DrupalChix Events at Drupalcon Chicago

We often have a Drupalchix Birds of a Feather at Drupalcon. Anyone want to do this again this year? Anyone interested in helping out?

Last Year
Last year, there were 100 people in the BoF. We also met for lunch on the first day. And also for a Happy Hour (which was just meeting in one of the Drupal parties.)

In our BOF session we said our names, and got a sense of roles and histories of attendees. We talked about some challenges that some attendees had in their professional lives as technologists.

There also have been discussions about the value of separating into an identity-based group. There is usually a lot of positive feedback by attendees for whom the one hour we spend talking per year is very helpful, as some folks find the discussions to help put our professional experiences in context.

However, the important thing to remember is that we meet to help ourselves find our way more easily into the Drupal community at large. There definitely are hurdles, and we try to be supportive as open source culture is complex and there is a lot to learn.

The last one or two Drupalcons have started to see some interest in also breaking out into groups that address power & privilege/community policy/barriers to participation/creative methods of participation. If this is something we want to do as well, then let's do it this year. :) I'll help. (This is probably a different thread, but just throwing it out there to get it started if there is interest.)

This year
Is anyone interested in organizing the Drupalchix BoF this year? We probably need 2-4 more people to help out, especially if people want to have lunch or Happy Hour or other stuff.

If we want to do this, we might want to do the following:
* Pick a time that works for everyone
* Pick a BoF room that will be big enough... (might be a problem!)
* Talk about how there might be 200 people at the BoF.... if so, what to do...?! Happy Hour instead?
* If we do a BoF, discuss our agenda (based on different sizes of attendance, 50/100/200...)
* Post information in one canonical location
* Invite people to the events (remembering that new Drupallers do not always see the BoF board)
* Pick a Happy Hour strategy
* Pick a lunch location
* Anything else?

Things we might want to do in general (at the conference):
* Encourage new Drupallers to come to the code sprints & Birds of a Feather sessions (not just the sessions! So much cool stuff happens in the BoF's! It's part of the Drupalcon experience.)
* Point out any BoF's and sprints/skill shares/sessions that might be of interest to new Drupallers (IRC/Git/Contributing to Drupal)
* Anything else?

Let me know what you think, cannot wait to see you all!!
- Chach