It's about time for another Montreal meetup...

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omar's picture

Howdy folks. I guess that it is about time for us to start planning another Montreal meetup.

As discussed previously, the next one should probably not be limited to Drupal developers. In fact, I'd like to invite anybody interested in Drupal but put a special focus on NGOs, non-profits and advocacy groups using Drupal... but then that's just me. Who would you like to invite?

As for a date... ummm... I dunno, how about the 29th? This would give us time to get the invites out in time for orgs to adjust.

As for a place... ummm... I dunno... any suggestions?

Finally, as usual I will try to secure a small budget for this activity from koumbit.org gang. Of course, your contributions are welcome too.

So, let's get this show on the road :-)

Comments

Sweet! :D

webchick's picture

I don't know anyone specifically in the NGO/non-profit sector, nor do I know where in town would be a good place to have one, but I'm definitely up for being there to help answer questions and demo stuff and whatever. :) We could maybe talk about what's up-and-coming in Drupal 5.0, have more "speed-geek" sessions on things like organic groups and CiviCRM, and whatever else makes sense for that audience.

For venues, I liked the venue from before, space-wise, just not the fact that it didn't have free wifi. ;( But we got around it, so maybe that's an option this time too. L'Utopik's a great space but probably not for the number of people who came last time (and I assume there will only be more people this time, since we've already had one) and it's also going to be too loud on a Friday night, I think.

Anyway, let me know if I can help in any way. :)

Green Party

Neil Adair's picture

The Green Party of Canada had our National Convention last weekend and elected Elizabeth May as our new leader (66% of the vote) she is the former Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada.

The convention was preceded by 2 days of workshops with Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's campaign manager and driving force behind hack4dean and DeanSpace now CivicSpace. He was just amazing and was preaching the bottom up, wide open type of political campaign which some of us have been working towards. Elizabeth May and George Read our national campaign manager are fully on board (George got them to invite Joe Trippi).

The GPC webteam were demonstrating Drupal/CivicSpace/CiviCRM to delegates from across the country for the 3 days of the convention. There are now hundreds of candidates, organizers, campaign managers and volunteers across Canada who are trying to get up to speed with the tools and the concepts of "open source politics". Drupal is our platform.

Launch of our new website has been pushed up to the end of Sept.

I have been working with Kieran Lal, Gerhard Killesreiter and others to get some key modules Drupal 4.7 compatible, volunteer/event/invite/CCK for meetups etc. and og2list. We are planning to host CivicSpace on Demand for all 308 ridings in Canada. We're also testing CiviCRM 1.5 and working with Donald Lobo and others to get CRM up to speed, such as getting it to recognise Drupal locale settings for multilingual sites, CiviMail, CiviMember etc.

Our servers are in Montreal (Netelligent) and windpowered (through Host it Green, we really do walk the walk as well as talk) and we will be in a Linux (Debian) cluster so we can add servers as needed. National political campaigns scale like you wouldn't believe!

We are putting the infrastructure in place so we can meet all the expectations which are growing by the day and would really appreciate the help of the Drupal community in Canada to make this happen and demonstrate to everyone how politics will work in the 21st century.

There are of course some in the GPC who want to stuff the genie back into the bottle or into the tiny little box that is conventional politics or as we call it "grey" party politics ie. top-down, command and control, scripted messaging, spam, junk mail, telemarketing, begging for money and all the other stuff we have come to hate about current politics.

I could go on and on (I am a politician after all ;) but I'll end by saying, perfect timing, we will be happy to sponsor this Meetup so we can get a good venue to accommodate all the people we will be inviting.

Once the website is launched we'll think about doing a meetup in Ottawa too.

Neil

Great!

omar's picture

This is good news Neil. We should get in touch soon so work out the details.

Omar

P.S. the next time you have somebody like Trippi in the neighborhood drop us a line so that we might be able to get in on it. :-)

Trippi seminars

Neil Adair's picture

It cost people money to attend the Trippi sessions, I don't know how much but heard complaints (the GPC webteam were told to go and didn't have to pay). Trippi doesn't come cheap, US$ 5k/day. George wants to invite Nico Mella, Dean's webmaster, so that could be cool, less expensive too. Will let you know if it happens.

The 29th sounds good

miriam's picture

The atwater library is a hotspot and it has wifi c/o ISF + a decent sized meeting area + it's a non-profit + it's central. I guess the only issue is the beer ? I think it may cost something to rent the space but I can find that out fairly easily.

If it became a regular thing for the Drupal montreal group to do meet-ups at the end of every 2nd month then we could really plan a fancy one for november? MAybe invite someone to do a special presentation

A swell, if we set a regular schedule fo rmeet-ups, poeple could plan their schedules somewhat, make time to attend etc..get prepared if there is something they want to demo in a big way.

"It's a go" so let's actually get it going now :-)

Anonymous's picture

Hey folks,

I've been swamped with work and the organisation of this event has been a little neglected... sorry about that.

Anyway, enough people have shown an interest and, thanks to Koumbit and the Green Party of Canada, we have a little money to sponsor the event. So at this point we just need to get the show on the road.

Myriam can you look into the details for the library and get back in touch with me please? My main concern is that I would like to be able to have some pizza and beer and I'm not sure that that will be possible there. Perhaps we start there and go somewhere else later... hmm...

Everybody please start telling people about this event... especially to your non-profit, advocacy-oriented or artistic friends and colleagues.

I suggest that the format include some form of show-and-tell, some discussion and, why not, a little "wishlisting".... Anyway, I decided to set up a wiki page where we could elaborate this collectively. *You are encouraged to edit/improve" this page:

http://wiki.koumbit.net/DrupalMeetupAgenda/2006-09-18

We have very little time folks so let's all get crackin'.

Correction....

Anonymous's picture

I had misnamed the page... sorry.... here is the correct link:

http://wiki.koumbit.net/DrupalMeetupAgenda/2006-09-29

meetup

Neil Adair's picture

Sep. 29th is is good for Pierre and I and maybe other Green Partiers.

green partiers?

miriam's picture
makes me think your gang's going to bring the left over st. paddys day beer.
)