Future presentations and events

I'm trying to change the way I've been coming up with presentation topics from basically not doing much at all, to a more formal schedule of topics. I've found myself doing talks simply because it was easier to do it myself than try to line someone up. As DrupalCampPDX demonstrated there's a lot of very talented people in this town doing very cool things. I personally need to step it up and do a better job of tapping them and bringing them in.

The most obvious change is to start getting presentations lined up and announced further in advance so people can plan accordingly. The second it to try to address a wider audience. The group has a wide range of from total n00b to ninja and we need presentations to address all of them. For instance I'd hoped to also have Jon Duell do a presentation at the August meeting how to add Views 2 support to a module but he had a scheduling conflict so it's been bumped to September. It'd be great to have some introductory topics as well (anyone want to install all the WYSIWYG editors and walk us through the differences?)

Another avenue I'd like to explore is having some events, both social and informational, outside of the regular meetings. On the social fron, Melissa and Michael did an amazing job putting together the Drupal party for OSCON and there's talk of an oyoaha BBQ (BQB?) in September.

For the informational meetings, I think there's a sweet spot between a two-hour meeting and a full DrupalCamp that would allow more depth without all the organizational overhead. At the Drupal OSCON Party last week Matt Westgate was talking about doing some sort of a virtual "barn raising" to build Drupal based websites for local non-profits.

My current itch is to take a Saturday, gather a small group of people who want to see how to build a module and then go through the process with something to show at the end. Or perhaps it's a workshop on how to write unit tests for your modules. Another idea, targeted at a more novice audience is to start building up the drupalpdx.org (so we can have a more customized environment than groups.drupal.org allows) using Views and CCK.

Here's where the call to action starts. I need help with events, topics and presenters. We've had a great string of events recently and you could be the next one responsible for the next one. Not sure what you could present? Then ask yourself what presentation you wanted to see two months ago before you had to make a decision or start working on a project. What mistakes have you made and what have you learned since then that you'd be able to share with others?

So go ahead and leave a comment with ideas and suggestions of topics and presenters. Go ahead... volunteer your coworkers they'll thank you later ;)