TriDUG Rebooted: we have two new organizers and a full plate coming up

Hi everyone,

I've got a number of announcements to make, the biggest of which is TriDUG now has two new organizers! Greg Monroe from Duke Corporate Education and Jason Hibbets from Red Hat have agreed to take a leadership role in the group and will be assisting with group organization and event planning.

Those of you who have made the Durham meetups have met Greg, he's been our liaison at Duke Corporate Education since we started holding meetings there. As many of you already know Greg has substantial experience with Drupal as both a developer and site administrator and having him on the organizer's team opens a lot of new doors for the group as a whole.

Jason Hibbets is the driving force behind opensource.com and brings considerable community organization experience to the table. With his expertise we're hoping to get the group as a whole better organized and start exploring new opportunities to reach out to the larger web development community in the Triangle and surrounding areas. In addition to standard organizer's duties Jason has expressed an interest in facilitating activities for new Drupal users and individuals or organizations that may be interested in Drupal but lacking prior experience.

All three of us plan on being at the next meetups in Durham and Raleigh so plan to come out and help welcome them to their new roles. We would also like to have town hall style discussions about TriDUG's current and future focus and goals to insure the group is meeting the community's needs.

Upcoming Events:

For those of you planning on attending the NCTech4Good conference Kosta Harlan will be presenting on Drupal 7 and Julia Kulla-Mader, TriDUG's founder, will be presenting on best practices for moving to a CMS. There may also be Drupal-related material during the unconference if there is sufficient interest among attendees. More information about NCTech4Good is available on their website: http://nctech4good.org/.

TriDUG is also planning on having an official presence at the upcoming CityCamp in Raleigh. This conference is in the early planning stages so we're not sure exactly what this will look like. As plans firm up we will keep everyone informed.

Durham Lunch-and-learn series?
Based on my conversations with several folks in the Durham area there is quite a bit of interest in a mid-day meetup. We are currently working on lining up speakers and a venue for a summer series of mid-day presentations. As with CityCamp, this is also in the early planning stages so stay tuned.

TriDUG Organizer's meetings
Going forward the group organizers will be meeting monthly via IRC to work on planning ongoing and future group activities. These meetings will be open to all and we encourage everyone in the group to participate. The first of these meetings will be held next month, date and time to be determined. For those that can't make it transcripts of the chat will be posted to the group.

Call for presentations
As usual we are looking for presentations for the monthly meetups. If you have a presentation you would like to give please contact any of the group organizers so we can get you on the calendar.