We're in the process of building up a sizeable group of Drupal users up here in Coffs Harbour, and a number (> 1, even) of businesses and volunteers developing websites in Drupal, so I've been thinking it's time to set up a local Drupal user/developer group here, initially only online but probably with semi-regular meetings before long. My first thought was to set up a site for it, but then I thought that's really what groups.drupal.org is for, so I created a group for it (still pending moderation). Then, just as I was congratulating myself on my initiative, my wife Allison pointed me to this discussion from last year, which as far as I can see reached no firm conclusion on the wisdom or otherwise of regional groups on groups.drupal.org.
The objectives of this particular group are to:
- Do the normal social/business network-y stuff that groups on gdo do,
- Provide a support forum that relieves me of the burden of being the single local guru everybody turns to (and nobody wants to pay), but doesn't require throwing non-technical users to the drupal.org forums,
- Reassure potential local clients that there is more than the one crackpot in town that supports Drupal, and a wide range of users that are (generally) happy with it.
I agree that fragmenting the Australia group would being a bad thing, but I expect any developers in the Coffs group would be members of the Australia group as well, and know how to post or cross/post appropriately, and I think that splitting a regional group's online presence away from drupal.org entirely is a more serious case of fragmentation. I also think that in this particular case it's a complementary group with a somewhat different purpose rather than a regional subgroup. I'd like to avoid treading on anybody's toes, but given that the last discussion didn't seem to result in any agreed policy, I'd like to rephrase the question from "are regional groups a wise idea?" to:
"Would anybody be seriously upset/offended/angered if there was a Coffs Harbour regional group on gdo?"
A single "yes", and I'll happily set up a little site on another domain.
Comments
Simple answer
Considering I was probably the most vocal person in that initial discussion when the decision was made to remove the Sydney group, I think I can look back and respect that (for now) it was probably the right choice.
I think that, basically the issue boils down to momentum and necessity. Its easier to start something within an existing group and resources, and then move elsewhere if/when the need comes. Currently, I think the Sydney group is a pretty strong user group and I don't think we really have any reason to have our own group yet.
So, my advice would be to start your group here and build it up. Once you have a bigger group of users, then it might make sense to separate and you can do that easily (you'll also have more support)
On a side note, I would recommend jumping in and having a face-to-face meetup. Even if only 2 other people show up, that's a start and it will create alot more momentum and reason for people to talk to each other online. Then, just push to make it a regular thing and it will start growing. Feel free to come chat in #drupal-au as well.
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
James Cross Construction Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
Too Soon
ATM I still feel that the Australian Drupal community is too small to need more than 1 group or sub-groups.
Right now there is still only 1-2 posts per week on average in the Australian group. also there is less than 300 members and out of those I would guess than less than 20-30 actually participate in discussions, or post new content.
As for being able to ask questions and use it as a support forum, everyone is quite welcome to post support questions here but it is much better to do this in the drupal.org forums where a lot more people (not just Australians) will be able to help them. This also helps people experience the entire Drupal community and not just 1 little part.
lastly if we were to create sub-groups I would see us adding groups by state or by metro/regional states, so I would see Coffs Harbour split out into a NSW (Regional?) along with the Sydney group.
I quite like seeing all of the activity for Australia, and I have been to at least 1 meeting of every group (expect Coffs Harbour) and seeing what everyone is doing can only enrich our Australian community.
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Gordon Heydon
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Gordon Heydon
Use this group
If there are enough of you up in Coffs, then you really should consider organising regular meetups, as we do in Sydney and in Melbourne. You should post the meetup details here in the Australia group - and then, you never know, you might get visitors from all over the NSW North Coast region, and even from elsewhere. Also, let us know if any of you want to pop down to Sydney (or up to Brissie) - we'd love to see you.
Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh
Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh
As always...
I for one welcome a Drupal related excuse to drink some beer down the Sawty Pub
cheers
ruben
cheers
ruben
Conclusion
As always it's not enough to find a solution to your problem, but to find a solution that doesn't cause other problems. It looks like the next step is to talk the Sawtell Hotel into putting in WiFi.
I understand Gordon's point about the forums, but I don't think the Drupal forums are the right place for a large proportion (probably the majority) of the clients you get in a town the size of Coffs. We're talking people who think they're pretty cutting edge for owning a fax machine. I recently had a client instruct me to remove some links to external sites by posting me print-outs of the offending sites (not the page on his site containing the links) with big crosses through the pages in red texta. We just knocked back an eager potential client who needed money fast and they thought an e-commerce site would be the way to get it, particularly since it was bound to be cheap to set up as they'd nearly finished the site themselves. In Microsoft Publisher.
I think there's got to be a way to encourage these users to help each other (and thereby keep their costs down and save my sanity), but I don't think anyone on the Drupal forums would thank me for lumbering them with enquiries like "My Internet's not working. Is it because the last PDF file I uploaded to the site was too big? I reduced the font size as much as I could." I will ponder on this some more - perhaps over a beer or three with the help of Ruben and others.