So we have a good start on the discussion for a date for the meetup. Now we need to figure out a place, it will probably effect the date/time.
I am using the Drupal Meetup Organizing Guide as a starting point.
I think some important things to think about are:
Price: It would nice to find a free/cheap venue. I would be nice not to have to tell people they have to donate
Consistency: Find a venue that we can return to over and over again. Consistency is highly effective in growing a community as people become familiar to the location and can plan their day/evenings around it.
It sounds like we will be doing the meeting either on a weekday evening or Saturday morning so parking shouldn't be an issue most places.
I originally was thinking of the public library but I checked it out and it probably won't be a great fit. To reserve a room would be a minimum of $100. There 2 rooms that you can can just claim if they are free but that wouldn't be great in case they were in use.
I have been in Ithaca less than a year so I don't know a lot of resources yet. I would be willing to do the leg work of checking things out if people come up with suggestions though.
Other places that come to mind: coffee/book stores, community buildings?
Maybe people belong to other local meetups that have good meeting places?
Comments
possible meeting location
I will have to ask about it but a possible location could be one of the meeting rooms at Mann Library at Cornell (where I work). It wouldn't cost anything , but parking could be an issue before 5:00PM. There are several good rooms with wireless access (non-Cornell people can use the RedRover guest access service), most have projectors (if not, I have access to portable projectors that are available for staff use). Rooms would have to be reserved but they're rarely used in the evening.
fereira, this sounds like a
fereira, this sounds like a very good possibility. I doubt we would have a meeting before 5pm on a weekday. It seems from this page that parking would be free on Saturday too. I like the wireless access and the possibility of projectors.
Definitely don't want to end the conversation if others have ideas too.
Core developer
fereira, can you check on the
fereira, can you check on the availability of the meeting rooms? You can report back here or you can contact me via my contact form.
Thanks,
Ted
Core developer
mann room reservations
For which days should I check the availability of rooms? There is a room reservation system we use to reserve meeting rooms that I can use to check availability but I need to know what day and how many people we might expect. I spoke with my boss on this a couple of days ago and he didn't see any problems with using the rooms for the Ithaca Drupal Group other than that someone from the Cornell staff would have to make the reservation and open up the room and that meetings would only occur during library opening hours. The library hours are shown here: (http://www.mannlib.cornell.edu/hours). If we're talking about a small group (about 8 or less) there is a collaborative development room in the department where I work that has two projectors (that project side by side images on the wall) and a large whiteboard along one wall. It would be an ideal setup as long as the group didn't exceed 8 or so people. It's almost always in use during the day but it would likely be available most evenings.
BTW, that library hours page shown above might be an interesting topic of discussion. It's produced by a library hours service I developed that generates library hours data as xml or json and is consumed by a fairly simple drupal module that I and another developer created. The same service drives the display of an information kiosk in the lobby that also shows events (also on the website) produced from an events aggregator service I developed.
I would hope for more than 8
I would hope for more than 8 people but maybe not right away.
So looking at the summer hours we wouldn't be able to meet after 6pm on a weekday, right? I am just wondering if people will be able to get off work and make it over there. Or we could do the afternoon on Saturday?
Core developer