Despite the fact that Florida DrupalCamp 2011 was just a few months ago, preliminary discussions about Florida DrupalCamp 2012 are getting started.
As many of you know, Florida DrupalCamp 2011 was held at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. This would not have been possible without the generous support of the Rollins College Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Center (RCPNL), they acted as our partner and deserve all the credit for making their facilities available to us.
RCPNL is thinking about organizing a "Florida Nonprofit Technology Conference" in 2012, and they have approached us about us scheduling Florida DrupalCamp 2012 on an adjacent day(s). Nothing is scheduled yet, these discussions are in the preliminary stages. They're considering dates (including weekdays) in February and May. The idea is to pick a time when classes aren't in session, as to avoid a large group on campus during classes.
DrupalCon Denver is March 20-22, so any dates within a couple of weeks of this would be difficult, at best. It is too early to tell what any cooperation would mean for the organizational workload, but having more people help out seems like a good thing on the surface.
I'm posting this information so that we can gather as much input from the local community as possible. Some questions:
- How do people feel about this idea in general?
- How do you feel about possibly having DrupalCamp on a weekday?
- What can we do to (or should we) focus our sessions on nonprofit organizations?
Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?
Thanks,
-mike
Comments
mike, I'm going to go ahead
mike,
I'm going to go ahead and bring up the idea that several other communities seem to have embraced - having a beginner camp, and a separate "experts" camp. These could be two different dates.
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
Obviously, the date that
Obviously, the date that happens next to Rollins' NPTech event would be a shoe-in for the "beginner" camp...
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
Ryan's suggestion of separate
Ryan's suggestion of separate beginner/expert camps is a pretty interesting idea. Do we think that's possible from an organization/resource/amount of people point of view for the Florida community?
I think that if RCPNL is helping out the FL Drupal community, and organizing an event around their larger scale non-profit conference helps them out it seems an easy thing for us to do and a bit of a win-win. It's not like there aren't avenues to learn/teach new Drupal knowledge from a non-profit website point of view.
However, if we attempt to cater all sessions to non-profit, that might make it harder for some folks to feel comfortable with comitting to/leading sessions as they need to relate the topic to a non-profit? If we don't have more than one Drupal camp next year, maybe we could keep session planning open to all topics (not just non-profit focused), but try to structure one session track that focuses on non-profits?
I wasn't able to make it to the last DrupalCamp here in FL, but am looking forward to attending the next and will likely be offering myself up to volunteer where needed.
Chris Budy
Heavy Robot
I don't think we'd
I don't think we'd necessarily need to relate the presentations to non-profits if it's adjoining to, not during, the NPTech con. Either way, I don't know that many presentations would change if you wanted to target non-profits.
Instead of separate "DrupalCamp"s, what if we worked with NPTech to have a Drupal day the day before or after the conference. I'm essentially agreeing with Ryan but am branding it differently. I would want NPTech to handle the majority of the logistics while we could focus on just the track.
We can then better focus that event, possibly still leave it open to the community (depending on whether NPTech would allow people not going to NPTech to attend). We can then refocus DrupalCamp away from the beginner track a bit since we'll essentially have covered that. We could also keep our DrupalCamp similar to as we have done it before and just treat this as an extra event to expose Drupal to a large audience.
Don VanDemark
Agile Process Manager, Blue Shield of California
This year's camp was fairly
This year's camp was fairly large, and there were quite a few beginners there. There were also a lot of intermediate/experts as well though too.
Although I do like the idea of having separate camps for non-profits and others, we may isolate the beginners and old-hats from one-another. The collaboration and dialogue that can take place when beginners and more experienced users meet is sometimes priceless.
I see the idea of a "Florida DrupalCamp for Non-Profit 2012" and a "Florida DrupalCamp 2012" as having merit and being attractive for us, but also don't like the idea of the dichotomous distinction.
A pre-camp, "Drupal in a Day" training day might be helpful. I know colorado is doing that this year. Maybe this could be on Friday, with Saturday being a standard drupalcamp and pepper some non-profit topics in as well if a non-profit leader emerges.
I agree with Ben- I think its
I agree with Ben- I think its important not to isolate the newbies and old-hats. There's a lot of great networking that goes between the groups. In addition, you may have a case where there's a programmer that's new to Drupal, but may want to take an advanced course. I also think its important to pass along the culture of the community... as we all know, this is Drupal's real strength.
I also like the idea of having a "Drupal in a Day" adjacent to the main camp.
As far as focusing on non-profits, I think we could have a session or two, but I think the real interest would be in the capabilities of Drupal as a whole, and that's really not specific to non-profits.
A couple more notes: 1) I think it's great to start planning this way early. I know last year's website got up a bit late- I think we should try to get it up super early this year (I'm willing to volunteer whatever I can to make this happen). 2) I really like the idea of having a multi-day camp. 3) If there's anything that I can do to help out, let me know.
Premium Drupal Commercial themes
To clarify: The idea of
To clarify:
The idea of holding a Drupal event on the same day / next day in relation to the NPTech event is as follows:
1.5. We had a social media event (and the business track) on the same day this year for that very reason, to draw a broader audience in to DrupalCamp. This makes it more complicated to organize, at least on the marketing front, and for the people putting together sessions.
My suggestion about having a beginner event was not intended to exclude beginner-level programmers from attending the regular DrupalCamp. For the past several years, we have cast a very broad net with our marketing for DrupalCamp, because it is trying to serve the two audience (tech and end user) equally. This move would just make DrupalCamp a bit more focused on tech people and practitioners (site builders, themers, developers, IT Ops, etc) and a separate all-day event for complete noobs.
To Ben and Micheal's point, I think if we were to "isolate" the beginners, we would have to plan to counteract that by bringing in some more advanced types - what if we were to hold a code sprint on the same day, for example?
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
DrupalCamp
Really enjoyed the last DrupalCamp. It exceeded my expectations. It was very well organized and I got a lot out of it. I will certainly be attending this next one and would be happy to volunteer.
I, for one, would find it odd to have some non-profit focus for the next one. I am a freelance developer that is stricktly for-profit with all for-profit customers that pay taxes. To be honest, I don't understand exactly what would make the tax status of an organization use Drupal in any different way, except to fulfill some accessibility requirement in the education arena, which is education, not tax status.
In case you are looking for subject ideas for presentations next camp, here are my requests:
RDFa and the new Google model for SEO optimization using structured data.
Having a separate mobile layout/theme for specific mobile environments.
Central Florida meetup thoughts
We discussed this issue at the Central Florida meetup yesterday, as a number of organizers were present (Erik, John, Andrew, Don, Stephen, and myself). A couple of ideas that rose to the top of our discussion were:
For those of you who were at the meetup yesterday, if I missed anything, please comment below and correct me!
Keep in mind that this is still just at the brainstorming stage - nothing has been decided.
Thanks,
-mike
Ha, I was just typing up a
Ha, I was just typing up a summary myself. I think you hit all the high points although I think there are some politics involved that need to get mentioned. Now I get to launch my opinions as opposed to reporting facts.
Don VanDemark
Agile Process Manager, Blue Shield of California
Just an idea
One of the things that was a big attraction at a user group I knew was several all day seminars on hot topics (like GIT maybe?) given the day before the normal sessions. Would this be a possible fit for our a drupalcamp?
perhaps
Dorothy,
It is possible. Traditionally, all-day workshops adjacent to larger Drupal events tend to be organized by private companies who charge admission. Adding an extra day to a camp, securing a facility, WiFi, instructors all add complexity and expenses.
That's not to say that we haven't thought about it, but it usually takes an organization stepping up and doing the legwork.
-mike