LA Drupal Governance Meetup- Saturday, July 30th

I started reading the recent forum about Drupal Association yesterday, and thought maybe I should post a reminder that Drupal has been around a while, and has a formal declaration of Code Of Conduct. For those Los Angeles members who were not aware, and for those who knew, here is the URL with the suggestion that everyone read it before our July 30th meeting.

http://drupal.org/dcoc

Why read it? We, members, you and I, are legally bound by it.

I have heard rumors it has been enforced. Successfully.

I do know this reminder is not needed for any LA member, as we are all SoCal, laid back, sun lovers.

Pete

I haven't been able to go to the meetups lately, and most of the activity I've seen is related to DCLA. I just want to check in that this is still all-systems-go. I'd hate to knock on Benno's door and find no one there! :)

I plan on attending & am coming via the blue line, no parking pass is needed for me. :)

You're right, "debating LA Drupal" doesn't sound fun at all. Please don't skip the organizers' meetup just because you think it's going to be a debate. The other reasons you give are understandable, but I think you'd be surprised if came tomorrow with an open mind.

Here's what I'm envisioning: everyone having good conversation over good food and getting to know one another better, discovering the challenges that individuals and organizers in LA Drupal are facing and finding ways to help everyone toward their goals. There's also an increasing amount of money going into the LA Drupal Association bank account and I think we need to make decisions about how to track, spend and otherwise protect the community's money.

We'll see how it goes. This type of organizers' meetup hasn't been done before and I look forward to seeing who shows up. That's all I have to add. I've said everything else already at http://groups.drupal.org/node/158864#comment-542919

I think the word "governance" has hurt this discussion somewhat. It flies against other words I like more, like teamwork, empowerment and leadership development. My guess is that the "governance" word came from the process that the Drupal Association is going through to change itself from a volunteer-run organization to using a paid-staff model:

   http://association.drupal.org/node/1119

An important distinction to make here is that LA Drupal is a user group with unpaid volunteers. We don't have much in the way of physical assets or monetary resources and the real wealth we have is in our people and the time they're willing to volunteer.

I don't think "governance" in this group is going to work unless it's self-governance, and for that to succeed in an organized way I strongly feel we must first share our individual goals and visions and be willing to dedicate time to help one another toward them. We also need to be willing to show up, resolve any misunderstandings along the way and agree to disagree whenever there is conflict.

I was surprised to hear last month that many of the organizers in our group still don't know one other. Whether it's top-down, a doacracy or something that's consensus-based, it seems to me that knowing one another is a very basic requirement for any leadership model. To that end I'm really looking forward to the organizers' meetup on the 30th:

   http://groups.drupal.org/node/160664

If interested members and volunteers get together and end up deciding to elect / select one person to make sure that things happen, so be it. Regardless of what happens, I'd like to keep doing the things I'm already doing, like securing venues, organizing meetups and special events, presenting, finding and encouraging new speakers, uploading presentation videos to blip.tv, getting raffle prizes, system administration of the LA Drupal server, promoting our community and its members at meetups and on Twitter, reaching out to countless businesses that use Drupal, inviting them to our meetups, and so on.

Just securing venues is a job on its own. I've worked hard with others to open doors at venues, including SDS (with Phil Cady), Oversee (with Miguel), Media Temple (with Oliver and Lee), Spring Arts Tower (with Hsin and Steve), and most recently Droplabs (with Uzi, Blake, Lee, Ron, Paul and Jeremy).

This is is all work, but it's collaborative and fun for me and I'm continually grateful to everyone who has allowed me to do these things. I'm amazed by everyone who has allowed me to support them do what they want to do. It's when we have similar goals and support one another openly and transparently that we see what teamwork, empowerment and leadership development are all about.