Planning Session or Meeting for DrupalCon 2009

Posted by chachasikes on October 30, 2008 at 6:45pm

We can either propose a session for DrupalCon or we can organize a BoF meeting.

What are we interested in talking about, in regards to technology cooperatives?

If you are part of a technology cooperative and would like to be known, please comment on the page for this group for 'existing technology cooperatives.' We would really like to know more about how you use drupal, and what sorts of contributions you make to the drupal community.

There is also another page for defining 'technology cooperative' - so that we all know what we are talking about here. Our mission for the group has a tentative definition of technology cooperative, but if other people have different ideas about this, it would be good to list them here so we can all benefit.

Comments

I would like a decent

Posted by JBack on October 30, 2008 at 6:56pm

I would like a decent definition of what makes a technology coop and how I could become involved in one.
Where should I look for contacts/resources?
Is there a managerial structure?
How does a project flow through the organization?
How do I start one of my very own? Or can I?

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.

Drupal Cooperatives

Posted by dchakrab on October 30, 2008 at 9:04pm

I work with the Chicago Technology Cooperative, which builds Drupal-based websites and web applications for the nonprofit sector. I know there are a couple of others around as well, such as Agaric; should we consider a BoF on the challenges faced by technology cooperatives?

Sharing best practices in project management or management structure might be useful as well.

--
Project Manager
Chicago Technology Cooperative
312-480-8051
Drupal For Nonprofits

--
Dave Chakrabarti
Co-founder | Project Manager
Nonprofitable.org - Drupal for nonprofits
(708) 919-1026

Agaric Design Collective

Posted by mlncn on November 1, 2008 at 8:32pm

For us the definition revolves around treating everyone involved as equals, but proportionate to work put in, so as not to force everyone to work full time (or then some). But we're small enough to try to do this without much formal structure, so I'd love to attend a BoF for co-ops but expect us to learn more than teach!

^{benjamin, Agaric Design Collective}

^{benjamin, agaric}

Hey you guys

Posted by chachasikes on November 2, 2008 at 5:16am

The moderator isn't convinced that this discussion is g.d.o worthy (yet! :) )

I asked for a 3 week extension before they delete this group. I tried setting it up to plan talking at drupalcon, but they weren't fooled! ;) But if we really want this, we should figure out our interests overlap with the g.d.o. requirements.

I think there's 2 issues related to this potential discussion

we do need basic education about tech. coops. I do feel like making a page listing of resources and planning to talk at drupalcon should happen (no matter what, even if we just go to a bar. That would be a shame though because it would be nice to have our discussion online so anyone interested could participate.) We might need to move the basic information discussion somewhere else.

http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-for-good -- this group is similar, but I think this group is more generalized that the nitty gritty that I think we want for this group. so maybe we could stick a discussion about tech. coops (what are they, who are they) on that group?

Hopefully this discussion can stay, and perhaps we want to consider these options in order to make it more compatible with the g.d.o. goals:

a. making a list of all the ways in which these discussions are relevant to talking about drupal code development (i think there are millions of little possibilities) -- for big reasons, i think that the ways tech. coops might work with drupal, and give back to drupal.

I do think we will probably have to elaborate on the connections to real drupal code to legitimize this discussion. I'll suggest some in a follow-up post.

b. moving discussion into a different 'umbrella' -- so as to include other alternative business models that have compatibilities with the open-source nature of drupal. i feel like organized code sprints, community code marathons, and social businesses/social entrepreneurships are related...and equally cool! Even just a listing of these kinds of businesses and how they use drupal would be so awesome - except we can do that w/ drupal-for-good.

i want to know how to organize these...and i want to find places where efforts have synergy with drupal module development. (Ben -- I got these ideas from you when you mentioned about groups that are really interested in coordinating and sharing event-related work)

maybe we are 'drupal-for-good...how-to-guide' ???

What do you think?

moved the framing discussion to a different thread

Posted by chachasikes on November 2, 2008 at 5:33am

http://groups.drupal.org/node/16422

we can continue to talk about drupalcon discussion here

moving discussion about this group to a different thread

Posted by chachasikes on November 2, 2008 at 5:34am

http://groups.drupal.org/node/16422

we can continue to talk about drupalcon BoF here

further explanation in case you missed it...

Posted by chachasikes on November 2, 2008 at 5:22am

i set up the group first as a real group...though there wasn't a good category to click. i think i picked working group. we do want to meet physically and talk at drupalcon, so the second time i submitted the group i chose 'planning' -- i'm not sure what group drupalchix or drupal-for-good belong to, but i didn't see a checkbox that matched that criteria.