Last week at the meeting, I took a few minutes to discuss the Organizing Committee for Drupal Camp Utah 2012. Here's the gist of the discussion.
I've identified a few of the areas that we could use volunteers in the committee:
- Public Relations - Getting the word out, posting, advertising, etc...
- Session Coordination - Scheduling the sessions, coordinating with the presenters
- Volunteer Organizer - Organizes all the people helping on the days before and day of the event(s)
- Finance - Someone has to count the money right?
- Donations / Sponsors - Works with business who are sponsoring the event. Maybe this is the same as Finance?
If you are interested in helping out in one or more of these areas please let me know. We want to get the next camp in the planning stage as soon as possible. I'm also open to suggested positions/areas, however, keep in mind that we are still a small organization and may not be able to find enough volunteers for the above.
The other thing I shared with the group was an idea for raising money by selling Drupal tee shirts in the $15 - $20 range. My plan was to keep it simple with just a screen printed Drupal logo on the front or back of the shirt. That would be for the purpose of marketing these shirts to people outside of Utah as well as our own group. But it was suggested that it would be more appealing to some if we added the name "Utah" or some kind of wording indicating Utah. It was also suggested that we save the tee shirts for Drupal Camp, maybe offer it up as part of the registration to the event.
What are your thoughts? How much would you pay? Would you rather it be just the logo or something more identifying?
Comments
My thoughts...
I like the idea of a committee to help, but I'd break it out into the following:
I also like the idea of the T-shirt being part of the Camp registration, although we should have them for sale on their own also. If we charged $20 for registration, and that included a $15 Drupal shirt, that seems like a good deal.
Experience with Events
Hi I'd love to volunteer my help on this wherever it may be needed most. I have experience with organizing, marketing, and running different events although the marketing has always been my true passion. I've had my own events company will be a year in business this October. It is also incorporated in case any of the benefits from that are needed or may help. I have various business accounts set up for just about anything you might need for putting an event on and promoting it, all tax free :) Be happy to donate any of these resources to keep costs down.
As far as t-shirts and registration - whats the target registration/entry amount for attending before adding the t-shirt in? What have you charged in the past? Pre-selling "early registrations" at a lower cost than "day of" would encourage people to register early and may also help with raising the money.
On the t-shirts I think it would be cool have something Utah on there for sure. You could always even do some of each.
Your welcome to checkout my companies website at www.veilep.com (Built on Drupal of course :)) or contact me anytime! My email is chad@veilep.com and phone is 801-923-8345.
Anything I can do, be glad to help!
events/sessions
We can help with events/sessions coordination. No real experience with it but we've been to some great developer conferences and have observed the formula that helps make them a success.
Re:
@WebChuck, are you volunteering for one of those? :) After talking with a few people, I think I'm also leaning toward the shirt included with registration.
@chadmkinder, we don't have anything planned that far ahead yet, just getting started. Please come to the next DUG and we'll talk in person about some of your ideas.
@Dharmetech, Thank you! Experience or not, having someone to keep an eye on it is helpful.
If anyone wants to volunteer but not for anything specific. We'll be able to use you in the coming months and on the day of.
Anyone else want to give any feedback on all this?
Certainly, Do you have the
Certainly, Do you have the next DUG currently scheduled? If not I will keep my eyes open for the information. Forgive me as I'm new to the group and only been part of the Drupal community for a little over a year. I am excited though to get more involved and become acquainted.
Always there
As I expressed previously to you, I very willing to contribute however you see me best fit to do so.
I think webchuck's simplification of roles is a good starting point. Marketing, I think it is important to say, would also need to be responsible for getting the word out via twitter, inviting other groups, etc. Also, it is my experience that the generalization of "everything that leads up to the event" could cause an incorrect view of the committees. Finance would do most of its work before the event as well as the Event coordinator. Also marketing would need to still be selling the value of the camp for a couple of weeks after and especially during the camp to improve turnouts for the next year.
I don't think it was webchuck's point to downplay the reach of each role but I wanted to make that clarification ahead of time. The time commitment is not a heavy one but it does stick around for a while and possibly crop up at inopportune times. Less groups with a few more volunteers to each group is a better idea in my opinion.
Tyler Smith
Developer