LA Drupal January 2009 meeting - (one week early)

Is there a volunteer from the San Diego, Bay Area, LA, or surrounding Southern California areas who wants to give their SANDcamp presentation a couple days early as a trial run? Step up!
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Senpai

Sorry, at this time we don't have the venue confirmed. I'm literally waiting on an call/email to come back by or before Monday afternoon. The event page will be updated for sure when we get that confirmation.

I am fairly new to Drupal. I've only gone to one full LA Drupal meeting. And never any meeting bigger (as a "camp" or a "DrupalCon").

But being quite pleased with that first meeting, on the 12th,

1. I turned to this page to schedule this next meeting of LA Drupal on my calendar. But instead I saw the venue being unknown.
2. But there I DID first see the referenced San Diego Drupal camp - and that sounded great; yes, based on my prior experience, sure I'd be willing to drive say 4 hours to San Diego for this. But, to my shock, even though that was only 4 days later and a whole weekend event, that, too, had no venue; indeed, even in the San Diego User group on this topic, I saw only users instead saying "is the venue settled?" and wondering then "should I book my hotel near the convention center?". Indeed I note I didn't even see the dates there (for SANDcamp on the SANDcamp site!) -- had to get them from THIS post.

This gave me a very bad impression of the reliability of Drupal in-person user meetings, since:

1. for the LA Durpal meeting, I was going to have to drive 1.5 hours (2.5 if traffic) to come, and no venue yet?
2. And much worse for SANDcamp. That would be a 3 to 4 hour drive, and indeed a whole weekend event, and still no venue, and I had to get it's dates from here (not there), and there had users wondering. Sure, SANDcamp SOUNDED like it was supposed to be big, but was it really even going to take place?

Still, just so I could get the email when they figured out where their big event would be, I then joined http://groups.drupal.org/san-diego --and even though I'm not in San Diego.

But I got no email of the missing venues.

And so I checked back again (I recall on the 17th (just 3 days prior this LA Drupal meeting)) and then saw this page ending with this post (of yet another worried user asking "I see the venue´s still TDB, Tuesday´s approaching. Any idea yet?"). And still, as I recall, no clear topic. So THAT was what really did it in for me for both meetings.

--as all of this gave me a bad impression, a kind of subconscious thought: "Hey, if it seems the organizers aren't taking these meetings seriously, why should I? Indeed, even if I went, maybe no one else would show up for this same reason, and then all my driving & scheduling would also be a waste."

As a result, I kind of tuned-out on these meetings, and sadly and ironically while I was actually very involved with Drupal (indeed working all day & all day on it, as my post here on what I was doing might suggest).

And so while these details of the venue were FINALLY added,

1. I didn't really tune into it by them.
2. And indeed the LA Drupal venue wasn't announced until 2009.01.19 (1 day before!) -- and by that time, I had really tuned out; had mentally written it off as "if they haven't found a venue by now, then it's probably not going to be happening this month"
3. Including most sadly not noticing (until now, after the fact) that the SANDcamp site DID announce a venue (and also provided dates) -- but I see this announcement is dated "2009/01/17 @ 10:21" -- just 7 days before -- that's way too late for this sort of large event (and not only for planning but also for good impressions) .
4. Moreover, http://groups.drupal.org/san-diego seemingly never announced/posted to their members the venue when it was found -- sadly, they relied on users to check the SandCamp.Org site, which --especially after these bad impressions-- I had heavily given up on. So http://groups.drupal.org/san-diego never emailed their members of the venue, and even though they were hosting it, and even though they had no venue to the last minute(so even though I joined them just be alerted of their choice, the alert never came)

So

1. I missed both meetings (since the notice came to late (or didn't come in the case of SANDcamp, and by that time I also didn't put it high enough priority, since it didn't seem the organizers were putting it in high enough priority by not having a venue when clearly folks were asking & needed to plan)
2. and indeed when it came to SANDCamp, instead I went to www.SoCalCodeCamp.Org, which WAS announced (dates & venue) months in advance was a sure thing.

Maybe if I knew that Drupal meetings might not have a venue to last minute but will still be a big success, I would would have known otherwise. (are they?) But:

• I would have never guessed this, and I would guess most newcomers would never guess it, either.
• Moreover, when people are are trying to do stuff as plan their schedules and book hotel rooms, not knowing just basic time & location causes notable problems.

I'm sure the organizers are working honorably, and volunteering tons of time. Indeed, from say http://sandcamp.org/sessions/schedule it looks like at least SANDcamp was remarkably good, and most surprisingly even when the venue was left to unknown until the end.
JUST ONE THING I RECOMMEND, especially since the problem (of no venue to the last minute) happened two times in a row here (with LA Drupal and then San Diego Drupal): you may not finalize all the topics to the last minute (even www.SoCalCodeCamp.com has a lot of last minute changes), please DO announce the time AND VENUE plenty in advance (the bigger the event, the more so). As

1. at least then people can put some time & place on their calendar. Indeed it seems better to change them than to not have them (as waiting until you can be certain seems here possibly much worse). As without these basics, a specific time & place, the event does not seem real. At least I do, and my guess is most folks would probably get the same impression.
2. Moreover, without the full details, then one is obligated to keep checking back (which is what blew it for me - after 2 checks with disappointment, I kind of gave up); in contrast, if it's announced but announced wrong, then the BURDEN is at least on the annoucer to correct it (plus the announcer then has more positive RSVPs which then can further help see if anything really needs to change).

Hope this feedback helps.