Morning,
I'm following up a conversation that was had last night at Oxford Geek Night and has been rumbling for a while in different forms since before the London Drupalcon.
I believe that Finn mooted an Oxford Drupalcamp and last night we were discussing a possible theme with other Ecobee Drupallers. Education seemed most appropriate given the city.
There are of course a large number of matters that would need to be sorted out and thought about but this post is an attempt to push the idea over the top as 'twere and make it a reality.
Some of the things that need to be organised are timings and venue. I think June was suggested as a space in between end of term and not too close to Drupalcon. Is this the best time in other opinions? In terms of venues, are there any suggestions? We did think of the Said Business School and I know someone on the conference office so I'm going to sound out them as a potential to get an idea of costs and so on, but any other possibilities?
I am sure there are members with more experience in the area of organising events but I really think that this is a ball that should start rolling if it is going to happen, rather than continuing some great semi-linked up conversations. Just a thought.
Iain
Comments
The Oxford e-Research Centre
The Oxford e-Research Centre is interested in this idea. Personally, I think it would be an excellent event. We have a range of ideas that could prove useful. It would be good to take this idea and expand it further.
Janet, DrupalCamp and so on.
Raz, great news. Perhaps this is something that we could discuss at the next OxDUG meeting and make plans for moving forward?
I'm pretty sure Janet would be interested in helping out as well from what I've heard recently in conversations but I need to come back to people here with some firmer proposals for costs and so on before I can take it further.
Iain
getting the ball rolling
Hi Iain.
Thanks for getting the ball rolling with this discussion. I think a DrupalCamp in Oxford would be fantastic, and as you suggested, the education theme would be good in many ways.
I guess there is much to think about at this early stage, and there are a fair few resources available to help guide that thought process. Here's a couple I have yet to read in full.
http://drupal.org/node/247972
http://groups.drupal.org/node/136494
We should also learn from others. I spoke to Matt Fielding at Drupalcon, he set up the DrupalCamp in Leeds earlier this year. He suggested he'd be happy to share some of their experience, so I'll follow that up. There will be other case studies out there, here's one http://nodeone.se/blogg/organizing-a-drupalcamp-%E2%80%93-a-short-how-to
Shall we put it on the agenda for the next OXDUG, perhaps mainly to identify who would be up for helping and to set up a separate meeting, rather than using the whole meetup to discuss the DrupalCamp.
In terms of a venue, it would probably be good to start looking into our options as soon as possible, but how do we assess what capacity we'll need?
I'll make some enquiries and do some more reading...
Thanks again for kicking this out there Iain!
Nice one.
Finn.
rolling the ball a bit further
Hey Finn,
I was sort of nervous pushing it out there since I'm following the conversation that you started :)
Anyhow, I'll make a node of the URLs and read them in my own time. We ought to put it on the agenda and discuss.
WRT the venue, I'll try and call somebody today to get some feelers for availability and costs but Raz's mention of the OeRC as possible venue is good news. We should be building on what others have done and presumably make our own experiences available for other Drupal groups.
Now if we make it happen, I'll be smiling.
Iain
Next OXDUG, Wed 7 December?
This is presumably on Wednesday 7 December? I think that'd be a great idea.
On a completely personal level, I'd much rather have Drupalcamp in the OeRC than the Saïd Business School, given I had friends who protested against it being built. But I appreciate that negative criticism doesn't get a Drupalcamp organized.
If OeRC isn't suitable, another option is the University Club, which I think required a £500 booking fee for the one-day Barcamp. As far as capacity is concerned, then it's hard to gauge, but people could be asked to sign up early, before a venue is decided on. When you get to 50% of any preferred venue, book it :)
(On a similar note, please let's use Wufoo or Google Forms to handle signups, unless we're building our own infrastructure. They're much more usable than a Barcamp wiki that people have to edit.)
Basically, Drupalcamp is the
Basically, Drupalcamp is the same as a conference, or workshop, we hold and organise such events on a regular basis. We should have pretty much everything that is required in terms of logistics, venue, camcorders etc...
I think there will be much interest in this event from researchers, OeRC/Uni collaborators and other academics. If you can send me the expected number of attendees I can start to put some feelers out for venues and their costs.
Raz :)
I'd love to find out more
I'd love to find out more about the plans and what dates you're thinking of!
More talk about DrupalCamp Oxford
There was talk on IRC today about a DrupalCamp in Oxford, apparently unaware that we were already thinking about doing one.
Tim Millwood and Heather Graham (both working for Acquia) are interested in the idea, so want to know more about our plans.
Heather had to shoot off to prepare for a meeing but she asked :
ecofinn: maybe your crowd interested in drupal and education- are they also interested in "drupal as subject matter' or just "drupal as tool in EDU"
to which I didn't have a chance to answer.
So in terms of 'education' as a theme, we should clarify what we mean.
Personally I'm interested Drupal being used by educational establishments, but also education of Drupal (training at all levels).
It would be good to talk briefly about this at our meetup on Wednesday.
Also, there is DrupalScienceCamp Cambridge - 21st and 22nd January 2012 http://groups.drupal.org/node/183899 which should be fun for those of us who can make it!
So what happened?
Sorry I missed Wednesday - I popped my shoulder out on Tuesday, landing heavily on my bike handlebars, and was all slinged up on Wednesday night!
Was anything discussed? I've got a meeting at 12pm about possible tech events in Oxford so it'd be great to mention any possible Drupal thing.
("All slung up?")
Post OXDUG update... dates?/venue?/size?
Morning JP!
Sorry to hear about your shoulder, I hope it is on the mend.
We did have a good chat about an Oxford DrupalCamp themed on education, mainly around the intial issues of how many people to expect, what venues are available, and what dates. Ideally we would like to have a confirmed date by the Cambridge event on 21/22 Jan, but to have a date, we need a venue, and to book that we need to decide on numbers. There was talk and enthusiasm for a larger event, but on balance I think the general consensus was that keeping it below 150 people would have a number of benefits: make it easier to manage, improve our options for venues, increase the opportunities for everyone to meet each other, increase the quality of the talks / sessions. The flip side of that is that it may be quite popular in the academic circles in Oxford and beyond, so we may need to put in effort to get a good balance of attendees.
The other big undecided issue is whether to make it a 1 or 2 day event. I'm all for 2 days, but Hernani suggested that this was at least twice the work.
A number of sponsors have already indicated they would be interested in sponsoring, so hope to be able to keep ticket prices down.
With regard to a date, we are looking at the end of June. I think the last weekend in June was suggested, taking into account term dates and potential prices of venues (which appear to increase when the students leave, preferring full residential bookings).
Raz has set up a project management site on asana.com - so I'll figure out how to add you to that if you like, there may be more details and thoughts bouncing around there (I've yet to read through it all).
We were going to try for a meeting one evening next week, but I'm all booked up, so we may try to do a Skype call or leave it for January.
Give me a shout in you want to talk more today.
And look after that arm (which one is it? You seem to be typing ok!)
Great stuff
That all sounds brilliant: that's plenty for me to be going on with. June is sufficiently far enough ahead that I don't mind not having a chat today!
I broadly agree with Hernani: Oxford Barcamp did a Saturday evening meal then a Sunday full-day thing, which works quite well (hangovers permitting) and means you're more likely to get a venue for the full day than if you're trying to do it on a Saturday. Having two days means setting everything up and tearing it all down again at the end of the day, unless you can get a really, really tame venue, where you can basically do it like a full-on Barcamp with people kipping on couches in the actual venue etc. That's a bit hard-core, mind you.
I'll discuss it with Tom today as I'm pretty sure we'd want to get involved. Please do get me on asana.com if you can.
(It's my left shoulder, but it's recovering quickly. I'm like one of the old-skool He-man figurines where you can pull the limbs out of the sockets on rubber and they snap back in, or maybe like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 2. Have you seen the party trick I can do with my fingers?)
Iain and I are off to
Iain and I are off to DrupalScienceCamp in Cambridge (http://www.drupalsciencecamp.org.uk/) to soak it all up and take notes on running a Drupal Camp, so hopefully we'll bring back lots of ideas to throw into the mix.
Meanwhile, Raz is looking at booking space at one of the Oxford Colleges in late June, on a Friday and Saturday, so we should have confirmed prices and options soon.
I've been thinking about the Education theme, which is huge, and am wondering about whether the whole thing should be geared towards education, or to keep it 50/50, with a good amount of non education specific material.
Also been reading about other events like this: http://groups.drupal.org/node/191733
Oxford Uni Drupal usage
Hi all,
In a vaguely unofficial category - we (a team at Oxford University Computing Services) built http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk using Drupal 7. We'd be keen to see an Oxford education event and my boss says he might be able to "sponsor" the event in some way.
Apologies for ambiguity.
Pat
Brilliant!
Hi Pat.
Great to hear about http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk, and great to hear about interest in the event and potential sponsorship! Sounds great.
As it happens, Iain and I were just talking about you and about the Open Knowledge Foundation (which sounds fascinating).
Have you been along to one of our OxDUG meetups? They're on the first Wednesday of the month (1st Feb is the next one). Either way, it would be great to know what aspects of Drupal in Education OUCS would be interested in, what you might bring to the event, or what you might want to take away from the event.
Early days, but I'm quite enthusiastic about the potential and the interest.
Hope to speak soon.
Finn.
DUG Stuff
Hello,
Although I'm using Drupal, I'm not really an avid fan.
Happy to come to a meeting though
Pat
Save the date: Fri/Sat 22/23 June 2012
We don't have the dates / venue booked just yet, but we are looking at Fri/Sat 22/23 June 2012. I've just been at the DrupalScienceCamp in Cambridge (which was fantastic!) and had the opportunity to talk with the organisers and others about the Oxford event specifically but also about UK Drupal Camps in general.
One point we noted that we need to try to ensure we don't unintentionally clash with each other. Looking at http://groups.drupal.org/event/2012-06 there doesn't appear to be anything on that weekend, but I also note that http://barcelona2012.drupaldays.org/ is the weekend before but it is not listed on g.d.o events.
Does anyone know if there is a definitive calendar of Drupal events that we should also check against?
In the mean time, I'll create an event here on g.d.o so that other people know what we're planning.
Anywhere else we should post our proposed event?
Actually, when about to post
Actually, when about to post the event, it reads "Only add actual events with established dates. Proposed events, discussions of event ideas, etc. belong in Discussions. "
So I've left it for now.
This does beg the question of how best to run the dates past anyone else who might be considering a UK based DrupalCamp.
Ask on Twitter?
I've just done that. It might help us get more info!