Posted by sheena_d on March 16, 2009 at 6:26pm
Hi All,
I'm a co-organizer for the Triangle, NC Drupal User's group, and we're looking to increase our number of meetings to 2x/month and have one of those meetings be a "hack night" or sorts, where members come in with their problems and find someone to help them find a solution.
I'm wondering if anyone has any experience hosting an event of this type, and if you have any advice, tips, warnings, etc. to provide to those of us looking to do this for the first time.
Thanks!
Comments
When HACKING is a good thing!
Here in Indiana we have had tremendous success with both of the Drupal HackFests we have done. See ,my blog on it here: http://dougvann.com/blogs/dougvann/09-01-31/drupal-hackfest-definition
What I have done these last two times, and am likely to do again, is just open the doors at 1pm or noon and set a 4 or 5 hour limit on it. People come and go as they please and some of them eat while others do not. We had a sponsor for our pizza, but you can always have people indicate that they are coming to eat and ask for $5/head for beverages and pizza.
On the Groups.Drupal.Org post where you post the details, invite the attendees to start listing out what they want to learn, what problems they have, what they want to share. Trust me. People will be crying for Multisite, CCK, Views, Taxonomy, Media, etc.. Just be sure to have enough ppl on hand that know the answers so that those coming with questions are satisfied.
The next time we do this I am going to advertise the gig to try and bring in some curious Joomla and Wordpress people, as well as the non CSM but curious ppl as well.
The way I see it, the HackFest is an opportunity to meet people where they are and deliver to them the knowledge they seek. But don't think me too altruistic. I have members in my group that way outshine me on a number of topics. I try to suck their brains at the hackfests when I can!
I know that other people do events like these... What do you do? How's it working? I'd love to improve the quality, reach, and success of our hackfests.
- Doug Vann
- http://twitter.com/dougvann
- http://dougvann.com
LA runs meetups in parallel
Hi Sheena- in Los Angeles we're using a venue that allows us to run a large "Main Presentation" (aka general interest) area, and we also have another side-room that fits ~15 people that is aimed at intermediate>advanced drupal gods. we call the it a "Drupal Lab" > where the main idea is to mentor or incubate intermediate developers and provide a venue where more advanced users aren't bored talking about views 2 or panels for the umpteenth time. not to take away from those modules but we want to appeal to advanced users to continue to come to meetups - and rather than doing it on a seperate night, we run in parrallel - the advantage of this is that EVERYONE benefits from the networking that occurs towards the end of meetups.
check out: http://groups.drupal.org/node/20536
--
mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
Mike, That is a really
Mike, That is a really great idea. We're working on getting a larger, dedicated space for our group and once we have that I think we will be doing something similar. Thanks for the idea!