Howdy Montrealers (and Ottawa'ers),
(Pour les francophones parmi les 166 personnes dans ce groupe: Ceci étant un forum principalement anglophone et n'ayant pas le temps de tout traduire, j'espère quand même vous inciter à participer à cette conversation et évènement. Écrivez en français s'il le faut!!)
At the last Montreal Drupal meetup we started talking about the next Montreal Meetup. In fact, at least one initiative is already underway to secure a venue at a major local institution so it seems that planning process is already underway. So here is my first stab at this year's planning (followed by a request for YOUR input):
Timing: For the moment, the target seemed to be sometime in October.
Duration: 2 days worked well last time. I think it was a Friday and a Saturday in order to mix up weekday/weekend.
Venue: TBD, but ideally it would feature a large space for plenaries and several small spaces for break-outs. A park or green space nearby would be a major bonus (assuming we'll have another globally-warmed fall again). Note that last year's venue would likely be available if needed/wanted, but we shouldn't wait too long to figure it out.
Format: I'd suggest a mix of "open space" sessions with "tracks" with a dash of plenary activities. Anyway, "to be determined". Feel free to brainstorm in the comments below this post.
Website: Umm... yeah... that might be nice... i.e. one that actually helps :-) Maybe we should contact the Association for guidance/help with this... we might be able to save ourselves some trouble.
T-Shirts: We still have some from last year (BTW, anybody want one?), but I'd be 100% for having another one done.
Food: Last year's food was both affordable and good... for both vegetarians and carnivores alike. Although, some institutions might be bound by catering contracts so we'll have to wait and see.
Financing/Cost: Lastyear's "suggested $20 donation" approach seemed to work fine... especially with the sponsorhips so we will be looking for sponsors again... AHEM... hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink, say-no-more say-no-more. ;-)
While the last Montreal DrupalCamp was great, it only promises to be better this year. But for us to reach our full potential, we need YOU (all 166 of you) to step up to the plate with your ideas, comments and suggests. So please take the time to do so and, after some discussion, we'll throw a wiki page together to structure it all.
So, what would you like to get out of such an event? Is there a track that you'd like to see? Do you know of some project or technique that you'd like to show off in October? Should we have a keynote speaker or panel discussion? If so, on what topic? Do you have another venue to suggest? Do you want to sponsor the event? How do you think sponsorships should work anyway? Etc.
In summary, I'm just trying to get the ball rolling (which is about all I did last year too :-p ) and am seeking to mobilise a few more of you to get involved so that we can make this an unforgetable event and, who knows, perhaps a precursor to Montreal DrupalCon 2010! [insert evil laugh here].
Anyway, thanks for reading this far. Time to post a comment :-)
Omar
Comments
Codefest + Tikifest
Yann Larrivée propose de faire un gros événement qui dépasserait la communauté Drupal en incluant un Codefest. Qu'est-ce que vous en pensez ?
Hmmm....
Does one event exlude the other? Otherwise, in principle I like the idea of mixing it up a little. In practice, I know that we have a lot to discuss within the Drupal community and will probably need/want a dedicated forum.
So... I don't know... maybe it is all in the sceduling... or maybe adding a day... or maybe the other event is planned independently and people, such as myself, promise to show up and try to bring their friends/colleagues.
What do others think?
Omar
Juste Drupal est déjà pas mal
Je préfère un événement dédié à Drupal uniquement. Drupal 7 s'en vient rapidement et le code sera vraisemblablement gelé. Donc nous pourrons sûrement créer plusieurs sessions sur Drupal 7 et nous n'aurons pas assez de deux jours pour en couvrir tous les aspects. Et ce sans compter le reste des modules contribués qui auront de plus en plus des versions pour Drupal 7.
En bref, seulement deux jours pour Drupal c'est peu, alors imaginons un événement mixe?
Bien entendu, je vote contre tout événement mixe.
/* http://www.xmacinfo.com */
flashback
Indeed, I think we had this conversation before ;) I just hope we can manage to do without schedule conflicts this time around.
As a sidenote, who's got the keys to Drupalcamp Montreal? Someone at evolving web, I think. Can we get OpenID there, please please?
Sylvain Carle veut aider
"Time to plan another Montreal DrupalCamp? (I'm willing to give a hand, too)"
/me se demande si c'est si difficile de commenter ici... mais bon. Plus on est de fous!
This Can Really Put Montreal on the Drupal Map
Omar, thanks for stepping up once again and getting the ball rolling! Montreal and its environs has a great Drupal community, but we can be pretty segmented.
Last year's camp was an amazing success (thanks again to everyone involved!) and we can build on that to really bring the community together.
Here are my thoughts on the matter.
Website:
As you guys might know, we threw together last year's website (http://drupalcampmontreal.com/) just a few days before the conference, and were were pretty new to Drupal at the time. ;) Unless somebody else is take over it, we'd be happy to put another one together, probably in September.
I think for a site like this, the RPX module would do a good job for making up signing up with credentials for Facebook/gmail/twitter/openid dead easy.
We may even throw in a photo gallery and other nifty things! And if there's enough interest, we could set up an Open Atrium instance for the planning process.
Space:
Eric Smith (http://ericsmith.ca/) has indicated that he's working at a rather large co-working space (conveniently located by Des Pins and St Denis, and 5 minutes away from the Sherbrooke metro), and that may be able to provide that for us. Also, perhaps the fine folks at McGill University could use their connections to get us some space? Needless to say, that would be the ideal situation. And if all else fails, we could ask Sylvain Carle for help/advice in this record--he's got a lot of experience with BarCamps and the like, and was one of the main organizers of this month's WordCamp.
Sponsorship:
Securing major sponsors early (August) is the most important thing we can do to guarantee that the event is a success.
Evolving Web will be happy to step up in a more significant way than last year, and surely some of the last year's sponsors will too.
The fine folks at iWeb (see http://groups.drupal.org/node/24484) have indicated to me that they would consider sponsoring our little event.
They were the principal sponsor of WordCamp and from what I understand their support was considerable.
T-Shirts:
Last year worked out OK, although in retrospect it would be great if we could have spent a few hundred dollars more and gotten American apparel.
The Druplicon with his head on fire is a bit scary (although I think it was my idea), perhaps we can outsource this?
I know there's a good amount of talented designers in our ranks.
We should also get mostly large shirts. Almost everyone who came was an L.
Food:
The food that we had last year was delicious. If it's around $10/person/meal, then we should probably go with them again.
Promotion:
I think we can do a lot more than last year to really promote the event, at least a month in advance.
1. Montreal Tech Watch
2. Drupal Planet (at least 3 posts)
3. Celebrity guests--yes, webchick counts as 2 ;)
4. Badges on everyone's blogs
5. ...?
Talks: The un-conference format turned out surprisingly well. In my opinion, it would be ideal to have a mix of scheduled and impromptu talks, perhaps half and half?
Looking forward to chatting about this more at the August Drupal meetup, wherever it will be held ;)
In the meantime, please feel free to email me (Alex Dergachev, alex#evolvingweb#ca) or Miriam Martz (miriam#evolvingweb#ca) to discuss any specific issues.
Cheers,
Alex
Space
If people are cool with using the ECTO co-working space I can commit to getting that booked and to covering any costs that are involved. But I think it would only be available for a Saturday/Sunday. Because on Friday it would be used as a work space.
C'est l'ancien emplacement de la Phonothèque sur la Place Roy à deux pas du Métro Sherbrooke.
It's a large adaptable space. La connexion Internet est fournie par Île sans fil. Je n'ai pas vu les derniers plans mais on devrait aussi avoir accès à un (peut-être 2) écrans de présentation.
If anyone wants to see the space. I can meet them there any time.
Another space option
Hullo all (and Eric),
I'm part of the web group here at McGill University. Omar mentioned an initiative to hold this year's camp at a local institution--I've put in a request exploring the possibility of using university facilities to house the camp, but it will likely be a week so before I have firm answer.
Is that an attractive option to the community?
I'll report back once I know what's what.
Logistics?
I'm not sure who organized this last year, since that was a bit before my involvement in Drupal started...I did order the t-shirts :)
Does anyone have all the details of the budget/vendors/contacts/volunteers etc. that would be able to share it? How many people came? I wouldn't mind helping pull it all together, although it looks like Alex already volunteered me!
YAY!!
Awesome awesome awesome!! :D
Random thoughts/comments:
Lullabot's doing workshops in Toronto from Oct. 5 - 9, and I'll probably be among the crew that gets sent along. So I selfishly would rather it be AFTER the weekend of 11th, because then I could definitely come. :D
Also on the topic of dates, I know chx is planning a "Port a bunch of D6 modules to D7" sprint in Vancouver the following weekend after that (Sat. Oct 17 and Sun. 18). It might be cool to have a component of our DrupalCamp that does some of this as well (maybe a 2-hour session in the afternoon on both days). After all, it's what we'll all be doing for the better part of the next 6-8 months ;) and it can actually be a lot of fun, esp. in a group! In addition, if we held it that weekend, it's possible we could do a cross-country virtual keynote session thingy like we did last time. However, I'd really need to check with him, since I know his plan is much more of a "let's get a bunch of rockstars together and get a bunch of stuff done" kind of gig than a "let's talk overall about Drupal to a highly mixed audience" kind of gig, and I don't want to derail their progress in any way.
As always, I can yammer on endlessly on topics ranging from general Drupal community stuff, to Drupal 7, to test-driven development, to "how to contribute", to "intros" on topics like Views, CCK, OG, blah blah blah. I think we should have at least one "intro to Drupal" session so that people completely new to Drupal have something to acclimate them a bit. Something that's fun to do here is build out a site in front of their eyes and explain concepts like nodes, modules, etc. as you go along. I could lead something like this if no one else wants to.
The mix of one or more formal "tracks" of scheduled sessions alongside a "barcamp" open-ended kind of thing sounds good. I personally love the barcamp-style stuff: there were a lot of really great sessions last time completely decided on the fly, but OTOH I don't think many new people came because they had no idea what was in store and what (if anything) they would be learning.
(hoping my babelfishing is correct here) As for co-hosting with CodeFest, I think that could present some very interesting cross-over, and if an opportunity arose where we could hold DrupalCamp in one set of rooms and CodeFest in another set of rooms at the same venue and the same time, that'd be really awesome!! I keep meaning to go to those but they keep falling on bad dates for me. :( I do agree with others though who've said that DrupalCamp is big enough that it should be its own thing, not a couple of sessions as part of a larger event. In fact, I think we should aim for 100+ people this time. I totally think we could do it, with enough head-notice and word-of-mouth advertising.
For sponsorships, the easiest thing is generally to get sponsors to pay vendors directly for things like food, venue, t-shirts, etc. That way no one has to be responsible for a bunch of cash (although the suggested donation means there will be cash :)). I'd be happy to check with Lullabot and ask them to sponsor again this year!
Ok, that's enough from me for now. :P Thanks so much for getting the ball rolling on this!!
Visiting in October
Hey, I'm usually in Montréal in October and I'm thinking about aligning my trip with this event. Toronto might be an option as well, but I'm aiming for the first and/or second full week of the month in Montréal and I would like to meet more people in your city.
I like the suggestion of doing this after the 11th - and hopefully before the 17th/18th - just because I'll probably be back in Vancouver again or visiting someplace else on my work-vacation.
A few thoughts: Thanksgiving
A few thoughts:
Thanksgiving falls on October 12th this year, which likely means a lot of people will be spending that weekend with family, possibly out of town. I think this is a good reason to avoid this weekend entirely, in addition to the fact that Webchick will be busy spreading awesomeness elsewhere. So, my vote is for the following weekend.
Last year choosing a Friday and Saturday worked well, but as I recall attendance was higher on the Saturday, so if moving to a Saturday and Sunday is necessary to get access to a great space like ECTO or at McGill I think that would fine too. A bunch of classrooms would be ideal, but I know universities often restrict wireless access to their students and faculty -- would McGill be able to open that up for us for the weekend? If not I think that would be a deal breaker.
There are obviously enough people interested just in Drupal in town for us to have our own event, but it would also be interesting to meet PHP folks from outside our community who might have an interesting perspective on what we're doing. Perhaps we could plan an intro to Drupal for coders session and invite those folks? Of course, we could
infiltrateattend their conference too!Which brings me to another point: I really like the suggestion of having some planned sessions, with others decided on the spot. These can even be combined: last time several people came with a prepared presentation which they either presented themselves, or merged with someone else's session. As much as the on-the-fly scheduling appeals to me I can see how it makes it difficult to "sell" the conference to people not already familiar with Drupal or the local user community.
Also, one thing I found missing last year was outreach to people not already using Drupal. Almost everyone who came had already drunk the kool-aid, so to speak. If we would like the local Drupal community to grow we should think more about how to reach out to technical and non-technical folks who've heard of Drupal but don't know anything about it. I think this is important, so I can offer to help give a talk for newbies too. DrupalCamp NYC always has a session in which they guide first time users through installing Drupal on their laptops, perhaps that would be a good start (I'll ask my co-workers there for tips on how they've led that session). But first we have to find those people, and convince them to show up. Any ideas?
I'm looking forward to another great conference!
--
Openflows Community Technology Lab
Space
Concerning the space. I'm fine with ECTO and offered Station C myself a number of times in the same spirit. However, I think both spaces are roughly the same size (unless I'm mistaken?) and I would hesitate to qualify either one of "large" in the scope of holding a Camp, it really depends on how many people are expected.
2500sqft (Station C) is large for an office. It's small for DemoCamp, WordCamp and BarCamp. If DrupalCamp is bigger than last year, I would suggest looking for a larger space. Especially if multiple tracks are planned. Last year's space was great for multiple small sessions but if any speaker was louder and/or if more than 10-12 people regrouped around one subject, the others were quickly overrun with noise from the big panel. And it wasn't much smaller than 2000sqft (my estimate).
Again, nothing against ECTO, I just want to make sure we talk numbers when mentioning size and try to get a feel for how many people we are expecting/hoping for. Then look for space that's appropriate.
McGill Space
We're currently looking for a space for 100-200 people at McGill and I've been told we should have an answer by the end of the week.
Mark, That's really great to
Mark,
That's really great to hear, thanks for pushing ahead with this. The McGill space would be an amazing venue for the event.
Update: still working on the venue.
Howdy folks,
I just wanted to say that despite the apparent silence, work is ongoing to nail down the venue and dates.
I've been in touch with the good folks over at McGill to discuss all the variables and try to come up with the best compromise of dates/times, size and number of spaces, costs, food, etc.
While I feel a little awkward at trying to guess/establish the priorities for the whole group, I also recognise that we wouldn't be able to figure out all the details collectively.
One way or the other though, we will have to be flexible with our original specifications and, based on past experience, I have prioritised the 1 weekday + 1 weekend day format even if this means pushing the dates back a week (i.e. to 23rd and 24th).
I know that just mentioning this opens the door to disagreements, but in the past the most important split seemed to be between those that do Drupal as part of their job (who prefer weekdays since they'll be paid to attend) and those for whom Drupal is a hobby/passion (who have other jobs that they can't skip out on for a day or two).
So that you have it. More updates to come soon.
Omar
Interested in hearing more
Can't wait to hear some more details on the event. Hopefully tomorrow after your local meetup tonight. We have a large handful ready to come up from the Boston area for the weekend.
What would the process be for sessions? How was that handled last year if the site was up just a handful of days prior? I think we'd have a person or two willing to slap something together to present on.
Jake Strawn (@himerus)
ThemeGeeks | Development Geeks
Omega - 960.gs
Handling of sessions...
Last year was as informal as it gets. It was an "open space" where none of the sessions were formally planned ahead of time. This year some people have expressed a desire for some more formal "tracks" (e.g. McGill is comtemplating some Drupal for Education tracks AFAIK) as well as a healthy amount of openpace/birds-of-a-feather style sessions.
At the very least, we need to make sure that we provide people with an opportunity to propose ideas ahead of time and to gauge the interest in those topics. Other than that though, I want it to be as amazing as we can make it without creating too much unnecessary work... but then it'll depend on how many people step up with (reliable) offers to help out.
Anyway, thanks for your interest.
Omar