Drupal evangelism outreach to increase motivation

I think Heather is right on the money. The proof is in the growth curve of which Drupalcons can be seen as a peephole.

I've been going to Drupalcons since 2007 - my first was Barcelona - and there was steady growth in both the North American shows and the European shows, at least until a couple of years ago. We have a plateau of largely the same group of individuals. On average, the age of the Drupalcon go-er is getting older. As a community we need to reach out to younger people, and bring them into the project.

Recently I was talking to one of my nephews who just completed university with a computer science degree. He wanted to know how I make a living, which naturally led to a discussion on open source and Drupal. Open source is given a vague nod in the "Academy" but isn't widely taught. Drupal certainly isn't. Yet universities are a fertile ground for new and creative thinkers.

• More camps should be held on University campuses and (for those camps that charge a fee) a certain number of comps should be given to the students who attend. Perhaps the DA could sponsor the tickets.
• Seminars have been held on some campuses in the past, they have been successful - lets do more activities like this
• Long term, It would be great to see Drupal taught as a course in universities - perhaps it could start as a survey course with other CMSes.

Hi heather - you're right. I need to correct myself. I should have said "intro material", not "learning material". Intro material has to be fun and engaging - don't worry about showing every detail of the admin interface when you give the intro, or even how to set up an apache server. Show why you think Drupal rocks and how they can also rock with drupal!

Reaching out. In addition to your examples, I'd also like to dare people to get drupal onto the agenda of even our "enemies'' events. Here are a few examples:

1) "How WPUG + DUG + JUG can work together to improve PHP talent in Singapore” ( http://2011.singapore.wordcamp.org/schedule/ )

2) I was visiting Phnom Penh in Cambodia and somehow they managed to announce a drupal meetup just because I was there. During my presentation we received a visit from a local web agency that wanted to promote the first Typo3 conference in Asia that was being organized few weeks later. When they finished selling their tickets I jokingly said: "Is it okay if we also send somebody to talk about drupal for 15 minutes at your conference". I was expecting a blunt stare though to my surprise she said: "We would be really happy to have somebody present in a panel about drupal since we like to compare Typo3 against other technologies"

If you approach conference X and say.. "Hey I see you're doing X. Now, I'm doing Drupal, can we look into how I can give a talk about how Drupal can complement your X technology?". In any case it's like dating. The worst that can happen is that they'll say no :) Most likely they'll buy you a beer and talk about you behind your back.. They won't throw tomatoes, trust me!

I'm not suggesting that anybody should gatecrash the nearby Wordpress camp, and maybe this works better in Asia where open source is a new concept for many and any additional attention they can bring to their open source event is better for everybody doing open source.

Exposing ourselves to the "enemy" can also be a source of inspiration for the overall Drupal community as we need to have our weak spots covered to look good. And tunnel vision/blind spots are actually our worst enemies.