Support travellers?

Posted by svenryen on September 4, 2012 at 5:12pm

To remove any doubt: I mean "Support" as in "provide the facilities to connect" - not as in "give money".

Let's explore the thought.. It's great that we have facilities in place to discuss ideas through forums, though we miss out on the personal connection that are also possible and necessary. And as it was mentioned in another thread, international DrupalCon's can only happen a certain places at certain times... What happens between the con's?

Many Drupalists travel extensively,
some travel because of their work,
some travel as a lifestyle.

I wonder what can happen if we make it possible and easy to bring travelling Drupalists together with locals for coffee, beer or meetups.

Can this be one of the means to spread and strengthen our international community and Drupal as a brand?
After all, history has shown that great ideas were always spread with travellers..

Comments

Great idea!!

Posted by HappyJiyoung on September 5, 2012 at 12:01am

This is really really great idea!
I live in Beijing now and totally see myself getting involved with connecting local community members with travelling drupaller for any event!
Also Seoul!!
Even I could host at my own home in Beijing and show the guest around.
Going to great wall and attraction is possible to. It would be also so much fun to do that with local Chinese drupaler!! :)

Central America Example

Posted by nickvidal on September 5, 2012 at 12:20am

Hi Sven,

Interesting thought...

I would like to provide an example of a Drupal Tour in Central America made my dasjo:

Sent by Austrian Service Abroad, I worked as a Social Servant at Casa de los Tres Mundos, Granada, Nicaragua from 2008 to 2009. Afterwards I travelled for one month from Nicaragua over El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize to México doing 14 drupal workshops with people of the free software community.

Here you'll find some nice photos, videos, and map from his tour:

http://dasjo.at/drupal-tour-central-america-gira-drupal-centroamerica-2011

He even created a Rap song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oBr6FoH9fA

Indeed this has provided many opportunities for both dasjo and the communities that received him.

Kind regards,
Nick

Great Jiyoung! I'm sure there

Posted by svenryen on September 5, 2012 at 1:06am

Great Jiyoung! I'm sure there are many drupalists that would love to visit China and Korea. I've already hosted Drupalists for the DrupalCamp I organized here in Singapore and although I could offer nothing but mattresses and pillows in the living room, we all had a great time. Later they also hosted me in Manila when I went there to take part in their Maplecamp effort (using Drupal to build and maintain church web sites).

Many great ideas have originated by bringing people with different background and experiences together, and when I later this year go to UK I'd definitely see if it's possible to have a beer or two with Steve Purkiss since I spent so much time discussing with him here in the threads.

I think it would be really cool if we had a Drupal hospitality network.
Hospitality networks allow travellers to send requests to people who already indicated that they are open to receive travellers for beer, coffee, community events, accommodation, etc. Usually profiles (like this one: http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/svenryen ), references, connections and vouches create a level of trust and safety.

Some people might say "well if you want that, just use couchsurfing.org", though the site doesn't offer me what I'm looking for. I would like to meet Drupal people and hear about how they do Drupal and share some of the cool stuff I've done lately with Drupal. At the same time I'm also curious to learn more about their culture, and then if we have something else in common beyond Drupal that's even cooler.

I don't think the basic hospitality features of couchsurfing.org would take long to set up in a Drupal site (using Views, Rules and a few other modules).

Most likely this should be branched off into a "Drupal hospitality" or "Travelling drupalists" group. I'd be happy to start off an initiative if there isn't already something like this among the groups here. Though the notion of supporting travellers and leveraging on travellers to strengthen the Drupal community brand and marketing should be explored. How do we include travellers in the drupal marketing plans?

Somebody mention beer?

Posted by stevepurkiss (not verified) on September 5, 2012 at 1:17am

Anytime my friend, any time!

I so want to reply to this thread but I'm just all outta time for today, am enjoying reading all the ideas!

Awesome!!!

Posted by ben finklea on September 5, 2012 at 3:21am

This would be a huge differentiator for our community. I know that i would use it and also make my home available for Drupalers from out of town.

Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee

*BAM!

I set up a group

Posted by svenryen on September 5, 2012 at 2:25pm

Here's a group I just set up.

http://groups.drupal.org/traveling-drupalists-connecting-travellers-locals

Unfortunately I'm way too busy for the next few days, so I won't post anything till Sunday at earliest unless I suddenly wake up and can't sleep ;)

Drupalers travelling to India

Posted by netbabu on September 5, 2012 at 4:37am

Yes, travelling is absolutely important if you want to build long term relationship with development partners. I am always happy to help drupalers if they want to travel to India.

-Babu
Promote Drupal with Tshirts/merchandise:
Promote Drupal with Tshirts/merchandise: http://paramprojects.com/drupalstore
Drupal Projects showcase: http://paramprojects.com/website/drupal-servicesprojects

Yes, and India is such a

Posted by svenryen on September 9, 2012 at 1:55am

Yes, and India is such a fascinating country to visit. I've been there several times since 2006 and I hope we can help more drupalers go there and connect with local developers, share some best practise drupal tips and have a great time.

You can help out by joining the discussions - head over to
http://groups.drupal.org/traveling-drupalists-connecting-travellers-locals

Thanks Sven, I just made my

Posted by netbabu on September 9, 2012 at 4:15am

Thanks Sven, I just made my first posting there:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/253083

Great Idea

Posted by greggmarshall on September 5, 2012 at 1:09pm

This is a great idea and clearly should be split off into its own group.

At the same time, some effort is needed to connect back to any local Drupal groups on groups.drupal.org so there isn't duplication of efforts. While the local groups tend to focus on the local community, they are a connection for travelers.

I travel quite a bit, many times as part of my contracts. I'll generally look for a local Drupal meet-up, although they aren't always listed on groups.drupal.org (e.g. Dayton is considered part of the Cincinnati or SW Ohio group, they don't always get posted on g.d.o, even though I think their meet-ups are the best in the general area).

If I don't see a meet-up, sometimes I'll post to the group and ask. I did that on a trip to Bangkok earlier this year. While one response suggested if I organized a meet-up people would probably show up (not real practical when you are flying in for a few days to organize a meeting in another country), it did result in a nice lunch with a fellow Drupaler.

And I'm not sure it's about having a place to stay. I contacted Jiyoung about an upcoming trip to Beijing, not because I need somewhere to stay (I'm told I'm staying in a nice hotel near the Forbidden City), but because it would be nice to connect with other Drupalers in the area, seeing the sights with a "local" is a big bonus.

Drupical

Posted by nickvidal on September 5, 2012 at 1:34pm

I found this site interesting to find Drupal-related events displayed on a map:

http://www.drupical.com/

swapping places as a way to travel

Posted by ifrik on September 7, 2012 at 12:04pm

If we got more people that want to travel around for a bit then we could start by swapping places - that would give everybody some new places to see without the need/cost trying to work from hotels with flaky internet.

Site builder and Documentation WG member

swapping places? that sounds like a good idea!

Posted by ardnet on January 16, 2013 at 10:54pm

But not really sure what are we swapping here if it's in term of more people.

Anyway, similar idea of this I already thought all along ago, but probably more swapping places between 1 person to 1 person. And by means swapping places is, swapping their home or apartments, but of course between 2 of them need to have sort of agreement in the first place.

Anyway, I'm still thinking what's the best way to come up with this, which one of them could be create some kind of website that does this.

But as my time still not really free to do this, so this will be in my to-do list.

Thanks for bringing back my old idea though.
Cheers

GLADCamp is coming up next

Posted by christefano on February 3, 2014 at 8:46am

GLADCamp is coming up next month. Everyone here is welcome to use the new Hospitality Network to find places to stay!

https://groups.drupal.org/hospitality-network

GLADCamp, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp, is a 3-day all Drupal all the time event in Pasadena, California, and has a non-profit summit in addition to sessions on everything from getting started to high performance websites:

https://gladcamp.org