Today (probably yesterday by the time I hit send!) has been a long day of organising our Brighton Area Drupal Association BAD Ass Drupal Weekender which is happening a week Friday, plus crunching videos from DrupalCon BoFs and continuing discussions on the Marketing of Drupal, more on that topic later!
I decided to call it BADCampUK because I wanted to echo the community element of what I saw happening over the other side of the pond in the legendary BADCamp. I've learned a lot since we put on our first proper camp back in April of this year where we had 80 people turn up, mostly that we have a very long way to go before we could really claim to be anything on the scale of the original, in terms of both size and sponsorship for people to attend. Luckily Brighton is an hour away from London where we have much good Drupal talent so it wasn't too expensive for many to come, but we realise there are many others who would like to attend where we could be of much more help.
We had many from much further away too, and the whole weekend was inspiring - so much so we decided it would be best to hold our second BADCampUK during September when the Brighton Digital Festival is on. There's over 100 events, currently the Reasons to be Creative conference is underway and people are traveling from all over the world to attend to see the very latest in technology and design. The month of celebration kicked off with a digitally explosive digital fireworks display by creative coder extraordinaire Seb Lee-Delisle.
With the next Drupal Association Global Training Day on 14th September I managed to book our local coworking space The Skiff which is a non-profit and where we hold some of our meetings. It's a really cool space, but I can see we could easily need far more space next year. One discussion is to hold them at the local Universities so we can grow interest amongst students, we'll be investigating that option for our next one.
We are still a small but growing fast group of Drupalistas here in Brightoncisco on the sunny(!) South Coast of the UK (a city with over 2,500 'new media' businesses & freelancers according to WiredSussex) with our pebble beach, promenade and piers and pints. Unfortunately we recently lost a couple of good members to other parts of the country and world, however we are also starting to see quite a few new members beginning to join in the fun, some whom have worked with Drupal for many years but not participated much in the community aspect. This, I am sure is also down to the post-local DrupalCon effect - wish I'd been transported to one the first minute the word "Drupal" entered my head! It's great to see the group grow, and after our meeting Monday night we now have a plan for almost the next year in place, which is great because I'm great at getting things going... ;)
Which brings me swiftly to the next topic of the day, and that is really all about topics of discussion over on the Marketing of Drupal group on groups.drupal.org. Some of the people are used to how Free/Libre Open Source Software works, some aren't as much. I, for one, have not typed as much on gdo in the last seven years as I have typed in the last week and a bit since Munich.
With the benefit of hindsight, some of it I think has been admittedly not well-thought out, and for those I apologise if any offence has been taken. I do though think it is good to get these things out because more communication on what's happening outside the star dot drupal.org sphere is a Good Thing. It will take a while for me, and others I am inviting to join in our conversations, to understand the full extent of what has been built over the last twelve-or-so years here and I ask you not for your patience, but to help guide us so we can grow and become of great value to the community as a whole by bringing more perspectives, skills, expertise, resources, and maybe cakes into the commons.
We have been answering the following questions about Drupal in the marketplace, and we invite you all to have your input. I know many out there will probably wonder when I'll shut up, but I also know many are also gaining value out of opening up these discussions and re-asking them now:
- What is it that Drupal does so well?
- Who are our "mindset" competitors that we need to overcome?
- Who are Drupal's competitors and what do they do particularly well?
- Who is Drupal's target group? What are their demographics? Psychographics?
Last but not least I converted and uploaded a couple of the videos I took at DrupalCon Munich:
- One for those interested in the forthcoming London DrupalCamp
- One for those who organise, or want to organise local groups/camps/sprints/etc. - Community Leaders Unite!
Oh, and I did some "real" work too (web services testing stuff with feeds & json parser!
What did you Drupal today? You don't have to say, but it would be rather jolly if you did! Post yours here: