Drupal Design Camp LA 2012 conference call #5 on October 1, 2012

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Attendees during this call were Chhun, Oliver, Stewart, Jerry and Christefano.

Announcements:

• Due to unforeseen changes in personnel and an increase in venue prices, io/LA has fallen through as a venue. This was hinted last Friday and confirmed today, Monday. We are pleased to consider them as a venue for a future event.
• DDCLA 2012 will be at Droplabs in Downtown Los Angeles. Droplabs is available as a venue for a limited audience (e.g. 75-100 attendees) with its existing space. Additional spaces at or near Droplabs may become available.
• DDCLA 2012 will be reduced in size and scope so that its attendance fits the venue. It can still be a 3 day event (e.g. 1st day is a mentored training, 2nd day is the camp and a 3rd day is full of sprints) but this is for the community to decide.

Discussions:

• There are several major options: We go with io/LA with fingers crossed; we cancel / postpone the event; or use our backup venue. Christefano and Oliver feel confident in pushing forward with Droplabs:
  • Droplabs is a known entity with a dedicated staff for marketing and hosting the event.
  • 3 separate spaces are guaranteed and a 4th may be possible (increasing capacity to 100-125 attendees).
  • Droplabs was not available before as a venue because it can't accommodate hundreds of people. With DDCLA's minimal marketing efforts to date and today's recent turn of events, however, the DDCLA organizers don't anticipate that many people. Droplabs can easily accommodate up to 100 people.
• Agreement is reached that Droplabs is suitable as a venue for an event of this size and scope.
• Overview of our budget (the LA Drupal Association is our fiscal agent) and discussion of food trucks (not likely in this area of Downtown Los Angeles), A/V equipment rental, and other items that are already identified in the budget.
• Do we need to update and maintain yet another website for this event? No consensus but we agreed to use Drupal Groups and Meetup.com as marketing channels and have a minimal marketing presence at http://www.ddcla.org/2012 in order to reach the larger Los Angeles design community.
• The DDCLA 2012 website needs a few minor tweaks to be functionally complete (days attending, DCLA imagery, etc.). We can redesign and retheme it later.

Action items:

• Oliver is talking with the LA Drupal Association about our revised gameplan.
• Stew is coordinating the first blast for marketing and promotion (#1799928).
• Christefano is mock deploying the DDCLA 2012 website tonight and will be launching it tonight or tomorrow at http://www.ddcla.org/2012 (#1790816).
• Chhun is updating content on the DDCLA 2012 site with nearby attractions.
• Christefano is providing Droplabs' social media team with signup information from Droplabs mailing list and previous camps website to send out a newsletter marketing blast.

Reminders:

• Tasks for DDCLA 2012 are being coordinated in the issue queue at https://drupal.org/project/issues/ddcla
• We have an open GroupMe chat at https://groupme.com/groups/2674439 for anyone who wants to participate.

Did I miss anything? Please post your notes here. Thanks!

How can I help?

Sorry I've been silent through the last couple of days. Client emergencies, and since at the moment they're my only client, I had to deal with them.

The following paragraph is not a meant as a criticism of anyone. It's just me feeling my way around Drupal Land and trying to figure out how things are done:

I've been kind of puzzled about this conference, in that it's in just a couple of weeks, and the website wasn't even up. We were going to have local nightlife and attractions on the site, but would anyone from out of town really come to something on this short notice? Like Christefano said above: "With DDCLA's minimal marketing efforts to date and today's recent turn of events, however, the DDCLA organizers don't anticipate that many people." So I think the move to Droplabs is a good one. (I'm eager to see where that room for 100 people is, since all I've seen was a workspace and a conference room.)

Also ... I thought it had been decided that the conference was just going to be two days. Now it looks like three is a possibility again. Again, time seems like a constraint.

Anyhow ... I originally got involved in the conference because I thought helping update the conference site would be a good way to get my feet wet in Drupal. It looks like that train has passed. My non-tech skills are as a writer (though mostly fiction) and editor. What can I do to help?

Thanks,
Nathan