Since I'd like to keep personal feelings, and work mostly seperated. But I still feel the strong Urge to write up some stuff I been thinking for the last few days I start this as seperate discussion from the "working thread".
If the annoncement in any way would have told about the importance of the DRUPALCON EUROPE BOF on drupalcon I would have shurely been there instead of in any of the realy good sessions that I atendend during dc Paris. But since it didn't I seem to have missed that moment in time. But when without knowing anything about what hapend at the BOF I was asking a guy about the outcome frome the BOF from his reaction I imediatly knew it seems to be some kind of hot topic...
...that seemed to be keppt silent on during the rest of the CON but in personal talks to guys involved in the community I realized that there was at least some silent cooking going on (which I personaly think is not good and the least thing a communty needs). After getting home from the CON starting to beeing captured by work stuff, I kept thinking about this stuff and decided that It was Time to on the one hand to work on the tasks that are obvious (finding a city for the next european con) hence the Work thread.
On the other hand I am seeing kind of information published about the BOF but besides 2 urls at the roundup session of Paris there seems to be no offical statement by the DA on the Issue (which I consider laking communication and why is the "Events Manager for the Drupal Association" not even Part of this Group that was announced by him at dc Paris) So the BOF writeup http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATgECFpHWbvRZGNiNzM1ZzZfMmtjemt6aGNy&h... from Johan Falk and the things that I heard from people that where at the BOF are the things I can refer to.
So from what I read in the write up and what I heard the BOF was Pretty authortive. And more kind of an anouncement by Cary Gordon than a discussion, which sounds pretty american to us europeans that are used to schemas of base democracy. And see the history of the drupalcons as more of a grassroots movement (that is of course taking of right now). So when I see the suggestion of the Vendor for Prague http://www.kcp.cz I see that we are moving away from university/public rooms bound organisation model to a more commercial fasilities environment which saves of course a lot of organisation work since you are just booking the venue and tell them there needs to be coffee and wifi but also brings up the costs of the venue. And will thus change the pricing of the Drupalcon, which will also give us another target audience.
But the big question Is DO WE AS A COMMUNITY want the drupalcons to be changed in that fashion. Do we want all that guys in bussiness suits running around. Or do we wan't the con to be the place where we geeks and nerd can hang out and teach each other things around drupal.
Of course I don't want to under estimate the bussiness Side of things on a Drupalcon. A lot of sponsers are seeking clients for their Drupal products be it hosting, management tools or other things.
But maybe their is a model of Spliting things up so on the one hand there is the community that needs place to garther once in a while and on the other hand there is this bussiness side of things. And I would easyly see a expensive like the lullabot "Do it with Drupal" kind of bussiness show (that would be more complelling to sponsors seeking bussiness and to bussines customers seeking quality talks that actually help their needs) and a still more self organized Drupalcon that has cheap atendance fees and gives students a chance to get into drupal, see some cities of the world. And I think those students that even now have a hard time to afford a 200€ confference with added travel and accomodation cost, are the seed for a brighter future of drupal (they are our hook_world_alter())
So what are your opinons,feelings,worrys about the future of European drupalcons. I'd love to hear opinons.
So this is a long write up quite longer than I intended in the first time and I'd love to have your feedback on that one as well as maybe some voices from people that actually atended the BOF
And as I think that is Important for more people than maybe just the people willing to organize another drupalcon I crosspost this to the Drupalcon Paris Group.
Edit: edited the link of the writup to pint to google docs and deleted the pdf with the email adresses.
Comments
Not public?
The URL you are linking to leads to an access denied error. This document is probably attached to a post that is not public.
Damien Tournoud
Thanks for the hint I
Thanks for the hint I uploaded the file to gdo an corrected the link
A few words from the notetaker
As I'm new to Drupalcons (Paris being my first) I can't compare the Drupalcon Europe BOF with any previous discussions.
But to me it seems very reasonable to allow Drupalcons to scale up to meet the rapidly increasing interest. If this means that we can't use university facilities, fine, but there was nothing said at the meeting indicating that university facilities should be excluded per se. (Rather, someone pointed out that universities usually are cheap compared to professional venues.)
I think that the scaling of Drupalcons will change the nature of them, whether we like it or not. It would be unfortunate if Drupalcons are taken over by suits rather than worn-out geeky t-shirts – especially if no other international meeting places are arranged for us geeks. Hopefully none of this will happen, and we (and Drupal Association, with increasing responsibility for Drupalcons) should make an effort to keep Drupalcons a huge meeting place for the community.
However, larger conferences will be more expensive to arrange, and not scaling up the Drupalcons doesn't seem like a reasonable option (since even today there aren't enough seats to fit all the geek-shirts).
If there is a widespread concern that Drupalcons will turn into a white-shirt-and-suit event perhaps we could extend the Drupalcon with a day or to, dedicated to "coding and geeky sessions" (or whatever label is needed to keep the suits away).
Well, these are just some thoughts. Cheers!
//Johan Falk, NodeOne
A post from ed that was blocked by the spamfilter
Like Itanglo, Paris was my first drupalcon though I'm hardly ignorant of what Drupal is or where it began, thank you Dries.
I had some very positive conversations and a couple of conversations that were less so on the subject of collaboration (commercial) - thank you to all of the people who gave me their time to listen to my thoughts/ideas.
I recognize there is a significant challenge for the commercial community (suits if you like) to replicate the behaviour of the technical community in terms of openness and collaboration on commercial interests though the benefits are immense if this can be achieved, the most significant of these benefits are expanding the reach of Drupal, competing with non-Drupal competitors and defending the market share of Drupal shops in the CMS industry.
I instigated a thought on this initially in relation to a presentation I saw as I was concerned that while the presentation and its content had significant merit it was omitting information that I felt would be well-received and of value to Drupalists looking to commercialize their passions: http://paris2009.drupalcon.org/session/how-build-successful-drupal-busin...
I feel these same thoughts have relevance and importance to the discussion in this thread hence sharing.
Please excuse me for mentioning this without providing a more compelling case and supporting arguments - this is one my key tasks to accomplish and publish ASAP for community feedback though ahead of that as I feel this relates to the discussion I am sharing this comment now.
The business model of a "co-operative" is well-known and I think it important that Drupal as a community can implement a contemporary equivalent that other communities will applaud and aspire to adopting themselves.
The key for me is the three Ts: transparency, trust and transactions.
Kind Regards,
Ed. (esdaniel)