Scorecard for DrupalCon Europe Location

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This document was approved by the European Regional DrupalCon Organizers after a discussion and vote on September 24, 2009.

The Location Selection Taskforce will use these criteria to evaluate locations, teams, and venues. Each item will be given 1 to 3 points. In addition, the events organizing firm hired by the Drupal Association will evaluate locations and venues with their own criteria geared at production issues, and return a ranked list of preferred venues. Finally, a preference poll open to anyone in the Drupal community will be run, and this too will generate a numeric score that will influence the recommendation to the BoD.

All proposals and their scorecards for all will be published openly. Every individual item's score will be published along with the final sum and any explanation, criticism or praise the selection taskforce feels appropriate.

In the case of tiebreakers or selection taskforce decisions that might appear to contradict scorecard results, the taskforce will be required to defend their decision publicly.

  • Team meets regularly
  • Team has hosted events
  • Team is large and structured
  • Proposal is well crafted and carefully prepared
  • Proposal was submitted on time
  • Proposal includes space/infrastructure for BOFs, multiple presentation tracks, trade fair.
  • Proposal includes "green stuff": public transport, short (walking) distances, rail connections from airport(s) and so on. Innovative concepts for "greening" cons higly encouraged.
  • Location is easily accessible
    • Accessible in terms of public transport
    • Accessible in terms of "barrier free" for all
  • Location has nice local attractions
  • Location reaches a new European DrupalCon audience (spread the love - there are plenty of places to go before we repeat any locations)
  • Location has strong business or media interest/involvement in Drupal
  • Location is popular among Drupal Community (open poll)
  • Venue can support 1500-2000 people
  • Venue is close to hotels and restaurants
  • Venue costs are reasonable
  • Venue contracts are reasonable

Comments

Contradiction in goals

horncologne's picture

EDIT Point discussed and resolved in IRC meeting. Thank you.

If a criteria is to reach a new European audience, how does that match up with there being a strong, established local Drupal community?

This point might be better redefined along the lines of, "Event has the chance of being the tipping point for Drupal adoption in region/country/language-use-area" and/or "Event has the chance of galvanizing/bringing closer together/motivating budding Drupal community."

Initial thoughts ...

Greening the con

horncologne's picture

EDIT "Green Hippie Crap" also suggested by MortenDK in IRC

I would also like some strong language that encourages the inclusion of public transport, short (walking) distances, and so on for these event proposals and bonus points for innovative concepts for "greening" cons ... loan bikes for participants, all locations and all hotels within 10 minutes walk, rail connections from airports, etc.

Another Green World

forestmars's picture

As I noted during our IRC meeting, I concur absolutely with the addition of a "Green Index" point. (f = Forest Mars)

It's not just rail

joachim's picture

It's not just rail connections from airports, it's rail connections full stop -- we Europeans have the benefit of a high-speed rail network!
Cities like Paris, Cologne, Amsterdam are easily reachable from much of Europe by train.

Bike loans sounds like a great idea, but I'd also like to see details on the basics of greening of the venue: eg, I was disappointed to see water coolers and sponsors handing out bottled water (which nobody wanted anyway) at DC Paris.

Not all! Not all! Our

lopolencastredealmeida's picture

Not all! Not all!

Our government planned TGV will turn our country (more) broke and totaly indebt for 30 years at least.
I would live very well without this "toy" and with a proper railway network.

Sounds Great

ronald_istos's picture

Excellent scorecard - thanks to all for the good work. I am afraid the Italian community will have some work to do before we can get a Drupalcon in Italy but hopefully we will be at a better place in a couple of years...

thanks for al the input

bertboerland's picture

I will use this for the list that will be used

--

bert boerland

This is the list ...

robertDouglass's picture

we ratified it in an IRC meeting with over 70 people present, including Cary Gordon, Tiffany Farriss, Kristoff van Tomme and myself from the DA. The location nominations are due tomorrow (Sept. 30) and teams are hard at work on them as we speak.

Isabell's picture

In the scorecard it is mentioned that the team (the local team) should be well-structured. And one thing that is crucial are attributed responsibilities.

Please add responsibilities to members (those you are adding to your nomination) interested in working on the next DrupalCon. You have the list here:
* Branding
* Conference programming
* Hospitality and social programming
* Press relations and P.R.
* Scholarship program
* Speaker recruitment and scheduling
* Web site
* Recruiting and managing volunteers
o Session monitors/assistants
o Registration assistance

It does not have to be thought through, it just already helps in seeing what resources exist.

Thank you! :-)

Portugal is definitively out! IMHO

lopolencastredealmeida's picture

Some notes on the defined ScoreCard and the Portugal case (which is for sure very similar to too many other countries around the world).

  • Team meets regularly

Mostly by email. Mostly concentrated in translation efforts.

  • Team has hosted events

Nope! Well! Very tiny meetings to drink a beer / coffee surely do not count :)

  • Team is large and structured

Nope! And I doubt that it will be large any day soon... Or too structured.

  • Location has strong business or media interest/involvement in Drupal

Nope! Wordpress and Joomla have much more buzz here. There are maybe 10 companies that (also) offer Drupal services. And with also it means that they work mainly with other F/OSS but they can manage to work something with Drupal. Companies like DevelopmentSeed, Rain City and the likes are not available here. Those prefer to work with proprietary in-house developed solutions.

On a basic Google search on "powered by..." and restricted to "Portugal sites" only:

    • More than 665k sites powered by Wordpress;
    • More than 188k powered by Joomla;
    • Less than 10k working sites powered by Drupal.

This data, of course, exclude many sites from Portugal that are hosted outside Portugal and so on but the proportion won't be too diferent from this.

  • Location is popular among Drupal Community (open poll)

This one is interesting. Popular how? By hearsay?
I'd never heard of Szeged before DrupalCon and it looks a neat place over the internet... but this makes it a popular place? For whom?

Could you be more precise on valuation you give to each point because this scorecard can give any result we wish and I would like to understand what you value most when choosing a location. Or they all value the same percentage in the overall 100%?

Thanks for your kind attention and excuse my english.

It's in your / our hands!

jcnventura's picture

humaneasy:

Politics aside, let's focus on the problems:

  1. It's true we don't meet regularly.. We have a small group that is going to organize a Drupalcamp in Portugal early next year, which unfortunately you haven't been able to attend. We want to change this point, and we would really appreciate your co-operation. The translation effort has a reserved session in the first DrupalCamp PT, even though none of the translation team has shown up in the latest meetings. Precisely because we know the effort it took you guys to do it, and we would like to have you share that experience with the rest of us.

  2. Team will host an even soon.. If all goes well, we would like to organize two Drupalcamps in 2010. Hopefully, one in Lisbon and another in Porto.

  3. Team structure.. It will be large if we all co-operate. Doubting that it will happen and not be willing to join the team is indeed the first step in making a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  4. Business interest.. True, that DevelopmentSeed and RainCity do not have offices here, but some of 'the like' do. Do you know a company called af83?? Have you seen their profile in d.o? Do you know where they have offices? I'll give you a list: Paris (DrupalCon Europe 2009), San Francisco (DrupalCon North America 2010) and Lisbon (DrupalCon Europe 2012+??) Besides, there are indeed businesses running Drupal (look at dri.pt). As to the statistics you've displayed for Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal they're probably similar in other countries. I've just asked google.dk for the Stats in Denmark, and they're 2M for WP, 210K for Joomla and 90K for Drupal. That hasn't stopped them from hosting DrupalCon Europe next year.

  5. Popular location.. Do you want a better city to go in Europe in early September?? (Barcelona already had their turn, so let's assume that it won't return there so soon).

I value your opinion, and would like your input in the meetings we've had, but clearly you've got some of the facts in the previous post wrong. It's my belief that indeed it will be hard, and the competition is good, but we're not aiming to host a DrupalCon in Portugal next year nor in 2011. In two years or more, however the situation may be quite different..

João Ventura

Walk the talk or talk the walk

perusio's picture

Helplessness, Impotence: Shrugging the shoulders. - When a man wishes to show that he cannot do something, or prevent something being done, he often raises with a quick movement both shoulders. At the same time, if the whole gesture is completed, he bends his elbows closely inwards, raises his open hands, turning them outwards, with the fingers separated. The head is often thrown a little on one side; the eyebrows are elevated, and this causes wrinkles across the forehead. The mouth is generally opened. I may mention, in order to show how unconsciously the features are thus acted on, that though I had often intentionally shrugged my shoulders to observe how my arms were placed, I was not at all aware that my eyebrows were raised and mouth opened, until I looked at myself in a glass; and since then I have noticed the same movements in the faces of others.

Charles Darwin in The expression of the emotions in man and animals, London, John Murray, 1872 (p. 265)


Hello Lopo,

Either you want to help us and be an energy source or I think that
being an energy sink is, to say the least, unconstructive.

Like João said, yes, we are aware that there are a lot of obstacles to
surmount and proofs to be taken, and yes we are just starting. But if
we start by being defeated at the outset, than that's what will come
out. We are aiming for a bid for 2012, not for 2011.

João has already elaborated on some of the finer points. Yes Drupal is
in a pre-natal stage here, but is up to us to deliver it and help it
grow. There wont be any magic potion that will help us defeat the
"romans", i.e., the incumbent CMSes and software companies. Either we
force our way through the "siege" or we'll be contented in our small
village of little concern to the world at large.

Even if we don't win, so what? Hopefully we'll have established Drupal
as viable CMS in Portugal with a thriving ecosystem of companies,
individuals and community.

I see it as a win-win scenario. Having a Drupalcon here is the prize
we are after, and there's a long way to go, but I'm sure we'll have
fun and enjoy the journey. Even in the Very tiny meetings to drink a beer (...)
that you refer in, what seems to be, a rather paternalizing way to me.
Perhaps I'm wrong.

I've met very interesting people that, like me and what I interpret is
your sentiment also, feel isolated and have a thirst to share
and learn more about Drupal and in the process find new friends.

Yes there's good work being done by the localization team, but why
stop there? Why not try to walk the talk and throw ourselves with
passion behind the goal of Drupalcon Lisbon 2012?

I'm done. After all this all boils down to where you stand regarding
the portuguese Drupal scene. Either you're on the fence watching the
traffic or you jump down and help get this show on the road. The
vivacity of your argumentation is a sure indicator that you would be
of great help: focus, focus, focus it's the name of the game.

António

keep on!

confetti's picture

@perusio and your group:
keep on going:
"have fun and enjoy", "passion", "we'll have established Drupal as viable CMS in Portugal"
it is worth it.
Whishing you fun and success!

. . .
------------------------------------------------
Bettina
Don't Follow Trends: Set Them!
https://drupal-training.de