Drupal "Evangelization" and awareness initiative

After an amazing Drupal Camp at Austin, I had the opportunity to meet some of the guys from Houston. I talked to talldavid about this and did not get the chance to pick the other members' brain.

This is oriented to people doing business with Drupal in Houston, but that doesn't mean everyone can't give an opinion. It just means that I think this will be treated better as a business opportunity of some sort.

Checking on Houston web designers, in my very limited google search and few\w companies that i have contacted, it is clear that Houston is a Wordpress town.

For me, the fact that a big college like lonestar has a class called Wordpress I and II and not CMS I and II, is a good sign of this.
I have been working with Open source projects back in my country for over 10 years, and used to be a great advocate of open source projects, being able to convince important companies on using Open-source when not many were doing it in Colombia. Anyway, that is not what matters, what matters is that in doing so, I always had something clear: if they don't understand it, they don't need it. By they I mean the people that we want to sell projects to!

Now open source is in a totally different place than when I started setting up internet nodes and cluster services and certification authorities in open source, but the fact that awareness is important remains the same. So, this is my proposal for a Drupal Houston Group initiative:

1. Develop a presentation, focused on what is, why it is better, how can affect bottom line and how can you learn and get support for Drupal. In general, demystifying Drupal and showing the best advantages. This presentation(s0 should be oriented to at least to targets in my mind: Business owners/technology managers and web design students. Should be also thought so anyone in the group could present in an uniform manner.

2. Start contacting colleges, professional organizations, local organizations. I am from Kingwood, I know we have rotary clubs, hispanic associations, etc. that are always looking for something to add value to their presentations, they tend to find speakers to talk about things that are of interest for the people in the groups. This groups tend to have, business owners in them! We could reach Lonestar college, entrepreneurial associations or "incubators" this kind of groups, (throw anything that you can think will help here) offering a free "Internet presence or web design seminar/ talk".

3. Start sowing the seeds of a Drupal Camp Houston, it is a shame that Dallas and Austin can have one and the biggest city in Texas does not. By doing the thing mentioned above I believe we can start creating awareness among businesses and future developers about Drupal and this will help with attendance and I am sure that people from Dallas and Austin will be glad to support us with advice, content and moral support to do that.

And that is all I got, please comment and give ideas... the reality is, I know nothing and may be just talking non-sense, but something tells me that if, as businesses, we create awareness of our product, Drupal, We can not only compete better but we will be getting a good boost on our business opportunities.