Posted by gallamine on November 2, 2009 at 4:34pm
I think there should be a specific topic for discussing the changes to the hack nights. I understand the desire to contribute back to the Drupal project, and I think it's definitely worthwhile. But, I think there are plenty of people like me who really appreciated knowing that there was a place we could go to and get face-to-face help with problems. That seems to be the traditional view of "hack nights".
Is there room for both types of meetings (real hack nights and group contribution nights)? How does changing the hack night format help "non journeyman" Drupal users? What if I want to get together with folks and mutually work on our projects and bounce ideas around?
Comments
Reposting my comment
Reposting my comment from the other Hack Night thread.
One of the big problems with having Hack Night be more of a group tech support meeting, is that those of us who are seen as the "experts" of the group, end up being heavily burdened by Hack Night. We love to help people, and we absolutely expect to continue helping folks out in the community. However, as a result of Hack Night, some of us have been overwhelmed with group members contacting us personally to ask directly for help (I've even received phone calls while at work, which is ridiculously inappropriate).
I believe that the right way to handle support is through the community. There are a huge number of resources within the larger Drupal community for support, and as for triDUG, we have both this g.d.o forum (where people get a lot of help) and the IRC room (#drupal-nc on irc.freenode.net), where you can be sure to get a helpful answers to your question without worrying about getting snark from the larger drupal IRC rooms.
I think the format of using the online community tools, where Users can ask for help and receive it (relatively) immediately from whichever group members happen to be available, is a much better way to deliver support, rather than expecting group members to hold onto their questions and problems for 2 or 3 weeks until the next Hack Night.
Over the past year, we have done absolutely nothing, as a group, to contribute back to the Drupal Project. Our focus has been completely on support and education for beginning users and with the release of Drupal 7 in the works, the need to contribute to the project over the next 6 - 12 months is incredibly important.
We are simply trying to create a balance, and since Support has, in the past, been our main focus, it undoubtedly seems like we are cutting it back too much, but we are not.
Hack Nights == Contribution; g.d.o & IRC == Support; Monthly Meetups == Education.