TC Drupal Coordinating Committee

Events happening in the community are now at Drupal community events on www.drupal.org.
stpaultim's picture
Posted by stpaultim on November 1, 2013 at 9:10pm
Start: 
2013-11-07 17:00 - 17:30 America/Chicago
Organizers: 
stpaultim
Barry Madore
Event type: 
User group meeting

Some of us have discussed the value of a meeting every 2-3 months to schedule and coordinate the various Drupal related events in the Twin Cities.

The purpose of these meetings would be to:

  • Avoid scheduling conflicts
  • Make adjustments in the schedule for holidays, cons, or camps
  • Propose new events (i.e. - upcoming Global Sprint Weekend)
  • Create a predictable TC Drupal calendar that we can promote
  • Etc.......

We've scheduled the first "coordinating" meeting ahead of the next weeks happy hour at the Blue Nile. We'll start at 5:00 PM and try to keep it close to 30 minutes. It's our goal to NOT interfere with the regularly scheduled Drupal Happy Hour festivities.

This meeting is open to anyone. However, it will be of special relevance to anyone planning a Drupal related event in the Twin Cities, over the next 2-3 months.

TC Drupal Coordinating Meeting
Nov. 7, 2013
5:00 - 5:30PM (ish)

The Blue Nile
2027 Franklin Ave. E.
Minneapolis, MN 55404
612-338-3000

Comments

I'll be there!

Posted by davidneedham on November 1, 2013 at 9:13pm
davidneedham's picture

I'll be there!

--
David Needham
Team Lead of Training at Datadog

Me too.

Posted by Barry Madore on November 1, 2013 at 9:17pm
Barry Madore's picture

See you at 5.

Barry Madore
Triplo
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

Me three

Posted by kpoeppe on November 1, 2013 at 9:42pm
kpoeppe's picture

Looking forward to seeing everyone! Will be there at 5.

Will there be beer?

Posted by bhp on November 1, 2013 at 11:18pm
bhp's picture

(That's a rhetorical question.)

Been out of the loop for a bit...

Posted by moonstruck on November 5, 2013 at 2:34pm
moonstruck's picture

...but looking forward to re-engaging. Hope to make it as close to 5pm as I can.
Peter

Peter S

I'll try and make it

Posted by jackprobst on November 7, 2013 at 12:03am
jackprobst's picture

As long as there aren't any fires at work, I'll try and be there around 5.

I'm going to try and make it!

Posted by maryannking on November 7, 2013 at 2:16pm
maryannking's picture

I think it will be worth the trip -- need ideas for getting commerce group going again and coordinating it with all the other meetups

maryann king
http://www.emkayandco.com

I'm going to try and make it!

Posted by maryannking on November 7, 2013 at 2:16pm
maryannking's picture

I think it will be worth the trip -- need ideas for getting commerce group going again and coordinating it with all the other meetups

maryann king
http://www.emkayandco.com

I should be there..

Posted by melbs on November 7, 2013 at 3:24pm
melbs's picture

I should be able to make it for a bit.

life's a beach

I'll see y'all at 5

Posted by mtift on November 7, 2013 at 3:55pm
mtift's picture

I'll see y'all at 5

Agenda

Posted by stpaultim on November 7, 2013 at 6:51pm
stpaultim's picture

Thanks for all the interest in this meeting. I went ahead and drafted up a rough and pretty simple agenda for the meeting.

http://tinyurl.com/lnqgbel OR
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12hAQhZQhXeIJgr65S6HCrprcXEqV6qpY_3lw...

Our original goal was to keep this to 30 minutes, but we may need a little more time given the level of interest. I am still going to try hard to keep the meeting to less than 45 minutes - so that we can all get back to the regularly scheduled Happy Hour festivities by 5:45.

Anything that doesn't happen in the "formal" meeting can spill over into "informal" discussions or small groups.

Tim Erickson
Triplo

cannot attend

Posted by maryannking on November 7, 2013 at 7:42pm
maryannking's picture

just got a call from a client - needs something by end of day so it looks like I'll be staying in monticello afterall -- I'll look forward to hearing from you on what transpired.

maryann king
http://www.emkayandco.com

comments on the agenda since I will not be there

Posted by maryannking on November 7, 2013 at 8:10pm
maryannking's picture
  1. Midwinter camp -- I like the idea -- and the simple part -- like an all day usergroup demo meeting - I signed up to help and I would certainly be an individual sponsor -- I also think a small fee is good - so if it snows, people will still feel like attending.
  2. Setting up our own TC Drupal site - how does that get managed, who does what - and isn't that what the groups.drupal.org is for -- and even then I forget to update that until last minute -- is the groups thing something we can change and still use?
  3. commerce -- we initially moved to 6-7 on tcdrupaluser nights so people did not have to make so many trips in for meetings -- at that time we had attendees from outside the twin cities area (including me) --

    the community labs started up later and bumped into the commerce time slot

    Attendance has been really low if not zero

    Some of the problems I believe are related to me just because I get into a semi-retirement state regarding meetings during the summer due to travel and have not done a good job of planning - so they end up being training sessions for those that do show up -- have not had time to devote to it.

    Some thoughts I have been bouncing around in my tired brain while watching ancient aliens late at night (a little humor) on some potential changes/fixes:

    • Need more than one person to chair the group
    • pick another night for meeting
    • have solid agendas that are not so much training as they are demonstating issues and fixes
    • share a portion of the regular TCUserGroup meeting with a demo every other month

    I did not expect to resolve this issue tonight - just thought I would throw it out there for discussion.

maryann king
http://www.emkayandco.com

comments on the agenda since I will not be there

Posted by maryannking on November 7, 2013 at 8:10pm
maryannking's picture
  1. Midwinter camp -- I like the idea -- and the simple part -- like an all day usergroup demo meeting - I signed up to help and I would certainly be an individual sponsor -- I also think a small fee is good - so if it snows, people will still feel like attending.
  2. Setting up our own TC Drupal site - how does that get managed, who does what - and isn't that what the groups.drupal.org is for -- and even then I forget to update that until last minute -- is the groups thing something we can change and still use?
  3. commerce -- we initially moved to 6-7 on tcdrupaluser nights so people did not have to make so many trips in for meetings -- at that time we had attendees from outside the twin cities area (including me) --

    the community labs started up later and bumped into the commerce time slot

    Attendance has been really low if not zero

    Some of the problems I believe are related to me just because I get into a semi-retirement state regarding meetings during the summer due to travel and have not done a good job of planning - so they end up being training sessions for those that do show up -- have not had time to devote to it.

    Some thoughts I have been bouncing around in my tired brain while watching ancient aliens late at night (a little humor) on some potential changes/fixes:

    • Need more than one person to chair the group
    • pick another night for meeting
    • have solid agendas that are not so much training as they are demonstating issues and fixes
    • share a portion of the regular TCUserGroup meeting with a demo every other month

    I did not expect to resolve this issue tonight - just thought I would throw it out there for discussion.

maryann king
http://www.emkayandco.com

TC Drupal, Inc.

Posted by bhp on November 8, 2013 at 4:05am
bhp's picture

I'd like to start a discussion around whether the Twin Cities Drupal community would benefit from forming a non-profit corporation, in particular for the purpose of organizing and funding the annual DrupalCamp Twin Cities, but more generally for promoting Drupal, and for supporting other Drupal events around the Twin Cities.

To my mind the most important reason is monetary: as a corporation we would own our funds, keep our own checking, savings, credit, and investment accounts, write our own checks, and pay our own debts. Currently, the Drupal Association handles our funds on our behalf, and it sounds like they've been good partners. However, they also take a percentage of our revenue (do I remember 10%?), and if we lapse in putting on DCTC, we could lose all our funds to them.

Incorporating would also create a more stable structure for supporting DCTC in the future, and would also foster a sense of stability in the broader community, which might help when asking for support from sponsors.

The downside is that incorporating involves some work, most significantly applying for tax-exempt status with the IRS. It's also a significant change from the current informal culture which has actually worked well so far.

Personally, I'm in favor of incorporating, and I'm willing to spend time on it. What do others think?

Would you mind spinning off

Posted by davidneedham on November 8, 2013 at 6:21pm
davidneedham's picture

Would you mind spinning off the discussion about becoming a non-profit into a new discussion? I feel like there could be a lot of discussion to be had. :-)

--
David Needham
Team Lead of Training at Datadog

Done

Posted by bhp on November 9, 2013 at 4:06am
bhp's picture

https://groups.drupal.org/node/368408

Quarterly meetings

Posted by stpaultim on December 5, 2013 at 5:55pm
stpaultim's picture

It's been a month since our first TC Drupal Coordinating Committee meeting and we never really reported back to the group. With Happy Hour tonight, I thought it would be good to report back now. NOTE: No official meetings tonight, but a great opportunity to check in and discuss these issues.

The only "official" decision that was made at last months meeting was that there is interest in a quarterly coordination meeting. There is no official definition of who should come or what the agenda will be, but the consensus seemed to be that the meeting would be open to whoever shows up - and that it would be an opportunity to coordinate various ongoing local programming and discuss issues such as "incorporation"?

I assume that our next meeting, in February (at 5:00 prior to Happy Hour) will include the issue of "incorporation" as a major agenda item.

Other issues that were discussed:

1) We've informally set a goal of planning of some kind of organized SPRINT on a quarterly basis. Next organized SPRINT is likely to be the weekend of Jan 25th and 26th. This will be "Drupal Global Sprint Weekend." I've already added us as a local site. We are looking at the possibility of hosting this with a midwinter Drupal unconference.

Drupal Global Sprint Weekend - https://groups.drupal.org/node/332998

2) Midwinter Drupal Camp - or "unconference." Barry and Tim are leading this. Talk to us tonight for more details. We'll be posting an update very soon. We hope that this will happen along with SPRINT on Jan 25th and 26th.

3) We discussed changing the night of "Happy Hour" to another night to avoid conflict with PHP user group. Decided to leave things as they are. If the PHP user group wants, they can change their date. :-)

4) Briefly discussed how to reinvigorate monthly Commerce User Group. Check in with Maryann on that issue (she was unable to attend last months meeting).

5) Briefly discussed upcoming training event (David Needham), monthly coder night (Ray Tiley), and the monthly user group at Intermedia Arts (Barry Madore).

If I am missing anything - other folks should feel free to fill in the details.

NEXT MEETING of TC Drupal Coordinating Committee:

5:00-5:45 PM - Feb. 6th, 2014
Blue Nile
Immediately prior to Happy Hour

Agenda:
* Incorporation?
* Schedule of upcoming events?
* Second quarter Sprint?
* Other....

Tim Erickson
Triplo