Posted by bhosmer on September 14, 2014 at 11:23am
I got a chance on Saturday at Fossetcon to talk to one of the event organizers, Bryan Smith. He had really hoped for a large Drupal turnout. We either didn't know about it or didn't have enough time.
He would have loved an entire training day just focused on Drupal too.
Here are some thoughts I had:
- Bryan would be more than open to having a dual-conference, DrupalCamp and Fossetcon together. I've seen other DrupalCamps like this and it works quite well. We gain a much wider audience, and can pool financial as well as other logistical resources.
- This also brings more diversity.
- This also brings a wider array of sponsors. I also talked to RedHat and they expressed interest in helping out financially as well as with any needed infrastructure for Coding for a Cause and other sprints. They would also be willing to send speakers.
Let's face it, Drupal uses a huge variety of opensource that isn't grown in our backyard. Our standard camp model would be quite similar, but we could also open awareness to others.
Additionally, Drupal is hot with many other opensource projects. I had more contact at the Drupal booth from other vendors interested in Drupal than from attendees. Companies like RedHat, OpenShift, HP, and CentOS all use Drupal.
Comments
This is a really intriguing
This is a really intriguing idea, but there's a lot to work out... dates, budgets, etc. I do think this could be very powerful bringing people into Drupal and OSS in general.
How do we want to proceed with figuring out what this would look like? Do you guys want to do a hangout sometime and brainstorm? At that point we could talk to Bryan and the FOSSETCON organizers?
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Let's start with a hangout
Let's start with a hangout this week and see what we need to do to get started.
I was planning on Giving Bryan a chance to sleep a little before I engaged him too much. This would give us a chance to decide what we want to do and present him with some ideas.
Let's get some times that work for everyone this week: http://doodle.com/yt7hmh2az4qavrra
Combining both Drupal and
Combining both Drupal and Fossetcon would be a powerful combination drawing many different groups. I am thinking specifically of Trephub who would help get the word out and Brevard Makerspace/Hackers group. Yes, this would be a huge success! We have time to prepare and I would be happy to start here in Brevard with our local groups.
timing?
Ben,
Did you and Bryan talk about possible timing of a combined event? Would we have to push FLDC until late summer/fall 2015?
Regardless, let's explore the possibility and see if it makes sense.
Thanks,
-mike
In fact we did. He appeared
In fact we did. He appeared open to a fall/spring event actually.
When I said "let him sleep" I meant give him some time this week to recover and not start pounding him with the possibility of doing it all over again in a few months.
Timing
Mike,
When Ben talked to us about it, Fossetcom was thinking about doing another meeting / convention around February. They also wanted us to help them with their Drupal based web site.
Ben did say that "I was planning on giving Bryan a chance to sleep a little before I engaged him too much". I believe that this was referring to doing another Fossetcom in February.
When is the next hangout? DC
When is the next hangout? DC Atlanta is next week and trying to schedule everything in. =)
After discussion with
After discussion with FOSSETCON, I don't think logistically and financially we'll be able to make both our camps meet.
We need to start looking at plan B again and perhaps a late-winter FLDC camp.
This doesn't preclude inviting wordpress or any other opensource projects that we feel are appropriate though.
Let's get another hangout early next week to talk about going forward.
The people who hosted Orlando
The people who hosted Orlando Tech Week said it was much easier to get sponsors by joining forces. I'm not sure what all the benefits and headaches were, but...
Do we know when the next WordCamp Orlando is planned? I just emailed the organizer. Their web site is still the 2013 version.
Edit: December 5&6
http://2014.orlando.wordcamp.org/
Bad SEO
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
I don't want to speak for
I don't want to speak for Mike as he normally gathers the sponsors but I never got the impression getting sponsors was a problem.
Don VanDemark
Agile Process Manager, Blue Shield of California
correct
Yeah, (fingers crossed, knock on wood), so far it hasn't been a big issue.
That being said, I really like the idea of joining forces with other "satellite" open source communities. I think if we can get more PHP, JavaScript, etc... organizations and people involved, that will benefit all of us...
-mike
Yes, "Getting off the Island"
Yes, "Getting off the Island" should apply to DrupalCamps too.
I think there is a way to make it happen without totally overshadowing the whole weekend.
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
blood oath
I say we make all non-Drupalists take a "Good Fellas"-style blood oath swearing their allegiance to Drupal before they're allowed to speak.
-mike
I vote for face tattoos.
I vote for face tattoos.
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
Doesn't David Rogers do both
Doesn't David Rogers do both the PHP and JS groups in Orlando? Maybe he'd want to do something?
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absolutely
Yep - he's a no-brainer to get involved.
-mike
He did an angular
He did an angular presentation recently at Barcamp.
I know I'm in the large
I know I'm in the large minority here but I'm not a fan of combined events. I like the focus of a single community event. I'll leave myself open to be convinced otherwise but figured I'd lob that out there.
Don VanDemark
Agile Process Manager, Blue Shield of California
We can't leave out the fact
We can't leave out the fact that very soon, the Drupal community will also be the Symfony community. Drupal also runs on FOSS server software, uses javascript (I'm thinking the trend with angular and headless), and also is touched by Wordpress, Joomla, and Magento when we are tasked with migrating from them.
I've also used Python with Drupal before for text processing.
So you're making the point
So you're making the point that we should have talks about more than Drupal. I completely agree. That's also completely different from having joint camps.
Glad to see I'm being painted (not just here) as being exclusionary, which was not my message.
Don VanDemark
Agile Process Manager, Blue Shield of California
Screwed by semantics again,
Screwed by semantics again, Don.
You are a pillar; a colossus; a cornerstone. That's different than being exclusive.
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
You left out dinosaur ;) Now
You left out dinosaur ;) Now get off my lawn.
Don VanDemark
Agile Process Manager, Blue Shield of California
(No subject)
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast
So you're making the point
So you're making the point that we should have talks about more than Drupal. I completely agree. That's also completely different from having joint camps.
Glad to see I'm being painted (not just here) as being exclusionary, which was not my message.
Don VanDemark
Agile Process Manager, Blue Shield of California
I obviously felt strong
I obviously felt strong enough about it to say it twice :)
Don VanDemark
Agile Process Manager, Blue Shield of California
bad guy
Don,
Someone has to be the bad guy, right? Thanks for stepping up.
Seriously, I know exactly what you're getting at. A few years ago we did a "combined" camp with a social media group and it was a disaster. There was no "mingling" and very little (if any) common ground. Obviously, we have to learn from that mistake.
Maybe we could position it as a "Drupal and friends" camp - keeping the main focus on Drupal, but letting the world know that we're not an island and welcome related projects into our tent.
Personally, I would love to see a "How to integrate AngularJS into Drupal" session. Or a "Intro to AngularJS for Drupalists" session. jQuery, Behat, GitFlow, Vagrant, VMs for Dummies, WordPress vs Drupal cage match (not giving that dream up), "Getting started with Linux", "Managing your LAMP stack", are all topics that aren't strictly Drupal, but I think would be valuable to our community (and others).
-mike
I don't feel like you're
I don't feel like you're exclusionary at all.
Re: We can't leave out the fact
Coming from the JavaScript development world (AngularJS primarily), I definitely agree that those communities that tie in with Drupal should be welcome. My focus these past few years has been integrating other technologies in with Drupal. I rarely work strictly with Drupal, but I'm a fan, and anything we can do to tie Drupal in with other leading technologies is a win in my book. If you look at the broader picture, the big driving technologies are focusing more on integrating/playing nicely with each other (for the most part). However I do like the suggestion of 'Drupal and friends' to make it clear to all what the camp's focus is. My two copper.
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Stephen Parker
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I'm in agreement with Don
I think DrupalCamps should be about Drupal. Not really a DrupalCamp if it's mushed together with a bunch of other stuff. Also not sure it's as effective at building the Drupal community.
John Hannah
Friendly Machine
I also agree with Don
IMHO,
The folks who are stretching the boundaries of Drupal are probably more of the "presenters" at the camps, rather than attendees. Who are these camps for? Who will constitute the majority of the attendees? What do they want from the event? (These are questions, I'm not trying to making a point...)
With camps trying to pack so much into a SINGLE-day event, there's a lot of info being presented, with not much opportunity to go into great depth on any one topic.
Drupal camps excel at:
I believe its best to focus on Drupal-centric content at the camps.
Just my two cents...
Dan Dease
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Dan, I agree there is a lot
Dan,
I agree there is a lot to learn about Drupal, and a lot of ground to cover. I have been doing it full-time for 8 or 9 years now, and I have noticed that some of the most critical things I can learn are not specific to Drupal.
This includes:
There are lots of people who could present on these subjects that know little or nothing about Drupal. I think if you look at our previous conference sessions, you'll see all of these subjects make it in there at some point.
Also, the advent of Drupal 8 means there are lots of new technology hurdles, and potentially more eyes will be focused on Drupal because we have caught up with the industry in a major way. This discussion has that fact as an undercurrent.
Ryan Price
DrupalEasy Podcast