As some of you may know, some Twin Cities Drupal People had talked at a Happy Hour about Drupalcamps and the Twin Cities. We all agreed that creating a Drupal presence at Minnebar would be our most ideal next step.
MinneBar officially has a date:
"Mark your calendars! MinneBar 2010 will be on Saturday, May 22nd." - http://twitter.com/minnebar
This is a great opportunity to give presentations about Drupal. It seems like the kinds of sessions that might fit well at MinneBar include 'Intro to Drupal' beginner sessions, or collaborating with other MinneBar people to do some panels about various technologies for non-profits, and represent Drupal in that way.
Anyone can suggest any sessions, though that part of the MinneBar website is not set up yet. I'm not sure how the voting on sessions works...we will find out soon enough.
Feel free to use this discussion to talk about session ideas, or if anyone has further thoughts about representing Drupal at MinneBar.
Here are some things I heard:
* I know that they are expecting hundreds of people (it's a huge bar camp)
* It will be at the Best Buy headquarters
* All kinds of people will be there, non-profits, entrepreneurs, geeks of many varieties.
The reasons why Drupal people liked this idea:
* We can help make the bar camp more awesome with (LOTS OF) great Drupal sessions
* Rather than creating our own Drupalcamp just yet, we can work with a community of people that is already well-connected
* Most of us don't know tons and tons of Drupal people, this is a good chance to meet more Drupal people in a different context, and invite them to get more involved in the Drupal community.
* Since we don't know tons of Drupal people...if we were going to have a Drupal camp, it would be easier if we all could work on something less stressful. while also finding more people. That will just make it much easier to start a Drupalcamp.
(That said...there are little rumbles of having a Drupal Geek Out event (more technical than what would be appropriate at MinneBar) in August. So...keep that in the back of your head. We would definitely want to have an idea of what that would be before MinneBar, so that we could invite MinneBar people to a more technical event. I'll be busy with my summer Drupal project/class -- so if someone wants to organize that...go for it. If the event was called a Geek Out and if there is a barbeque involved, I would not be upset. :P )
Comments
Joe and Samir
Joe (eojthebrave) and Samir (SteamedPenguin) have been actively helping to organize this. :)
Samir gets the credit for bringing up the Drupal + MinneBar Mashup idea. Thanks Samir!!
One of the things I would
One of the things I would like to figure out is how to promote this to the larger local Drupal community. I'm guessing there are a lot of people out there that are involved with Drupal who do not read this group or show up for happy hours. How do we get them involved too?
Is there anything we can be doing to help support the MinniBar organizers? If we're going to try and show up in force lets make sure we're welcome.
Sessions. I know I would like to see/participate in something that is more introductory level. I think this is a good opportunity for us to introduce a bunch of local geeks to Drupal and get them interested in the project. So maybe a "Why Drupal" session and a "What is Drupal" session would be appropriate.
I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on the matter.
D7?
It might also be worth considering focusing on D7, given it is much more appealing out-of-the-box than D6?
Hooray! I went in 2008 and it
Hooray! I went in 2008 and it was pretty awesome. There were some pre-voted upon sessions, but a lot of stuff was just very ad-hoc and developed as the day went on. I remember quite a few more technical Wordpress sessions toward the end of the day, but not a whole lot of Drupal talk. I am very excited about this and was sad to miss last year's event.
Drupal + MinneBar makes total sense, and I am sure there will be people there interested in more technical sessions, as well.... especially if there are some beginner sessions earlier in the day.