Greetings all. I met many you at DrupalCon, but not all of us have met, I'm Kevin O'Brien and I work for San Francisco State University. I want to keep the momentum going on getting a California State-wide university Drupal group together. (Hey If you can think of a catchy name/acronym that would be good too). In these times, I believe it is really important to share resources with each other, as many of us are most likely duplicating effort on each individual campus. Many of us are Drupal evangelists and would really like to push it as a potential solution for campuses across the CSU and UC systems. I believe, right now is an especially important time to form a formal user group, due to recent talk of moving campus IT services to "Cloud" systems. Drupal is not well known enough across all campuses and among the administration to ensure that it would be looked at as part of that effort, but if we work to promote it I think it will come more to the forefront.
We were discussing meeting once a month, virtually (undecided on platform yet, could be IRC, could be video chat, screencasting, Skype, GChat, etc.) to discuss all things related to Drupal implementations on California public university campuses.
So, at this point, what I'd like to do is discover your interest in this. If you know anyone else that you think would be a good fit for this system, please also forward this e-mail to them and ask them to contact me.
Comments
Also FYI, I chose to make
Also FYI, I chose to make this group moderated, in order to try to ensure the discussion remains focused on California public universities, and thus keep membership restricted to those who are actually members of such universities. If I make a mistake on this moderation please let me know.
Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com
Excellent, glad to see people
Excellent, glad to see people joining up already. I have a list of about 8 people I need to e-mail this evening that are from DrupalCon and ask them to join up as well. After that next steps will be getting up a public facing website, I'll probably create a separate discussion on that, as we need to ask ourselves if we host that on a current university web server or if we put it somewhere else (e.g., www.drupal4california.com or something like that) I'd be happy to register a domain if that is what would be best.
Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com
public website
I think something with more functionality than drupal groups would be great.
If someone can spin off a little space on a local university site that'd cut costs and we could point a custom domain name to it - I kind of like yours.
Here, here. However, I think
Here, here.
However, I think that the focus of this group might be for the 'evangelists' to collaborate and out of that we could build a whiz-bang site for others in the CSU/UC to see what Drupal can do. I'm thinking something with a highlight of Drupal projects across the state, as well as internal discussion groups which are aimed more towards being a resource for other campuses to ask specific questions about things like SIS, accessibility, etc.
I absolutely agree. I don't
I absolutely agree. I don't mind registering and owning a domain and then giving everyone here administrative access to it. This group will definitely be both about collaboration and evangelizing, but the more important goal is evangelizing, just that collaborating on projects will help us all to build better projects, which in turn will better help us evangelize.
Also, as a side note I have already turned down two people who run consulting companies. I don't think that is what we are looking for here, rather to focus on how employees of universities themselves can show the great work we can do on our own. Does that sound like the correct approach?
Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com
re: consulting companies
I'm of a mixed opinion. If a consulting company just made a brochure site for a department/etc then I'd agree that's not what we're looking for, but a company that integrates it's knowledge and works with UC teams should be welcome (in my opinion). I know Chapter Three has been helping out with UCSF getting a hosting environment going, and they contribute presentations etc to the Berkeley DUG... in that case it seems that leveraging their knowledge as well as the unfortunate tendency for UC (at least) admin people to trust outside consultants more than their internal staff could work for the better. :p
Yeah, it's tough and I am a
Yeah, it's tough and I am a bit on the fence, but at the very least, we could agree to limit it to known consulting companies who have already done good work with California universities, but even that is a stretch, because how does one objectively define that?
I definitely think this effort should harness the knowledge/power of companies like Acquia/Development Seed/Chapter 3, but it would seem more appropriate to have them as offering advice and eventually putting in RFPs or something like that, otherwise there is a conflict of interest here, because they would promote the interests of this group out of a desire to bring funds to their consulting companies. Wouldn't you agree?
Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com
I agree it's grey - I think
I agree it's grey - I think we could acknowledge with some of the known players/shapers (if they express interest) as strategic partners / advisors to the project. It would make the arbitrariness seems somehow more reasonable as you don't let just anyone advise you. :)
From a personal perspective I don't really have a problem with some of the major agencies that contrib back / shape drupal getting some side business out of this- it's a win/win situation in the end and it isn't like they are desperate for work. However there are guidelines against "endorsing" solutions or companies as a public institution that it'd be good to catch up on (if this becomes something more formal than some higher-ed employees evangelizing on their free time).
Yes, just to clarify, I have
Yes, just to clarify, I have no problem whatsoever with consulting companies, many of them have done great work with Drupal. I'm just focusing on our subset issue here.
Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com
Yup. I think focusing on the
Yup. I think focusing on the university while allowing private input makes sense, and agree we don't just want people joining to try and score a contract. It would be tough to enforce a "advise only" policy with private firms that do help out as we don't have any authority, and I do agree it would look like a conflict of interest for us to receive help.
I personally don't see it being a major issue as long as we're an informal group, and there is obviously a lot to gain by letting them contribute expertise. I guess when a company of substance decides to join we can revisit the issue.
Sorry if I was a bit unclear before, feeling a little under the weather. :)
I'm going to make a slight
I'm going to make a slight addendum to say that I believe having Stanford on board is important for the promotion of this cause and I think they will help us with collaboration. However, it's important to note that the focus will be pushing for statewide support for Drupal in public universities, so as long as there are people at private universities that want to help us towards this goal (along with joining hands in collaborating) that should be a great thing.
Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com