Rekindling the flame of local groups

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dougvann's picture

Ok.
As we all know Fernando [aka DevelCuy] and others down South are COOKING when it comes to Drupal events.
My own town [as I've mentioned] has slipped from twice a month to a very casual monthly dinner which is not as suitable for Drupaling as we'd like. My and the other organizer Dudenhofer are cooking up some plans for another hackfest. See hackfest definition here: http://www.dougvann.com/blogs/dougvann/09-01-31/drupal-hackfest-definition

My question for Fernando is "What in the world are you guys doing to get so many large events?" I'd be interested in hearing a lot of detail on how it got to this point and what exactly is happening at your events?

My question for everyone is: "Do you have any advice on Rekindling the flame of local groups?"

THNX!
- doug vann
- www.dougvann.com

Comments

"Drupal mentors needed"

DevElCuy's picture

As said by Dries: http://buytaert.net/drupal-mentors-needed

I'm working to make that happen in the whole Latin America. But it depends on the region and culture. For me is so surprising to see headless self-organizing groups, in my country we use to "follow the lead", because otherwise nobody takes responsibility on the project/group/initiative. So, in this case, I'm encouraging the new leads to be mentors, to find potential leads and take care of them.

But the message for the followers is different, they need to believe that they can be leaders, that they don't need to ask first before contributing, but ask for help to contribute. Because we always need more power to get more things done.

To answer your question first: the large events are a result of progressive growth. We cycle on event, retrospective, event, and so on. The same for drupal modules, Dokeos was the first one, and the result was 8 months of continued contribution to a single goal. Now I'm working to make that model scalable. Wish me luck :)

And to answer your second question: IMHO, local groups have the opportunity to be the live evidence of that open collaboration models work. Start the movement and constantly improve it getting feedback from your community, they better know what they need and then you can talk them about doocracy :), if they want something to happen, they are welcome to do it.

Hope this helps.

--
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