DrupalCamp Qld 2010

Yeah, DrupalCamp QLD was awesome, was great meeting everyone. Can't wait for next year.

Thanks for the congrats — we would have loved to have you there. :) No probs re:questions...

1. We had planned to have the Drupal Camp for late 2009 but then DrupalCamp Australia changed it's dates, and we did not want to conflict with that so we in turn changed ours. I think this happened twice and finally we just decided to set a date so we had plenty of time for organisation. :) We did a lot of the nitty gritty stuff and leg work esp in getting quotes, organising the purchase of food, organising pick up and drop off, etc. However, Kat and myself are highly motivated by this sort of stuff — I think it took about a week to get quotes and then ask around for sponsers. Jeff and Sean worked on the site whilst this was happening. We then advertised the site and people signed up, 2 weeks later we opened voting. One week later, voting was closed then we tallied up the hot topics and prepared the schedule. We had a full week, two weeks prior to the Camp to organise the schedule, contact any speakers with what they would need and time-frames for presentations etc, we also used this week to do any graphic design work: prepare signs, prepare name tags etc and buy lanyards. The week before the Camp we printed and cut the name tags, confirmed the shopping list for food and purchased the food, arrange people to come early to help set-up, etc....

2. We capped it at 60 knowing that even if 60 places are filled we would not get 60 people on the day. We did extend this once but our budget was catering for 60 so we could not risk having many more just in case everyone did turn up. At a free event it is easier for people to decide not to show up. I think if it was a paid one then people are more likely to be committed to coming. We ended up with 48 people in total. We also had some people just show up on the day having not signed up so this is good to remember for next time. :)

Re:advertising, we deliberately chose not to be too active in the advertising as we wanted to keep it capped. We easily filled the spots just by announcing on GDO and word of mouth. Next time we will aim bigger and better. :)

1. Yes we did, however, as organisers of the event, we knew that if anything was not covered then we would need to cover it from our own business. We were happy to sponsor but needed to wait until the end to pick up the tab. We ended up sponsoring as well as organising the printing and then making the lanyards and signs from our printer. For a bigger event, we would want this done professionally. :) We also paid our staff for the time they spent organising before the event.

We had a rough estimate of our costings before asking any sponsors. After the date was set we then hunted around for a venue and by chance John for UQ attended our next Drupal Meet and he arranged for us to use UQ venue for free so this made things very easy. Also in our Drupal Meet we have a person from Suncorp who was able to arrange for the food to be sponsored. We gave them the rough figures and they came back with an amount and we worked to that budget for the food. We had someone sponsor the drinks (fizzy and water) and someone sponsor tea and coffee for the day (this was quite tricky as we wanted a coffee van or coffee station but ended up using coffee percolators on the day which needed to be refilled up quite often on the breaks :) We also had sponsors for the internet. We ended up using a 3g dongle and telling people to go easy. It was perfect actually as we had download capacity even at the end of the day. Plus it only cost a pittance on the deal we found. :) Hunt around for good deals.

1. Get a small team around you (outside of your work team). There will be people who will have the talk but unfortunately the rubber never hits the road — you just have to accept this for the first one and move on. However, there were people who will just be really committed and go above and beyond. I would say that only use people who have been solidly committed to your local Drupal meet-up. We didn't have this particular problem but you need to be careful about people's motivation in wanting to be involved. It's important to have a reliable team. It all sorts itself out and by the end you should have a core group of people that are all focussed on accomplishing the same thing.

It's too hard to "run by committee" and sometimes a decision just needs to be made. We quickly realised that we were "where the buck stops" and in being that we needed to be empowered to make those decisions and know that the team will support. We were very transparent about things and at times had mini-discussions with certain key people on the team about decisions that we were making. At the end of the day, we didn't go seeking opinions from a larger group of people as it is very difficult to make progress that way.

Lastly, on the day, you need some people who can do the behind the scenes things. Jeff was able to be free to do what he needed to do knowing that everything was going to be sorted out. Kat and myself again did this part of the day. Unfortunately it meant that we missed out on the presentations totally but fortunately it helped free up people to do the up-front stuff. We would organised the tables and food and coffees and drinks. Then pack away after each time and then get it ready again. :) We also did the sign-in's and registration and anything "admin". Next time we would need a bigger team on this as there was a lot of work involved in setting up (UQ did not provide an eating venue so we had to lug tables around etc — the weather was perfect so we used a courtyard which was fantastic). If food was catered at your venue the set up and pack up is much less. We also went into the room to let speakers know that there was 15 mins left and then 5 mins left. We also herded any dawdlers. :) This helped keep the day on track.

Sorry if this is long, we still have a lot of thoughts as it is still quite fresh. If you have any more questions feel free to get in touch.

Jeff and Sheree
http://marmaladesoul.com