Drupal Camp Asheville

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Drupal Camp Asheville was planned as a supplemental camp to Boone and Atlanta as we are focusing primarily on beginners with a very small attendee cap. We didn't have enough time to get in before Boone but two weeks before Atlanta worked out great.

I have called and collaborated with Boone and Atlanta for weeks before the camps to make sure we were a help to them. The majority of our marketing for the 2 weeks before Boone was for Boone.

This camp was not unnecessary, maybe to you, but not to the people in this region. This camp was not a competition, something that all of the other leaders know and understand, maybe not to you.

The concepts of the Drupal community was the #1 driving goal of our camp and every one (except for you) believes we hit the mark.

If you have any issues with our camp, then please email me directly matthew (at) mrconnerton (dot) com and I will be more than willing to tell you all about it.

I've been one of the main organizers of Drupal Camp Asheville and we've been supporting DC Boone and DC Atlanta. This is Boone and Asheville's first year and I've been in talks with them on collaborating or possibly sharing next year. I went to Drupal Camp Boone and it was an amazing event that really was at a different level than ours. They reached there goals in attendance and as the DrupalCampAsheville social mediaest I tweeted and facebooked and will continue to help these camps. As Matt said, our camp has a different flavor. We have Doug Vann coming to teach a beginner track and we have different goals than the other camps.

Next week we will focus our attention on helping ATL and we already have a big caravan of folks carpooling there.

Its likely that the timing could have been better, but in this situation we are all working together. And as momentum goes having all of this action so close together is getting most people even more excited about Drupal and all the camps.

Looking forward to all of this Drupal and thank you to the people from Boone, Atlanta and all over who have supported our first year!

I would like to echo the comments from @jlmeredith and @mediacurrent and say that the organizers of the Asheville, Atlanta, and Boone were in communication with one another. As one of the "co-chairs" of the Boone event, I specifically communicated with @mrconnerton and @mediacurrent about ways to collaborate and maximize attendance at all of the events.

From the outside, I can see @afreeman's perspective: driving to Western NC twice within a few weeks is asking a lot of people from other areas within the state. If our roles were reversed and there were two camps in Eastern NC within weeks of each other, I may have provided the organizers with feedback such as "please consider coordinating dates better for those traveling long distances." I feel that referring to the Asheville event as "unnecessary" goes a little too far and seems a bit harsh. You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I can say firsthand that DCamp Asheville filled an important need in the Drupal community. Organizing a DrupalCamp is quite a challenge, and no decision is made lightly. @mrconneron chose the date in part so that people would have a knowledge base going into DCamp Atlanta. DCamp Boone had numerours scheduling factors as well (home football games, student move-in day, building hours, etc.) to consider so in the end we both chose the dates that worked best for our events. From my perspective, the Western NC events filled different needs within the community: for the Boone camp we wanted to introduce the Drupal Community to Appstate users (mostly content editors) and also frame Drupal within the wider open source community, which is why we had a keynote speaker. As I understood it, the Asheville Camp was focused on beginners and also had sessions for intermediate/advanced users that were more hands-on. I attended both events, and learned a lot from both of them. I think that one of the great things about the way DrupalCamps are organized is that, like the open source movement itself, the users determine the content which makes every event unique.

That said, I do agree with @afreeman that there is room for better collaboration in the future. I propose that we move towards having DrupalCamp North Carolina. This annual, state-wide camp would rotate to different locations around the state each year on a predetermined cycle. For example, the fall 2011 camp could be held in the Triangle, fall 2012 could be in Asheville, fall 2013 could be somewhere on the coast, fall 2014 could be in Boone, etc (I have fall in my head because the Western Hemisphere DrupalCon is held each spring but that's just one idea). Each region could also organize additional camps independently (perhaps these could all be in the spring), but still in coordination so that at the very least they do not all fall on the same day. I welcome anyone's thoughts on this proposal, and suggestions on the best way to move forward.