I'm new to the Utah Drupal Group as of today and have reviewed past articles. I'm down in Spanish Fork and would love to see how many users are down here in Utah County. I saw the poll and saw there were quite a few. I think it's great to get have a big meeting every so often, but would anyone like to meet up that is from Utah County?
I use to live up in Logan and there is no way I would have come clear to Salt Lake for a Drupal meeting. I wonder if it would be smart to break our Group into sub groups and potentially have at least quarterly meetups? This might help grow the group and even create better participation. Maybe I'm missing some smaller Groups that have been put together. I saw a Southern Utah Group I believe.
I know in Utah County I already have a location in American Fork that has been approved for Drupal Meetings and most likely they will be a major Utah Drupal contributor when they can. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
Comments
Utah County
I'm going to create a Utah County User Group to try and make things a bit more intimate. I would love to have a statewide Utah Drupal convention every so often. I think it would be awesome. I just want to see what type of response I can get from Utah County. Utah is a big state with only two user groups. This is how I see the state groups being broken up:
Cache Valley Group
Odgen Area Group
Salt Lake Group
Utah County Group
Eastern Utah Group
Southern Utah Group
Everyone comes together and contributes in the "Utah Group".
How does that sound?
Brandon Buttars
Drupal Theme Development
http://www.odindev.com
Brandon Buttars
Drupal Theming
http://brandonbuttars.com
> This is how I see the
It sounds to me like a lot of groups :-)
I think a reasonable approach is the one used by UPHPU, which holds monthly meetings toward the south end of Salt Lake County. There are about enough members for a good meeting. I didn't see as many people at the Drupal meeting yesterday so I doubt multiple groups would find enough members.
-- Walt
single group vs. multi group
in general, the site suffers from "dead groups" that have too little content. So, it is really best if these groups can all stay part of the main Utah group unless there is a real demand to split them up.
Since this Utah group only has 20 subscribers it's hard to imagine that each of those smaller sub groups would really have a critical mass that deserves its own group.
Maybe you could start a post for the "Utah County" group and see how many people would be interested. If there are a lot of people and if the goals of the group are such that the work/coordination can't happen within this Utah general group then a separate group makes sense. Otherwise...it tends to split effort and not actually help.
--
Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
I think Walt's right. As it
I think Walt's right. As it would be nice to have group meetings for each county I don't think that the Drupal users in Utah has reached that stage yet. We should give it a little time with the Utah Group and if it starts growing then we can look into breaking things up a little more. I'd love to have a Northern Utah group, but I'm not sure that there are enough to make the group work. As we meet over the next little while we should keep track of the people that make it to the meet-ups, and then we can look into splitting things up down the road.
Andrew (amariotti)
Andrew (amariotti)
Is it against the law to be a part of multiple groups?
Just because I set up a Utah County Group does not mean that I wouldn't still want to be a part of the Utah Group. Can't the Utah Group be broken down into divisions to create more frequency and attendance potentially? If users throughout Utah would like to come to the meeting but they have a 3 hour drive to get the meeting once a month and the time it's set up doesn't fit in their schedule should they be deprived of the opportunity to contribute to Drupal in a Group environment just because a majority of a wide spread group finds it convenient otherwise.
I'm not saying abandon Utah Group as a whole I'm just saying how about we try and grow Utah as a whole by localizing our Groups and coming together by minimizing the cost of being a part of the group. If we have more contributors in overall the project will grow quicker and probably get better. It may take some internet recruiting but most Open Source people are obsessed.
Does that make more sense?
I plan on still being a part of the Utah Group but would hope to help build the Utah Group through a Utah County Group.
Brandon Buttars
Drupal Theme Development
http://www.odindev.com
Brandon Buttars
Drupal Theming
http://brandonbuttars.com
Groups
What it comes down to is that if you want to start a group for Utah County then there's nothing wrong with that. one thing to consider is that groups.drupal.org won't approve your group unless there's an obvious need for it. They moderate a lot of groups and a group for Utah County will not fly. I know because I tried to start a Northern Utah Group and I was told that since the Utah Group only consists of 20 subscribers that it probably won't be approved. My recommendation is to hold tight and once we start growing a little more in Utah then we can start looking into separating it out to each county. Arguing about this really won't go anywhere if the moderators won't even approve it. Don't let me stop you from trying though.
Andrew (amariotti)
Andrew (amariotti)
I understand the philosophy
I understand the philosophy and how it could be a benefit. However, I believe that it will cause too much disconnect when there is not that much activity in this group first of all. The problem is not you being in two separate groups. The problem is it will segregate the utah group into smaller groups, and when there is 9 people meeting, segregating it to 3 people per group would really slim down the groups.
The best option is to move the location of the meet-up to the location around to different areas. Right now, the best option seemed to be the downtown library. However, if you a nice facility to accomodate people in Utah County, then it would be an option maybe every other month or two months to host one there as well. But, it is just really helpful to have around 10 people in meet-ups, then to separate people's attention into their own small local group and a still small utah group.
In the end, if you see benefit with the separate group, then I won't hassle you. I am just trying to point out how it benefits me to not separate the groups.
Thanks
Sorry if I came off childish with my remarks. I didn't realize others had tried before. That kind of sucks. Yeah amarrioti Utah County just got rejected. They said look at their guidelines and I'm still scratching my head.
I'll just contribute as must as I can with this group. I'm excited to get going. If any Utah County Drupallers or anyone want to start meeting even more often, let me know. I have a place down in Utah County in American Fork with a projector, wireless internet, and some offices that we can use for our meetings. I'm a web designer and we use Drupal quite a bit and my bosses would like to start contributing more. They have volunteered to start sponsoring meetings at our office. I'm willing to do exactly as TapocoL has mentioned.
I'm going to try and convince some people I know to start coming and get involved in things. I've got most likely 3 others that are potential members from my office. I may do some web recruiting also.
I willing and able to help however.
Brandon Buttars
Drupal Theme Development
http://www.odindev.com
Brandon Buttars
Drupal Theming
http://brandonbuttars.com
denying is hard, but maintaining is harder
Hi buttars,
It's always sad to deny a group because the message can be interpreted as a rejection of the person's offer to help spread the word. That's not at all the message that the g.d.o admins are trying to send.
But, maintenance of the *.drupal.org sites takes a lot of time - and it's all volunteer time. It's easier from a maintenance standpoint to deny a group than it is to clean one up. So, the g.d.o admins only approve a group if there is a demonstrable need for it (or if there reasonably will be). So far, there is no demonstrable need for multiple groups in Utah.
Now, recruit a whole bunch of folks and get a local community that is really active and get them involved...when the Utah group starts getting confused about which meetup is in which area and there are so many posts that things get lost, then it would be time to split this into multiple groups (though probably 2 or 3 groups, not 6).
--
Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation