As one of DrupalCamp LA's lead organizers, my sense is that DrupalCamp LA has moved out of the realm of what a camp is and into the realm of large summits and conferences. I talked a little bit about this in a recent LA DrupalCast episode, and while I definitely thought DrupalCamp LA 2010 was a lot of fun and a moderately successful event, I think DrupalCamp LA occupies a strange place in the spectrum of camps, summits and cons.
If you haven't been to camps other than DrupalCamp LA or if you're wondering what this "Design for Drupal" stuff is, please bear with me and read the entire post and my comments below.
DrupalCamp LA and where it fits in the spectrum of camps, summits and cons
DrupalCamp LA 2010 was a success in every important way, including:
- Attendees came from all over the country and as far as Russia. In 2009, attendees came from as far as Argentina and New Zealand!
- We met our costs for the event and even raised a small surplus for LA Drupal's operating costs for the rest of the year.
- The camp organizing team was larger than last year's, showing that LA Drupal members are having fun working together and are gaining experience for organizing larger and larger events.
Here's why I don't think DrupalCamp LA was a very good camp as far as BarCamp-style events go:
- It took hundreds of hours of planning, fundraising and website development before the conference doors even opened.
- We had to raise thousands of dollars to meet our costs, which is about as anti-camp as you can get.
- On a minor note, DrupalCamp LA wasn't in Los Angeles or even LA County.
I'd actually like to see DrupalCamp LA update its name to "LA Drupal Summit" or "Drupal Southwest" or at something that better reflects what it really was in 2009 and 2010.
What makes camps and DrupalCamps different?
There are a lot of ways that camps and DrupalCamps can be organized but I've observed that compared to large summits and conferences, camps have a lot of commonalities:
- Camps have a lot more spontaneity (i.e. "things just come together").
- They have little or no budget to speak of.
- The number of attendees are a lot fewer than the 400-500 people who signed up for DrupalCamp LA.
I think that with a conference of 400-500 people, attendees can rightfully expect things like good food and daycare, both of which weren't offered at DrupalCamp LA due to logistical issues.
Who's interested in a "Design for Drupal" conference in Los Angeles in February, 2011?
I propose we get back to the essentials of what DrupalCamps are about and have a Drupal Design Camp in February, 2011, much like the one this year at Standford and and the one I helped organize last year in Boston.
February works for a design conference since SANDCamp is in January and DrupalCon Chicago is in March. Once it's over, we'd have 6 months to plan our next conference in the summer.
Any thoughts?
Comments
I really like the idea of
I really like the idea of having a Design for Drupal conference in LA in February but SCALE is February 25th - 27th so we need to take that into consideration.
The target audience of these
The target audience of these two conferences are very different and I'm not worried about diluting the attendance. I'd be at both, of course, and I'd love to see you at both, too. So, February can can definitely work as far as attendees go but I'm keen on ways to collaborate so that we don't spread our resources (which are pretty much the organizers themselves right now) too thin.
SCaLE vs D4D
D4D sounds really interesting to me, and I'd like to attend/participate. However, SCaLE is significant. In my opinion there's more to consider than overlap of target audience. Key people active in the local community, who might also be very active in a D4D would have difficulty doing both in a month with only four weekends.
I doubt I could do both in February, and would likely choose SCaLE over another Drupal event. SCaLE is larger, more networking and learning opportunities, and more diversified.
Jan will be a HUGE camp in San Diego - I feel March would be a better time to do this - and its before, and provides an alternative to, Drupalcon Chicago. March in SoCal is a pretty nice destination.
EDIT: oops, I thought Drupalcon was in April... hmm... tough choice. do it a weekend before Drupalcon... but its got to be 2-3 weeks away from SCALE too... First weekend of February or last weekend of Jan
SandCamp: Jan 8/9
SCALE: Feb 25/27
Drupalcon: Mar 7-10
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mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
For the sake of argument,
For the sake of argument, SCALE is about open source in general while the D4D movement is highly specific to advancing the state of Drupal design, IA and theming. SCALE is different enough that I don't think many people other than hardcore LA Drupal members would even notice or care if Design for Drupal LA and SCALE were on the same weekend.
To be clear, I would care and I'm not arguing that they should coincide (I plan to attend and help organize at both events) and timing-wise, I think a new conference such as Design for Drupal LA would need to be in February so that it's one month after SANDCamp, one month before DrupalCon and approximately 6 months after and before LA Drupal's camp in the summer.
I'll start a poll to see which weekend in February works for people and leave this discussion for ideas about possible venues, general organizing, whether we should charge for tickets, etc.
The poll is up
The poll is up at http://groups.drupal.org/node/97224
update: ...and the poll has ended. Drupal Design Camp LA is officially scheduled for February 5-6, 2011! See the announcement and sign up for notifications at http://groups.drupal.org/node/96799
Translating a design into a Drupal theme
I am interested in topics, the design process, translating design into a drupal theme, and usability testing. Yes I am sure to attend as much as possible. I saw a lot of training content being added by btmash which would be totally excellent too. Thanks!
Don
Interested
Sounds like a great idea! I would definitely attend.
Good Topic Focus to draw in those new to Drupal
I'm all for a trying out a different focus on Drupal Camp style big event. I think we have room for two big events a year. We are LA/OC, 10 million strong. As long as they have different focus. I think DrupalCampLA is "defined." Nothing to change there. It's good. DWD will give us a chance to explore other approaches to drawing adopters. And service a demand for learning Drupal here in LA and OC.
Below you will find a 1-2 year project proposal for our LA Drupal User Group. Having the group go to a higher level of professional presentation. Please keep the rant and rave down, as it's merely one person's opinion. The Open Source "free" aspect is respected, in my humble opinion.
I can recall my original learning curve for Drupal, where I tried to relate my existing design methods to Drupal base, and it's many modules. It's a hard reach, and instead of correlating what I knew about web design to Drupal, I had to learn how to design using Drupal. I recall consciously choosing that learning route, and Drupal became easy to learn.
My Web Spinner meeting will restart soon. I have been advertising the topic for the coming year will be focused exclusively on designing web sites using a CMS. The CMS for demonstration purposes will be Drupal, through to end of 2011. Going back to "basics," only using a tool, and not explicitly focusing on hands on with the low level, under the hood tweaking. That is, no HTML tags, no copy and paste JavaScript snippets, no CGI install. No database schema, table, field and SQL lessons. No web server (apache, etc) config tweaks. No LAMP at all. Just CMS design methods with Drupal as the sample CMS.
Instead, it will be navbar design with CMS, theming with CMS, page layout with CMS, site design with CMS, Rich Text Editors, User, Roles and Permissions, finding/installing/configuring add on modules, testing new themes, imageCaching, boosting performance tweaks with CMS, user profiles, search types, faceted search, social networking widgets, photo galleries, media types (audio, video, flash, etc), and more. All from the drag and drop point of view.
No hand editing of text files of any type. Basics for 1 year.
What will be skipped? All modules. Not even Drupal base will be examined. It's a black box approach to CMS design. Web Spinners will not be about "Drupal", but about "Design" using web based tools.
The year 2012 will likely focus on the intermediate level of Designing with Drupal, going to .htaccess, mod_rewrite, editing tpl.php files for HTML, adding regions, removing regions, removing unused theme html tags and sections, and near the end, using CCK and Views.
That all said, I think "Designing with Drupal" gives a good approach for those new to Drupal, and getting them on board faster than a DrupalCamp can, which is more than half filled with advance topics.
Now, the reason I wrote what my Web Spinner meetings will cover, is to provide an initial direction for Designing with Drupal, in first quarter next year. Please build upon this direction, even make it identical.
I will use Web Spinners to promote Designing with Drupal, as well as the other LA User Groups for Joomla, and the like. I think DWD should be 'after' SCALE, as we can give 2-3 drupal talks at SCALE and promote our DWD conference coming in the next month. DWD can then promote our weekly meetings, as well Web Spinners for just it's designer's aspect.
I'd really, really like to see LA Drupal get a bank account, to fund a higher level of meetings (food, rented venues, chairs/tables, coffee service), without the extra effort of struggling for sponsors to cover costs, at the last minute. Towards that end, I'm volunteering to organize a fund raiser for our group. I did it for the IICS back in 1993-94 and got 5K for the kitty. It was both Saturday and Sunday, 6 hours a day. And cost $50 a day, a low cost for the value, 3 presenters and a 60 page handout. We had three students who got waived the fee.
Now, that bank account can fund the Not For Profit filing fee for this state, I think it's $800. Then, we can accept donations that give a tax credit for our big sponsors for Drupal Camp 2011. That should double the number of sponsors we can get. Makes it easier for them to give just a little more. And have kitty funds for our next DrupalCampLA.
Will DWD also be a fund raiser for our group? I suggest at least one "free" track for all days, just to draw in that crowd. To get the corporate staff to pay through company funds makes sense to me, for the 'advance' tracks, like performance tuning, e-commerce for 20+ item inventory, CDN, and other levels of Drupal what most firms need to move forward with. Just my thoughts.
It's just "one" plan "suggestion." I put it out there for feedback. To build upon, to change, following group consensus. Please post what you agree with, disagree with and how to change it.
Peter
LA's Open Source User Group Advocate - Volunteer at DrupalCamp LA and SCALE
The D4D movement
The D4D movement is about design for Drupal and making Drupal more approachable to designers in general. "DWD" and Web Spinners sound interesting (indeed, we frequently use Drupal as a wireframing tool at our company and it's something I hope one of will present on at a meetup or conference) but for this thread, can we stay on the topic of what D4D is and what the upcoming Design for Drupal LA conference would be about?
Drupal is a great open-source, PHP-based content- and user-centric framework for building web applications, but those developer-oriented buzzwords don't really speak to the designer heart and soul. To make Drupal more approachable and attract designers to the Drupal community, Drupal's theming subsystem and the tools that are available in Drupal contrib need to be better publicized, better documented and easier to use. That's what the Design for Drupal LA conference would be about: design- and theming-related case studies, demonstrations of established and emerging best practices, and so on.
I've been pushing for this for months and after much discussion and garnering of support, LA Drupal is now in the process becoming an unincorporated association. This will give us an EIN that's independent of any SSN that's associated with a single person, which is the best way for us to open a bank account for LA Drupal.
The last I heard, the necessary paperwork (and payment for the administration fees) was turned over to the county clerk's office. At this rate, we'll have the financial infrastructure that's necessary to run a conference without depending on (and paying) an external fiscal agent, which we did for DrupalCamp LA 2010.
Good focus for D4D
Thanks Christefano for clarifying the D4D direction.
I support the EIN # for the checking account. It opens up all sorts of great possibilities, like I saw in the AIP.
BTW, in my post s/DWD/D4D/, though you are giving me thoughts of DWD, but I have another plan for such.
Peter
LA's Open Source User Group Advocate - Volunteer at DrupalCamp LA and SCALE
Coordinate with a RockDrupal event
Whenever this D4D event happens, would be fun to coordinate a RockDrupal event on one of the nights as the design camp. Would just need some lead time to talk a club into letting us put it on and get acts.
This is an unbelievably good
This is an unbelievably good idea. I think we need to figure out which venues to consider for the conference and then see which bars or clubs are immediately in the area. Unless we have a shuttle service, the bar or club would ideally be within walking distance.
We could also go in the reverse direction, too... do you know of bars or clubs that you've played at (or want to play at) that have venues nearby that you think we should consider for the conference?
It turns out there's already
It turns out there's already a Southwest Drupal Summit in Houston:
http://swdrupalsummit.com/
http://twitter.com/SWDrupalSummit
Hi, thanks for posting this.
Hi, thanks for posting this. I would love to see LA Drupal represented in Houston this January, so please join us!
These types of events are so important to sustain Drupal's growth, so I am glad to see this discussion happening.
I will most likely be a SCaLE as well, and while I don't think the audience overlap is huge, it looks like a few of us are evidence that it is there.