Greater Los Angeles Drupal Governance Meetup #1 from 4-6pm on April 2, 2013

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christefano's picture
Start: 
2013-04-02 16:00 - 18:00 America/Los_Angeles
Event type: 
User group meeting

The Downtown Los Angeles Drupal group is now Greater Los Angeles Drupal and we're having our first Greater Los Angeles Drupal Governance Meetup on Tuesday, April 2, 2013 between 4-6pm. This is prior to the Downtown Drupal meetup in Downtown Los Angeles that's scheduled the same evening from 7-9pm.

In the spirit and tradition of our user group and events, this meetup is open to all Greater Los Angeles Drupal members and is an excellent opportunity for anyone who's interested in getting involved or is just interested in observing our open governance model.

Join us in person at Droplabs or remotely via Google+ Hangout!

Agenda

Our agenda for this meeting is:

   1. Review (and possibly publish) the proposed Greater Los Angeles Drupal Governance policy:

   http://groups.drupal.org/node/230018  

If you plan to attend, please be prepared and familiarize yourself with both our group's mission at http://groups.drupal.org/node/219129 and our current governance proposal at http://groups.drupal.org/node/230018 prior to this meetup.

   2. Discuss the name change of the group from Downtown Los Angeles Drupal to Greater Los Angeles Drupal.

   3. Brainstorm about the group's current mission and distributing what we want to do across our current organizing team. How do we identify new organizers and empower our current organizers?

   4. Would you like to add something to the agenda? Add a suggestion in the comments at http://groups.drupal.org/node/289988#comments! (a Drupal.org account is required. See http://groups.drupal.org/node/69093 for more information.)

Join Us on Google+ and Twitter!

To join the meeting, use the following URL:

   Google+ hangout: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/d9b0d9eba12664d9ec5ed3f07265266d10cf031b
   Short URL: http://ex.tl/ZMK  

During the meetup, the event organizers will be monitoring Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @GLADrupal.

Location and Directions

This event is hosted by Droplabs (@Droplabs), a collaborative coworking space, classroom and hackerspace in Downtown Los Angeles.

   Droplabs
   651 Clover St.
   Los Angeles, CA 90031

Google Map
We're quickly gaining a reputation for being the only coworking space around with a with a low-cost business model: come work here and use our tables, chairs, WiFi and conference room with a low, daily or monthly membership fee and only pay more for the extras, such as 24/7 access, equipment rental and a locker for your belongings.

Droplabs is in the Mission Junction neighborhood of Los Angeles at Big Art Labs, just 1 mile down Main St. from Philippes (the first-ever venue for Drupal meetups in Southern California!) and Union Station. We're one block west of The Brewery, the largest live-and-work artists' colony in the world.

Free parking in our large parking lot is first-come, first-served. After parking in the lot, follow the yellow signs that point to Droplabs. (If our lot is full, you can park for free on Clover St.)

Droplabs is a brief walk from the Main St. / Lamar St. stop on the the Metro Local 76 bus line. This is also the Lincoln Heights / Chinatown DASH stop.

To carpool or catch the Droplabs shuttle from Union Station, post below in the comments.

What to Bring

Just bring your laptop, your business cards or whatever else you need. You're also welcome to bring some light food, sodas or beers to share with others at the meetup.

Please note that our guest wireless network is limited to 1Mb per client, so bring your MiFi router or a phone you can tether with if for some reason you need a lot of bandwidth. Access to our high-speed network is included with a Droplabs membership.

About Greater Los Angeles Drupal

With several weekly and monthly events, the Greater Los Angeles Area is one the most active areas for Drupal in the world.

Formerly named Downtown Los Angeles Drupal, we've been meeting regularly in and around Downtown Los Angeles, California, since early 2010, and now organize a large number of events in the area. Our signature events include the Drupal Job Fairs and the Downtown Drupal, Frontend Drupal and High Performance Drupal meetups.

Our members and organizers have produced hundreds of Drupal events, including job fairs, meetups and workshops, conferences, paid trainings, coworking days, study group sessions, movie outings, FREE tutoring sessions from Drupal professionals, and website barnraisings to benefit non-profits and members of our community.

Attending Drupal events in the Greater Los Angeles Area is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend as many meetings and special events as you'd like. Whether it's to find solutions to problems you've been having, sharing something you've learned or just meeting interesting like-minded people, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal events are an essential resource for Drupal professionals and hobbyists alike.

If you aren't already a member of Greater Los Angeles Drupal, it's easy to join our community. Our community calendar is on our "Events" tab on our home page at http://groups.drupal.org/dtla  

We proudly participate in the California Drupal Travelers Program, which aims to connect businesses and community members who are visiting the area with our local community and events. Inquire within by contacting any of the Downtown Los Angeles Drupal organizers, or by joining the global Drupal Hospitality Network.

Comments

Hi all, this governance

christefano's picture

Hi all, this governance meetup has been moved up an hour and is now from 4-6pm. Does this work for everyone who was interested in attending?

There is still the Google+ Hangout option:

   Google+ hangout: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/d9b0d9eba12664d9ec5ed3f07265266d10cf031b
   Short URL: http://ex.tl/ZMK

The time change is to allow for enough time to carpool from Droplabs (where this meetup is taking place) to Sensis for happy hour and the Downtown Drupal Meetup.

Alternatively, we can roll this governance meeting into the agenda for the main Downtown Drupal Meetup, but my preference is to keep them separate.

Btw, I'm here waiting & ready

Techivist's picture

Btw, I'm here waiting & ready @Droplabs in the small conference room.

Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu

I'm running a few minutes

christefano's picture

I'm running a few minutes late (as if you didn't know already!). See you all in a few minutes.

Minutes from GLAD governance meetup #1

christefano's picture

In attendance were myself (Christefano), Miguel and Oliver. Our main point of business was the Greater Los Angeles Drupal Governance Policy document, and we reviewed the proposed policy and agreed that we were ready to formally present it to Greater Los Angeles Drupal (GLAD) members at that evening's Downtown Drupal meetup for feedback.

We are trying a new approval process for how to review and discuss the document, receive feedback from our community, and eventually publish the document (i.e. move it out of its draft version and making it official). Here's the process:

Our policy document is effectively "frozen" during a 2-week review and discussion period. If we receive feedback that results in modifying the document, we will "unfreeze" it, incorporate the feedback, and "refreeze" it for a new 2-week period. Once the document has been frozen for a continuous 2-week period without any modifications, it will be published.

There was indeed feedback 2 days later from an attendee at the meetup, and per our new approval process we've unfrozen the document to incorporate that feedback and have updated the document. The document was then re-frozen and will be published 2 weeks from that date (April 21, 2013), so long as there isn't any new feedback to warrant unfreezing the document again.

The mechanism for providing feedback is listed in the top of that document.

Another agenda item was the discussion of our group's name change from Downtown Los Angeles Drupal (Downtown Drupal) to Greater Los Angeles Drupal (GLAD). We've been considering this name change for several months and the organizers at the meetup agreed unanimously to make the change. This also meant that this governance meetup was our first "Greater Los Angeles Drupal Governance Meetup" and why it's numbered the way it is.

Now that it's official, we've updated our group's mission statement at http://groups.drupal.org/node/219129 accordingly. We're now waiting for the Drupal Groups webmasters to approve the change of the path alias of the node from 'dtla' (for Downtown Los Angeles) to 'glad' (Greater Los Angeles Drupal).

The final point of business discussed at the meeting were the various forms of sponsorship that GLAD events can have. There are many (including technical, organizing, and hosting sponsorship) and we determined that Droplabs wasn't actually an organizing sponsor of the Downtown Drupal meetup in March. The announcement here on Drupal Groups was corrected.

The total time spent was roughly 1 hour. During the meeting we also had some awesome food, provided by one of Droplabs' neighbors at Big Art Labs. Afterward, we carpooled to Takami and Sensis Agency for happy hour and the Downtown Drupal meetup, respectively.

Congratulations, everyone!

christefano's picture

Congratulations, everyone! Our governance policy for Greater Los Angeles Drupal (GLAD) went into effect on April 21, 2013, using the approval process mentioned earlier in the meeting minutes:

We are trying a new approval process for how to review and discuss the document, receive feedback from our community, and eventually publish the document (i.e. move it out of its draft version and making it official). Here's the process:

Our policy document is effectively "frozen" during a 2-week review and discussion period. If we receive feedback that results in modifying the document, we will "unfreeze" it, incorporate the feedback, and "refreeze" it for a new 2-week period. Once the document has been frozen for a continuous 2-week period without any modifications, it will be published.

I'm excited about using this process again in the future. Until then, we have a shiny, new governance policy that states our processes, common goals, shared values, and commitment to transparency and accountability. Let's celebrate!