Discussion of how the Drupal Employers Summit is being promoted

We encourage users to post events happening in the community to the community events group on https://www.drupal.org.
christefano's picture
Start: 
2014-03-07 18:00 - 20:00 America/Los_Angeles
Organizers: 
Event type: 
Drupalcamp or Regional Summit

This event announcement has turned into a long running discussion about the preferences, policies, politics, etc. of how event announcements are received by various regional groups.

For information and discussion about the Drupal Employers Summit event, please see the followup announcement at https://groups.drupal.org/node/408388  

Comments

Please don't spam

rootwork's picture

Why is this posted in the Portland OR, Seattle (and apparently Boston?!) groups? I get that you want people to come, but spamming a bunch of other groups is really poor taste. If every local camp did this then the geographically-based groups would quickly lose their meaning.

People who are interested in nonprofits or activism are part of the "Drupal for Good" and/or "Drupal for Activists and Campaigns" groups, and this event is welcome there. But keep events with a geographic location in geographic groups; that's the whole point of having separate groups.

Please remove this event listing from non-Southern California groups. Thanks.

Ivan, I love your suggestions

christefano's picture

Ivan, I love your suggestions and the passion in your comment. I didn't know about the "Drupal for Activists and Campaigns" group and just joined it.

The way cross-posting works and is used here on Drupal Groups is a frequent conversation topic and I imagine it will always continue to be. As a frequent community organizer and event producer, I've heard this a lot myself.

I understand what you're saying about relevancy. Please don't confuse something that's irrelevant to you being irrelevant to others. Just because it's not your taste doesn't make it bad taste.

I remember when Chapter Three promoted their San Francisco trainings in groups on the East Coast and they got in trouble over that until the groups.drupal.org webmasters at the time agreed that it makes sense for training announcements to be posted in groups where people interested in attending the trainings are likely to travel from. I think that relates well to what GLADCamp is offering.

Speaking specifically about camps, SANDcamp was recently promoted in groups as far away as Berkeley, Las Vegas and Arizona. The upcoming DrupalCamp Phoenix is also promoting their event outside of their area, including the Pacific Northwest. The Southwest Drupal Summit completely bombarded everyone on the planet with their announcements. If they hadn't, a lot of people probably wouldn't have heard about the event until it was over. Again, I think this relates to GLADCamp.

While everyone probably thinks that the event they're involved with is the most important one of the moment, myself included, I do want to mention that we're doing a couple things at GLADCamp that no one else has been crazy enough to try. I truly think the events that make our our conference program are extremely interesting, but my bet is that they're interesting to the larger community, too.

Disclosure: one of my companies is a Chapter Three partner.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy this.

rootwork's picture

For topical-based camps -- as parts of your camps are -- I think it's entirely appropriate to post those events into related topical-based groups. The nonprofit summit should absolutely be posted into nonprofit Drupal groups. Thus, those who find it "relevant," as you describe in a pretty condescending way, will easily be able to find it.

But it's unreasonable to post a regular camp announcement into every other location-based group on the off chance someone will be willing to travel to your camp. Groups in your state, sure, and maybe even neighboring states. (In the Pacific NW, for instance, Oregon and Washington events are often cross-posted.) But in Boston? No.

There are Drupal groups all over the world. Many of them have camps (or join together to create camps) at least once a year. If every Drupal group advertised their camp in every other Drupal group, there would be no point to having separate groups at all -- every group would be flooded by every Drupal event listing in the world. That's obviously not feasible.

Even though I live in Portland, Oregon, I'm willing to attend camps in Philadelphia (where I used to live), and so I'm a member of that group. But I don't expect to see those events pop up in the Portland group, because that would be insane. Again, consider the scale -- if every Drupal camp from every group appeared in my local group, there'd be no point to having a group calendar.

More to the point, though, is your attitude that your camp is so special, you shouldn't be bound by the community guidelines we've all collectively been living by. That others have sometimes ignored those guidelines isn't much of a defense; in fact given the number of Drupal camps around the world, the fact that it's only happened a few times shows how widely-shared those guidelines are.

I've helped organize Drupal camps in Philadelphia, I was a track chair for Drupalcon Portland, and I have a background in community organizing. I know how important it is to get the word out about an event. But consider that you're seriously turning people off by spamming groups with your events. I think it's instructive, for instance, that you didn't invite people in other groups to your event. You simply cross-posted the event, so that it appears as if it's being sponsored by all those local Drupal groups. It would have been far different if you had created a blog post that said, dear folks in Boston and Portland and Philadelphia, we're having an awesome camp and even though we're far away in San Diego Los Angeles (sorry for the mistake), we think you might be interested! That would have been charming and respectful, and I bet you would have gotten some folks (certainly just as many folks) using that method.

But simply cross-posting events shows a disrespect for people's time, not to mention disrespect for your fellow organizers.

And so again, I'm going to ask you to kindly remove the event from groups which are not anywhere nearby, not topically-related, and not involved in the planning of the event.

Thank you Ivan

hifalutin's picture

I absolutely agree with Ivan and am grateful someone spoke up about this spammy use of groups. Please keep our inboxes free of messages about logistical details of events in distant locales in which we haven't expressed interest.

Thank for the reply, Ivan. I

christefano's picture

Thank for the reply, Ivan. I love your enthusiasm and am super bummed I rubbed you the wrong way. I certainly didn't intend for my response to come across as condescending but If I'm going to defend myself in public I guess I should be prepared for my responses to be misconstrued.

By posting the event announcement to Boston, Portland, etc., I was actually inviting everyone in those areas to post comments and discuss the event. After producing something like 300 events to date in this community this is pretty much my understanding of how Drupal Groups works. "Hey, everyone, here's an event I believe you might be interested in. If you're not interested, then just ignore it."

I understand what you're saying about community guidelines. That the guidelines have been overlooked by other camps in California and the Southwest tell me that we operate differently over here. While I don't know why that is, I don't have a problem with being lumped in with other camp organizers in this area. I also don't mind being a lightning rod in this case.

When it comes to Boston, several parts of GLADCamp, including the non-profit summit, are being attended and organized by people and organizations who based in Boston. The company where I work is one of them.

When it comes to Portland, it turns out that a resident there did apply to the non-profit barn raising we're having on March 9th. I'm excited that she's in the running to have her site rebuilt by a team of Drupaleros at our event. I do think that the non-profit barn raising is special and I'm not sorry about that. I'm glad that news of it has reached people in your neck of the woods.

In the future, I'd love it if you would contact the event organizers directly instead of participating in public crossfire like this. I admit I'm guilty of this since I responded to you publicly, but I think we can both probably do better. After all this I do have more respect for you and what you do and I'll be happy to get a beer with you the next time I'm in Portland.

Please stop spamming the

coderintherye's picture

Please stop spamming the other groups with this. Ivan left a very reasonable response as to why you should not be spamming all the location based groups, and yet you continue to ignore it. We have topical based for a reason, and at this point what you are posting is not much beyond spam, and it's rather degrading to you and your company that instead of actually listening to the feedback you are getting in your regard, you keep pushing on.

Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com

If I'm not mistaken, Ivan

christefano's picture

If I'm not mistaken, Ivan said that he thinks people would have welcomed a blog post inviting them to attend the event. That was indeed my intention.

Alas, posting an event announcement — instead of a blog post announcing an event — was a subtlety beyond me that I wish I'd been aware of beforehand.

Please don't mistake disagreement with disregard. Having a civilized discussion about all this is not my definition of spam, but I understand you see it that way and I've removed this from a couple groups.

webbywe's picture

Being an organizer out in the OC of groups such as OC Drupal, OCPHP, and Inland Empire Drupal I usually stay out of LA business, but this has turned this camp and region into a spectacle for the wrong reasons. It has done a disservice to those spending their time to volunteer for GLADCamp and even other regional Organizers who will have future events that they will need to promote such as DrupalCamp LA around August that OC Drupal helps with.

Cross-posting within our region was an issue years ago that I thought had been resolved but its a shame to see it has reached beyond even though it was made well known through discussion back then the huge annoyance with it. So, political ignorance of acceptance to the issue is mute. I have been getting thread replies from SF, Vancouver, and Boston groups in my inbox over last few days. Every organizer knows the importance of promoting an event but work within the organization of the intended regional group that is a few states away as a common courtesy or simple post straight on their group page. Even though LA is a 30 min drive away, when OCPHP has a big event such as AngularJS at its Google office, LAPHP is directly contacted and they can choose to let their members know rather than I just announcing through their mailing list. This type of heavy cross posting could even be construed, looking at copy, as regional SEO back linking and subsequent lead generation so why it is doubly annoying. An edit, reveals this event alone was cross-posted to 29 drupal groups but humorously to Northern Mexico but not San Diego.

With all this said, it is good to see that the amount of emails may subside now with Ivan's suggestion of invitation by Blog post vs Event for future events cause I think OC Drupal alone has 3 separate events posted to our group about GLADcamp.

I wish all those that put the countless hours and effort in volunteering to put the GLADCamp together the very best with its success.

@williamestrada, For what

stevenator's picture

@williamestrada,

For what it's worth I believe the San Diego group has a strict rule on not cross posting. This happened about 2 years ago though I can't find the post where they stated complaining; maybe someone out there can help me.

I've stayed out of the mix as well as I am helping to organize the LA group. I don't have any community agenda so I more or less stay to the group I am a part of with posting information.

So I am more or less trying to be a Switzerland, but I do know that In the LADUG we've had to post a Code Of Conduct. I can't say whether it is ignored but sometimes it feels that way.

As I've found, there isn't much we can do about cross posting. GDO offers it without much guidance (correct me if I am wrong).

That's the thing about local

christefano's picture

That's the thing about local groups. Each one has their own preferences, and in some cases their own official policies. Any time a group organizer informs me of their group's policy, it has always been respected.

Here's an example. I've been told privately that outside groups can post event announcement to the San Diego group only once a month. If there's more than one then the non-SD event organizer needs to get permission first.

I'd like to know if I've accidentally crossed this line, so everyone is welcome to call me on this.

Come to think of it, I've also been told that paid events are not welcome in the OC Drupal group. I don't think I've personally broken that policy since learning about it but it's possible that this month someone posted the paid training we're doing at the Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp.

All the group organizers here on Drupal Groups have the ability to simply remove a post from their groups. Why that didn't happen here until this weekend is unclear to me. If anyone is acting as a steward of their community then by all means please do so!

The "LA Drupal" group doesn't have a policy as far as I know but there's a wiki page somewhere that has a "draft" code of conduct. There are a still number of unanswered questions there so it seems to me to be in a state of limbo.

The distinction between an

christefano's picture

The distinction between an event announcement and a blog post announcing an event and Ivan's suggestion about that was welcome news to my ears and I'm looking forward to trying that approach. I actually did that already with my request for input for the non-profit summit, and I'll keep trying it.

An edit, reveals this event alone was cross-posted to 29 drupal groups but humorously to Northern Mexico but not San Diego.

Well, that's because there are so many groups in California! At last count there are 22 groups in California (not including the Drupal California group itself) and a dozen of those are in Southern California.

This event announcement is for the Drupal Employers Summit, which as far as I know is the only event of its kind, and has the potential to provide high to companies with either customers or employees in California.

The reason the post isn't in the San Diego group is because it was removed from the San Diego group, presumably by an organizer of that group. That's absolutely fine with me and is pretty much how Drupal Groups has always worked.

Spam is Spam

Michael-IDA's picture

Hi Christefano,

Unfortunately, no matter how pretty the justification, or how numerous the precedents, 'Spam is Spam.'

I know you do good community works, and I wish I could have attended your Job Fair last year, but, please, stop spamming non-relevant groups.

Best,
Michael

Please consider that the

christefano's picture

Please consider that the regions this event had been shared with are with companies who have — or at least claim to have — offices and employees in the Los Angeles area.

Perhaps this event doesn't relate to you but I'll bet that it does relate to them. If this event isn't of interest to you but might be to someone you know in your area, please pass it on.

Spam discussion

kwkag's picture

Ivan and Christefano and the others involved in this running debate about spam and posting in inappropriate groups, please take your discussion off line. I agree with the comments about posting in inappropriate places but your running debate has created far more spam than the original post.

I'm aware that I just added to the problem but I am hoping this one message will end all these messages.

Thank you

In an attempt to lower the

christefano's picture

In an attempt to lower the total email volume and to keep this discussion on topic (well, on its new topic), I've moved the posts around a bit and this one is now only in the Greater Los Angeles Drupal group.

I also don't want the Drupal Employers Summit event to be accused of gaming the "hot content this week" leaderboard and have renamed this to a better title.

This discussion is now only reaching folks in the Greater Los Angeles Drupal group and anyone else who is subscribed to the node.