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DrupalCamp Organizers Unite: Is it Time for Camp Organizers to Become an Official Working Group?

If the community is a top priority then resources for organizing DrupalCamps must also be a top priority.

Kaleem Clarkson
Drupal Atlanta
Published in

6 min read

Oct 27, 2018
“Together We Create graffiti wall decor” by "My Life Through A Lens" on Unsplash

Community, community and more community. One of the common themes we hear when it comes to evaluating Drupal against other content management systems (CMS), is that the community is made up of over 100,000 highly skilled and passionate developers who contribute code. And in many of these application evaluations, it’s the community, not the software that leads to Drupal winning the bid. We have also heard Dries Buytaert speak about the importance of the community at various DrupalCons and he is quoted on Drupal.org’s getting involved page:

“It’s really the Drupal community and not so much the software that makes the Drupal project what it is. So fostering the Drupal community is actually more important than just managing the code base.” — Dries Buytaert

My First Encounter with the Drupal Community

With this emphasis on community, I tried to think back to how and when I first interacted with the community. Like so many others, my first introduction to Drupal was at a local Meetup. I remember going to this office building in Atlanta and the room was packed with people, plenty of pizza, soda and, of course, laptops. It was a nice relaxed atmosphere where we introduced ourselves and got a chance to know each other a little bit. Then the lights dimmed, the projector turned on and the presentations kicked off, highlighting some new content strategy or a new module that can help layout your content. After that first meetup, I felt energized because until that point, I had never spoken with someone in person about Drupal and it was the first time that I was introduced to Drupal professionals and companies.

Are you interested in attending the first online DrupalCamp Organizers Meeting, on Friday, November 9th at 4:00pm (EST)? RSVP Here.

DrupalCamps Play An Integral Role in Fostering Community

After attending a few meetups, I joined the email list and I received an email announcing DrupalCamp Atlanta was going to be held at Georgia Tech and the call for proposals was now open for session submissions.

2013 DrupalCamp Atlanta photo by Mediacurrent

I purchased a ticket for a mere $30 and added it to my Google calendar. On the day of the event, I remember walking in the front door and being blown away by the professionalism of the conference as there were sponsor booths, giveaways, and four concurrent sessions throughout the day. But it wasn’t until I was inside the auditorium during the opening session and saw the 200 or so people pile in that made me realize this Drupal community thing I heard about was for real. Over the next couple of years, I decided that I would attend other camps instead of DrupalCon because the camps were more affordable and less intimidating. My first camp outside of Atlanta was Design4Drupal in Boston, DrupalCamp Charlotte, DrupalCamp Florida and BADCamp were all camps I went to before attending a DrupalCon. All of these camps were top notch but what I really loved is that each camp had their own identity and culture. It’s exactly what I think a community should be and for the very first time, I felt that I was a part of the Drupal community.

Why Establish the DrupalCamp Organizers Council?

As provided in my previous examples, one of the advantages of Drupal comes from the great community and DrupalCamps are an important aspect in fostering this community. Running any event can be challenging, but to pull off a respectable DrupalCamp you have consider so many things such as the website, credit card processing, food, accepting and rejecting sessions, finding a keynote speaker, the afterparty, pre-conference trainings, oh and did I mention the website? You get my drift, it's a lot of work. Many of these tasks just roll off my tongue from past experience so ask yourself;

  • Where can I share my knowledge with other people who organize camps?
  • What if there was some way that all of us DrupalCamp organizers could come together and implement services that make organizing camps easier?
  • How could we provide camp organizers with resources to produce great camps?

During the #AskDries session at DrupalCon Nashville (listen for yourself), Midwest DrupalCamp Organizer Avi Schwab asked Dries the following question;

“... giving the limited funding the Drupal Association has, where should we go in trying to support our smaller local community events?” — Avi Schwab

Dries then responded with:

“That’s a great question. I actually think its a great idea what they (WordCamp) do. Because these camps are a lot of work. ...I think having some sort of central service or lack of a better term, that helps local camp organizers, I think is a fantastic idea, because we could do a lot of things, like have a camp website out of the box, ... we could have all sorts of best practices out of the box .” — Dries Buytaert

DrupalCamp Slack Community was the first time that I was provided a link to a spreadsheet that had the camp history dating back to 2006 and people were adding their target camp dates even if they were just in the planning stages. As a camp organizer I felt connected, I felt empowered to make better decisions and most of all I could just ask everyone, hey, how are you doing this?

Are you interested in attending the first online DrupalCamp Organizers meeting, on Friday, November 9th at 4:00pm (EST)? RSVP Here.

Earlier this year I volunteered for the Drupal Diversity and Inclusion Initiative (DDI) and was inspired when I heard Tara King on the DrupalEasy podcast, talk about how she just created the ddi-contrib channel on the Drupal slack and started hosting meetings. All jazzed up and motivated by that podcast, I reached out to over 20 different camp organizers from various countries and asked them if they would be interested in being on something like this? And if not, would they feel represented if this council existed?

Here are some quotes from Camp Organizers:

“I think a DrupalCamp Organizers Council is a great idea. I would be interested in being a part of such a working group. Just now I’m restraining myself from pouring ideas forth, so I definitely think I’m interested in being a part.”

“I am interested in seeing something that gathers resources from the vast experiences of current/past organizers and provides support to camps.”

“I definitely would appreciate having such a council and taking part. I’ve now helped organize DrupalCamp four times, and this was the first year we were looped into the slack channels for the organizers.”

“I really like the idea — what do we need to do to get this started?”

What are the Next Steps?

Based on the positive feedback and the spike in interest from other camp organizers I have decided to take the plunge and establish our first meeting of DrupalCamp Organizers on Friday, November 9th at 4:00pm (EST). This will be an online Zoom video call to encourage people to use their cameras so we can actually get to know one another.

The agenda is simple:

  • Introductions from all callers, and one thing they would like to see from the council.
  • Brainstorm the list of items the council should be advocating for.
  • Identify procedures for electing people to the Council: ways to nominate, eligibility criteria, Drupal event organizer experience required etc.
  • Outline of a quick strategic plan.
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