Event organizer panel at MidCamp

Kevin - freelance frontend

Dan Moriarty -

Mike Anello - trainer, consultant in Drupal for 13 years

Amy-June Hineline (volkswagonchick)

April Sides - DrupalCamp Asheville

in Drupal community through marriage for paid to help people, so help Mike with Florida, help with New Jersey, also in WordPress space.

Mike: sponsor-only event yesterday? Very interested in that, as a way of adding value to sponsors.

Heard that what happened in that room stayed in the room, but it was reall

got some feedback,

In audience: Avi - froboy (he wanted to say something after that)

Tim: more professional, less about community

conference putting on is expensive

AmyJune: BADCamp traditionally free. Even training we would take a small amount, and then give it back in cash or swag. Last year we made the grown up decision to charge for training and take it as revenue for the camp. Just charging $20 for training that costs $800 at DrupalCon caused huge pushback. We ultimately changed venues

Mike: We raised our prices just because we anticipated, based on what we heard from other events,

Don’t feel that tension as an organizer, maybe because i’m simple-minded,

make it more professional, maybe not

Avi: How do you decide how to give away free tickets?

Mike: Speakers, trainers, volunteers, students of the tech school

Amy-June: also gave discounts to user groups, women-who-code, etc.

Mike: The only time we said no to free tickets, was a former sponsor that had not sponsored

our goal is just not to lose money. And we have a little bit of money in the bank, so

How do you prove your a student? Ask for a ticket. Some people

Dan:

AmyJune: We have some heavy-hitter sponsors because we’re in the Bay Area, but one big one stopped, and another platform said everyone’s on our platform`

all the time

I’m community ambassodor, so my thing is everyone has obligation to give back to the community.

Early-bird sponsor prices: when we needed to go to DePaul for a bigger venue, we needed a bigger deposit, but

Alex Finnarn (Finnam?) - is there branding for each camp?

as an alternative to DrupalCon Europe; it’s six months from DrupalCon US.

Alex: Yeah i can’t afford DrupalCon anymore.

Dan: It’s the location. If you’re anywhere around Minneapolis St. Paul, visit us. We did a tie-in with

Mike: Consistent event.

Don’t have a huge Drupal community in Asheville, but it’s a bit of a tourist destination, and now it’s really a family reunion. So i pitched it as a community building retreat this year. “Come for the code, stay for the weekend” has been our slogan for a while.

Mike: We’ve reduced the number of sessions each year. Had one or two complaints. It’s because we believe the majority of people are coming to network, not go to sessions. So half hour between sessions, long lunch, and then

MidCamp stole this idea from Florida, and Mike credits Mike Miles.

And people seem to be smiling more. Keep sessions to 45 minutes.

Increasing to 30 minutes bombed for MidCamp. One difference: Orlando has relationship with caterer so there’s food all the time. Geometry issue, if you can arrange your event so there’s a reason to stop and start a conversation.

JD: This year we are all on one floor, if you want to eat, you need to talk to a sponsor.

Sponsors want foot traffic.

AmyJune: Moved to all in a hotel, instead of having people run from far apart sessions.

AmyJune: Unique position that i don’t do billable client work, what else am i going to do? It’s my job.

Mike: I do it because i’m selfish; i’m a trainer, consultant and this gives me street cred. Contribute where you want to; helping you personally while you contribute is OK. For 5 years i’ve been saying someone take my job, fire me. We have a good team, not a chore.

April: I’m always looking to serve the version of me from before i entered the community. And interested in events, and entrepreneurship, and motivating people, the volunteers, who are not being paid.

Dan: Because i’m so unselfish. (Avi: Where’s your street cred now, Mike? It’s going down.) Got involved as a way I want to see the people in the project that i know and in the broader community succeed; currently that’s a motivation; if i let this thing die, it hurts the community and Drupal in the Twin Cities.

Kevin: Chicago already had a camp. But organization and attendance was going down year by year; started Fox Valley camp because

Where i worked at the time, we ran an event for 1200 people, i did video work, audio work.

It was seeing a need; now with MidCamp the suburban community feels our needs met by MidCamp.

when i’m here at the event, and i see the value people are getting, i get a rush from that.

Alex: Camps broadening their focus, mergers and acquisitions for camps?

BADCamp has had a downward attendance trend. So this year we invited Gatsby, and had a slight increase in attendance because of that. Inviting more communities in, but it’s tricky, because sometimes what they want is more than we can give.

Dan: Mini-camp for Backdrop this year [checked with Tim to make sure it’s official]. Interested in broadening, but branding, this is the only Drupal-specific event.

Mike: Drupal is the sum of a crazy number of parts; it’s not a huge reach to find people to talk about composer, symphony, react, etc. And so we go to the PHP groups, the front end groups, and invite them to our event, pointing to those talks, while it still being Drupal.

A CMS Summit - it’s a more professional feel, cold, not as warm - and we talked to them about merging events, and it didn’t feel right, from the beginning, that we would lose more than we gain.

Hold onto our culture.

Tim: do with WordPress, in common?

WordCamp US had Drupal talks

[woman] Outreach to get more participants? To coder camps, etc.

AmyJune - i’ve been going to Laravel

April: WordCamp has restrictions from WordPress.

AmyJune: I’ve been talking to WordCamp about

Alex: Online gatherings?

Mike: Florida is big, but we act as one community. Local meetups have all become less than periodic— not happening once a month. We’re going to have a Florida-wide Zoom channel; each area will be responsible for a meetup, and it will rotate. In May, the Space Coast where i live will kick it off, where people come in person here, and we’ll see how many join as individuals, or

Using left-over money from Florida DrupalCamp to get as big a Zoom as we need.

AmyJune: San Francisco gets 30-40 people in person a month, and 5 on Zoom. we don’t record because then attendance falls.

DrupalTV would add camps

Bob Snodgrass - Fox Valley - deal with Qs online? Have a proctor looking at the chat.

Meetup.com and groups.drupal.org event nodes, and Bay Area slack channel.

Mike: from Community Working Group perspective, resources to community for conflict resolution: checklist, resources, or guide for code of conduct, how to have contacts for problems, and what to do when something comes up.

Kevin: Those things you just said, we need them.

Mike: There are events that just take the DrupalCon code of conduct, change a couple names. We’ve seen an increase in incidents at events that are only Great example we saw recently: You should have an opening global session that includes giving a gist of the code of conduct, and what to do if there’s a problem. There should be a man and a woman. Their pictures should be there. And multiple ways to contact a person, including discrete ways. What else?

April: In addition to resources, have the two people from each camp trained.

Mike: What’s the best way to deliver that?

JD: As a paramedic, we got training that’s not medical specific, but anything from a rude comment to a mental health issue becoming combative. Need to know who they can reach out to for trainings. CWG could give a lead to camps on crisis intervention .

and where does teh budget come from?

Kevin: I’d hope the camps would invest a little money in this, to provide a

Wylbur: keep training people, including at the camp.

April: Could do it online, to not do travel costs.

J.D.: there are physical components, not saying you have to be prepared to restrain someone.

if someone is a threat to themselves or others

intervention is keep yourself safe, even if you have to leave and call 911

Avi: Keeping list of people who have baseline of training

incentive for people to do it, discount the event cost

Amy-June: WordPress has code of conduct officers.

open source event conflict management training, probably doesn’t exist yet.

Amy-June: BADCamp is October XX-XY

Kevin: register for camps early!

Wylbur: registrations are open for Twin Cities Drupal Camp!