DrupalSouth Steering Committee Minutes - December 5, 2019

Sunday 5th January

Attendees: Thom Toogood, Pamela Barone, Owen Lansbury, Chris Skene, Nicole Kirsch 

Guest: Simon Hobbs

Drupal Career Pathways working group:

  • It was identified at DrupalSouth that there is a need to get more developers and students interested in Drupal
  • Si offered to put a working group together 
  • It was agreed the working group would report back to the DrupalSouth committee and at a quarterly Drupal business leaders catch up. The first one will be held in March 2020
  • The aim is to utilise/incorporate what’s already on the market, e.g. 
    1. Doghouse internship programme 
    2. Salsa training material for govCMS
  • Additional potential initiatives that were discussed during a BOF at DrupalSouth:
    1. Be present at University Career Expos
    2. Organise dev days or training days
    3. Internships

DrupalGov 

  • The proposal was accepted by Linux AU
  • We’re potentially looking at the same venue as DrupalSouth last year
  • 2 day - 1 sprint, training - 1 conference
  • Next steps: formalise the team and budget

DrupalSouth Wellington

  • Alex to put an event team together
  • The venue is available for preferred dates. Next step is to pay the deposit
  • Guidelines towards a paid resource need to be established

Budgets

  • Nicole/Pam/Chris to meet up and talk about DrupalSouth conference budgets 
  • We discussed budget accuracy and a profit target and parameters for unforeseen expenses
  • Owen and Nicole to finalise and publish the Steering Committees budget

Hobart Retro

  • Sprint day before conference is ideal, but need a coders lounge through event for people to keep going
  • Icebreaker activities that aren't based around alcohol considered important
  • Keynote speakers need to share slides with Track Chair beforehand to ensure there's no content that could be construed as a sales pitch for specific platforms
  • First-timer track would be beneficial with consistent intro content
  • Hands-on sessions for audience to follow along with dev exercises
  • Roundtable sessions
  • Speaker selection, diversity and experience level indication
  • Session that provides insight on who to be selected as a speaker and give a good presentation
  • Babysitting / parents’ room
  • Workshops & training
  • Strict limits on budgets for after parties and drinks. Sponsor needs to decide if they want to extend the budget to include additional drinks so it's not a conference expense.
  • Women in Drupal activities

User Survey

  • Chris to send out

LA - Steering Committee Model

  • Get annual budget approved rather than having to get each payment approved 

Strategic Priorities

  • Career Pathways WG
  • DrupalSouth.org rebuild
    1. Design, UX of DrupalSouth.org (Platform.sh designer available)
    2. Frontend developer required
  • Marketing / PR contractor 
    1. Few hours a month retainer
    2. Drive awareness and potential business for sponsors
    3. Similar to DA mandate
    4. Leverage DA marketing material and spread across NZ/AU
    5. Set a matrix
  • Jobs board (Drupal jobs)
    1. There are currently no AU/NZ jobs on the drupal.org board. We will start raising more awareness and promoting it to the community and employers
  • Decision maker summits
  • Dev Days

Logo

  • Policy to enforce the use of the logos and branding across different events

Sponsorship policy

  • Create a special Event Host category for organising companies will be implemented and will most likely sit above diamond

Dev days

  • Casual event
  • Engage with local organisers on the ground and offer support
  • Engage with international organisers
  • Likely to require its own Working group
  • Whiteboard and room, nothing else
  • Annual or quarterly?
  • Come up with model to implement
  • Regional event?
  • Start with e.g. “Sydney” Dev Day
  • Thom and Pam to discuss the best approach

Local Organisers

  • Meetups languishing in general
  • Grouping meetups - do less but better
    1. Run regional meetups via video conference
  • Working group - to drive this initiative
  • Forum for deep tech discussions
  • Funding for local meetups
  • University outreach
  • Shared resources, marketing and speakers for meetups
  • Approaching other tech communities e.g. Women in tech, accessibility, front end frameworks

Sponsorship

  • We had a successful BOF session with sponsors at DrupalSouth and got good feedback
  • DrupalSouth to drive product marketing
  • Talent development & internships
  • Decision-Maker Summits
  • Reaching Drupal users in large orgs - dev days
  • Annual sponsorship packages as well as ad hoc / per event
  • Quarterly business leader catchup calls
  • Owen to put together a sponsorship proposal and send out invites for business leader catchup 

NZ market

  • Nicole and Thom to identify needs for the NZ market
  • Drupal bigger in enterprise market
  • DrupalSouth to provide mentoring/support
  • Private sector flat - gov big
  • NZ Marketing campaign
  • NZ summit for gov