Thursday 4th February
Attendees: Janna Malikova, Chris Skene, Dave Sparks, Owen Lansbury, Kristy de Vries
Drupal Career Paths - Working Group
- Kirsty has been coordinating the Career Paths Working Group since mid 2020.
- Focusing effort on a survey for agencies and potential Drupal career recruits to establish what their needs are and how an internship model may work.
- Information page for DrupalSouth website needed that outlines the initiatives.
- Working on internship models that might suit remote working during ongoing Covid restrictions.
- May need to consider alternatives to internships to get new developers into Drupal - e.g. mentoring programs.
- Dave noted that it's worth talking to Catalyst IT about their well established internship program.
- Summer of Tech runs internship programs in NZ https://summeroftech.co.nz/
- Auckland Uni and AUT have graduate internship programs
- Contact has been established with the Drupal Association's "Talent & Education Initiative", that's currently in development.
- Some initiatives that might require funding by DrupalSouth.
DrupalSouth 2021
- Consensus on the committee that an online conference with standard session presentations is not a compelling format due to ongoing "zoom" fatigue due to Covid.
- Sessions need to be more interactive, such as pre-curated BoFs, panels, workshops etc.
- Need better exposure and opportunities for sponsors.
- Decision to investigate running a shorter format event, repeated throughout the year with different topics and audiences. e.g. 3 x quarterly events.
- Engage a professional event coordinator rather than relying solely on volunteers.
- Ensure digital platform supports the event format effectively. HopIn and Veertly mentioned as potential options.
- Reach audiences that DrupalSouth might not have effectively engaged in the past - particularly decision makers.
- Don't overlap with existing Drupal Meetup formats.
- Opportunity to tie in with Drupal's 20th anniversary.
- Dave & Nicole have been working on a revised sponsorship model.
Other Business
- Drupal in Government working group needs a reboot in 2021. Toby Bellwood to investigate options.
- DrupalSouth website design - decision to run an EOI for agencies and freelancers to bid on undertaking it as a paid project, funded by DrupalSouth retained funds.
- Sohal Khatwani to transition into Chris Skene's committee seat from March to May.