[consulting] and they call it drupalcamp

Thu Feb 23 07:34:04 UTC 2006

Not sure who said it but i think that regional is very important.  these
things will get easier the more they are done. and because all it takes
is the a room, a presenter or two and an organizer (and people and an
internet connection as dan said), they can happen close together (in
time) and geographically disbursed.

as far as profit goes, i don't think that anyone has any illusions about
these things costing money for the attendees.  They will have costs
associated with them: the time of the trainer(s) and the organizer(s),
cost of space, food, equipment, etc...

As long as the curriculum is Copy Left and grows with the camps, i don't
see any problem in people being compensated for their time.

It might makes sense for organizations to sponsor or seek sponsorship
for the camps, but they could also be completely participant supported. 
I spent a fair amount of money on a 2 day training not long ago, and
considering that there is work aplenty, any investment in learning
drupal should be recouped rather quickly doing drupal deployment.

I think that a cost of $300 to $500 for two days f intensive training in
a class limited to perhaps 15 participants per instructor, max, is
reasonable.  That is $4500 to $7500 per class which should cover costs
and the time for instructors/organizers as well as might cover
additional cost for documentation and curriculum development.

Participants could pay their own way, or maybe be sponsored by a shop,
and would be responsible for their own housing.

Rich mentioned focused sessions, and that is also a good idea, it
probably makes sense to touch on more than just one focused area of
drupal development/deployment but focus on a particular facet.

Lastly, as Dan mentions: time is really of the essence.  If we planned
for a camp around the NTEN NTC it would be in the heart of Plone
country, but also not far from vancouver.  Airfare is not that bad to
Seattle, and there seems to be lots of housing.  Penguin Day is
currently scheduled for the 25th, but for some folks learning drupal
would be more important that the general PD activities, the training
could also take place on sunday and monday to accommodate PD.  or could
take place on monday (20th) and tuesday (21st) before NTC even begins. 
or the weekend of the 18/19

-Gregory
Dan Robinson wrote:
> Anybody think we could do this sooner?  like 2-3 weeks from now?  We've
> had to turn away work recently because there is just too much.  I happen
> to know that other Drupal shops who were approached re: the same work
> are also slammed and don't have bandwidth.  On location -
>
> NY - You get Boston, DC, Philly for the price of one - yes it is more
> expensive - key thing would be to arrange very cheap housing.
> SF - cheaper - not as dense a population - more likely to find crash space.
>
> I think we need to get this done :)
>
> Dan
>   
>> As posted here:
>> http://www.zacker.org/drupal-camp
>>
>> The CivicActions folks are starting to organize the first "Drupal
>> Camp", a multi-day intensive Drupal developer training program.
>>
>> Why?
>> Every Drupal shop I know of is in a crunch of Drupal development
>> talent. The limit on their ability to take on more and bigger projects
>> is not from lack of sales leads or lack of management capability, it
>> is simply there are not enough seasoned developers on hand to pay to
>> work on Drupal development projects. An experienced and talented
>> web-application developer will take a bit of time to learn Drupal
>> inside and out and get up to speed developing complex websites, so it
>> is not simply a matter of bringing in fresh talent, we need fresh
>> Drupal talent. The Drupal economy is rocketing skyward and this
>> problem will only become more intense in the forseable future. This is
>> an immediate and growing problem that we need to start solving now.
>>
>> Who?
>>
>>    1. Drupal newbies sponsored by their parent companies
>> (CivicActions, Trellon, etc)
>>    2. Drupal engineering experts to lead the class. Anyone up for
>> this? :) (Matt Westgate, Crunchywelch provided he doesn't drown?).
>>    3. Other Drupal folks in the neighborhood also might want to get
>> together for a code sprint or to discuss Drupal projects.
>>
>> When?
>> At Vancouver Josh and I floated out the idea of doing it in
>> conjunction with the Personal Democracy Forum on May 15th. This dates
>> works with me, does it sound reasonable to you?
>>
>> Where?
>> If we do it in NYC in conjunction with PDF, I can think of two
>> possiblities off the top of my head:
>>
>>    1. The Tank
>>    2. EyeBeam
>>
>> I will follow up with my contacts at both of these venues tomorrow.
>> Does anyone know of another possible venue?
>>
>> Curriculum
>>
>> We should make sure that whatever is taugh and learned at "Drupal
>> Camp" is recorded and synthesized for posterity. We want to have many
>> more of these in the future so we should aim for publish-able
>> curriculum that can be later posted on Drupal.org.
>>
>> Next Steps?
>>
>>    1. Gregory Heller is organizing a consultant conference call to
>> talk about this and other issues shortly on the consultat mailinglist.
>>    2. David Geilhufe proposed we look into the former Ars Digita
>> training camps. I'll sign up to follow up and do some research and try
>> to talk to folks involved in organizing them.
>>    3. We need to figure out a data / location. Unless someone can come
>> up with a better data / location than PDF on May 15th let's go with
>> that. I will start looking seriously into venues tomorrow.
>>    4. We need to line up the teaching staff and get firm commitments
>> from vendors to sponsor newbies. I can take this on starting Friday.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> -Zack
>>
>> On Feb 22, 2006, at 5:59 PM, Gregory Heller wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Perhaps the problem sets could include things like:
>>> Port a contributed module from 4.6 to 4.7?
>>> Integrate bug fixes or patches for a module
>>>
>>> they could be submitted by the community, or culled from the forum
>>> http://drupal.org/forum/51
>>> any revenue generated could go to defray costs for space, food,
>>> trainer's and organizer's time, back to drupal, and maybe to the
>>> "student" in an amount no greater than the cost of the camp (if there is
>>> a cost associated).
>>>
>>> Another option could be completing an entire website project for a non
>>> profit organization.
>>>
>>>
>>> David Geilhufe wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Back in the dot com boom, a company called ARS Digita did "boot
>>>> camps."  I like the name "Drupal Camp"
>>>>
>>>> These basically were 2-5 day training sessions for developers. You
>>>> went the camp, learned some basics and then completed some "problem
>>>> sets" collaboratively with the folks at the boot camp. A problem set
>>>> would be something like creating a module. Perhaps the problems could
>>>> be something like:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Create a basic module.
>>>> 2. Create a module that exercises parts of the Drupal API thoroughly.
>>>> 3. Create a new theme
>>>> 4. ?
>>>>
>>>> This would also be a great addition to the handbook for folks to
>>>> self-study.
>>>>
>>>> If someone with more drupal skills were to work with me, we could come
>>>> up with a few problem sets to start putting together on the Handbook.
>>>> david
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> ------
>>> Gregory Heller
>>> http://www.CivicActions.com
>>> http://www.GregoryHeller.com
>>> AIM/SKYPE: GregoryHeller
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