2015 - the year of 2 DrupalCamp Colorado's

I support this idea. I think with the proper planning that there is a strong enough community here that two camps would be successful.

I like it. I somewhat regret that we didn't do this sooner.

I support this as well.

At this point I think this makes the most sense. A camp in March and one in August gives people an option to pick one or even go to both. I think a lot of us like to get out of our caves more than once a year.

For me personally, coordinating the finances of 2 camps would be more work, but worth it.

I like the idea of several bigger, higher quality events, perhaps easing the pressure on local meetups (like SCUG) to develop and market truly valuable meetings.

I would like to have us make a very conscious effort to attract Colorado web folks (Drupal or not) from outside the Denver/Boulder area to attend, present and volunteer.

I hope that the two camps would be presented to the public as complementary and coordinated, so people would feel that they need to attend *both*.

I would support this as well. I generally can't afford time or money to go to DrupalCon if it is not near by so having a few camps a year plus the meetups only seems like a win.

I Think what Rick Nashleanas mentioned is important. This would be twice the work for organizers. I would be interested in volunteering for either or both of these events.

I think it is worth a try.

I am interested to see what participation, volunteering, sessions, and sponsorship looks like with two. By interested I actually mean concerned. But, it is worth a try as two camps would be awesome.

I agree with #7: this is likely to cause a fair bit of strain on our volunteer/donated resources. We can offset some of that by using the same website, but I wonder if sponsors will be excited about covering two camps at the same level. If we run a copy of this year (no lunch, low cost venue) then its easier to cover the event on a lower budget.

I think the only way we will ever know is to try doing two next year and see what the results are. I'd rather make future decisions based on hard data and this is a great opportunity to see what the attendees say via their registration votes.

Agreed with 8 and 9. Two camps for 2015. We can go from there for the next year.

I would also add this... If we ultimately decide to only have one per year after the two in 2015, I think we should just rotate between Denver and Boulder each year, rather than trying to decide between the two each year. Both places have a lot to offer to the experience and a rotation would solve a lot of that.

I will volunteer at both camps for 2015.

I agree, we should give it a try and see what happens.

Would we do training at both camps as well? Or just one?

Thanks,

Karyn

Still a relative newcomer to the Drupal community, I've only seen two DCCOs in 2013 and 2014. In both instances, there was a lot of excitement months prior, and a tightening of nearly all the volunteers' schedules leading up to the event. If you run two events with the same volunteers and resources burnout is likely.

More important than Denver or Boulder in 2015, DCCO needs to happen again in 2016 and 2017.

In addition, my experience tells me that coordinating two sites in one codebase seems like a good idea on paper, but sharing that resource will have its own overhead between competing interests. It's likely the shared site will fork and that fork might come at an inopportune time for one camp or the other.

I like the idea of two camps, I even like the idea of a friendly rivalry between the cities. But perhaps we should think of them as two camps, and the only coordination that should happen between the two is making certain there are no scheduling conflicts so everyone can enjoy both of them. Perhaps we should think of the two camps as the Executive and Legislative branches of government — anyone can be a member of either, but no one can be a member of both... and like lobbyists, sponsors should feel free to throw money at everyone.

One idea to try might be a "mini camp" concept similar to the DrupalCamping Colorado even in 2012.

Inspiration for this suggestion was this podcast episode http://drupaleasy.com/podcast/2013/12/drupaleasy-podcast-119-it-goes-bod....

Ok, so would we do a "mini camp" if we have issues getting enough sponsorship or just start out with the goal of one of the camps being smaller? How would we want to structure the mini camp?

From an informal poll I've taken in the southern Colorado Drupal community, I'm hearing that most folks would go to only one DrupalCamp annually. They cite the travel involved and also how the travel time kills any personal time on the camp weekend.

I think if we have a hard time getting sponsors we would just scale back on the expenses (food, coffee, shirts, stickers, signage - in rough order of size) or increase the ticket price. We have enough money left over from previous years to cover the venues for a year with no other income, so the worst-case scenario isn't all that horrible.

So, I kind of think that is the point of having two. Some would go to both, some would only go to one due to timing, desire, location, etc. but having two, and two different times of the year gives everyone an opportunity to attend at least one local camp. I would expect that both camps will be slightly smaller than one combined camp, but I am very interested to see how this all goes.

I am very concerned about burning out our volunteers though. I know the goal is, and has always been, to get new volunteers from the community involved in the creation of the camps, I think that is a fantastic idea, but the biggest issue I see is how do we accomplish that? I always hear from people that they would love to get involved, but then they do not know how to get involved, or feel intimidated in one way or another.

One suggestion might be to create volunteer slots but not allow "seasoned" volunteers to sign up for those slots for a set amount of time and encourage new volunteers. I am sure some of our attendees have great ideas that those of us who have been doing this for awhile haven't even considered since we get so caught up in "what's always worked".

Just my thoughts for right now.

Karyn

Personally I like the idea of two camps, it creates the opportunity for more learning sessions. This year about half the sessions were turned away due to so many being submitted at the last minute. With two camps, we could get many more submissions for great sessions.

With regards to volunteers, I think holding planning/building sprints during normal meetup times might help encourage participation as well as community. I know a number of users at the Boulder meetup would love to jump into the community but are unsure of how to do it (aside from getting in IRC). If, during some meetups, there were sessions to plan and build the camps, we could show that you don't have to be an expert or a long time community member to participate and help out.

I'm not sure that making a fun rivalry between cities would help the cause in 2015 and I would be concerned that it would make the camps tougher to be complementary of one another.

I agree with what others have said already, I think we should give it a shot and see what the numbers tell us, keeping in mind that some people will not support the idea at first.

It sounds like we have a general consensus here that it's worth trying two camps next year. I'm not reading any of the stated concerns as "we shouldn't do this," rather "we should be careful about how we do this." So I'm tentatively marking this RTBC.

We still have a lot to figure out, but we have plenty of time to figure it all out, and that will probably work better in more focused discussions on specific issues.

Totally agreed that the concerns I've seen raised are constructive criticism and potential problems we should mitigate rather than blockers.

If someone sees something that is a blocker, please state that explicitly.

+1

Read everything here again. Looks like we go with two. BUT, I suggest we plan a debrief about a month after the second one involving a variety (Drupal newcomers and veterans) of people to go over the pros and cons of the two camps. I would like to see an official, planned evaluation of how thing went and whether two camps is sustainable and beneficial to the community. I am happy to assist with this however I can.

Seems like this notion of a second camp has generally been adopted. Should we start a project on Drupal.org for the Boulder Camp or run it under this project?

I would like to see the Boulder Camp planning start rolling as soon as possible. I am trying to schedule the venue for the Denver camp around the Boulder camp. So far in my mind, a Boulder Camp in May or June and the Denver Camp in August seems to make sense. Of course this is open for discussion.

I recommend we open a issues/tickets either in this project or a create a new Boulder Camp Colorado project to figure out the dates, leadership, volunteers etc for the Boulder Camp.

Closing this ticket up.