26 Nov

Stuart Clark

This is the second year that DrupalCampMelbourne has been run in it’s current form, and it’s expected to be just as much fun as it was last year, but maybe just a bit bigger.

DrupalCampMelbourne is a two day event, with one day of sessions and one day of code sprints, but the way it’s run is a little bit unique (as far as we know). Unlike a conventional Conference or Camp, the scheduling is 100% determined by the attendees on the day.

How does that work you ask?

It’s relatively simple:

1. First thing Friday morning all attendees get the opportunity to do a short lightning talk explaining the topic they wish to cover.
2. During the lightning talks, all attendees will vote on the sessions they wish to see.
3. Finally, after all lightning talks and voting is complete, the DrupalCampMelbourne website auto-magically builds the schedule based off the votes, number of sessions and room sizes.

We ran this approach for the first time last year and it worked superbly, and with a little tweaking to the algorithm this year we expect it to be just as good, if not better.

The major benefits of this approach are:

1. Everyone gets an opportunity to have their say, both in submitting a session and in voting on what they’d like to see.
2. No “committee” or “track chairs” are required to vet every talk and make the final decisions, reducing the organisational time of the event.
3. SkyNet is one step closer to taking hold of us all… oh wait.

So if you are coming (you are coming right?), make sure to get their early and have your say. And remember, everyone has something worth saying and worth hearing, and there’s nowhere better to start than a local community.

There are still some tickets left for the event, so if you haven’t got yours, get it now: http://dcm2015.drupal.org.au

The future (a.k.a, SkyNet?)

The auto-magic scheduling of the talks is but the beginning, just as the day of session is just the beginning of DrupalCampMelbourne.

Day 2 of DrupalCampMelbourne is, as it was last year, a Code Sprint. This year, I will be running a sprint on the future of the DrupalCampMelbourne website in the hopes to make it even better; more autonomous, more usable and also more generic.

More autonomous

The “auto-magic” scheduling feature is a great help for running a DrupalCamp, it helps get Day 1 all sorted with minimal effort, but it’s not the only part that can be automated and improved. A larger portion of the camp itself could be automated.

If, when setting up the next camp, one where to provide the site with the date of the event, the camp could set a schedule for the organisers (when to have venue booked by, when to contact sponsors, etc), it could transition through various states (register your interest, event information, signup, etc), it could manage the budget (venue cost + resource costs - sponsors - tickets = success) and much more.

The possibilities are endless.

More usable

There’s no question that there have been some issues, certain information lacking, not enough communication, and other various management related issues; this is inevitable when the number of volunteers is in the low single digits and the time those volunteers have is equally lacking.

DrupalCampMelbourne is as open source as it can be at the moment, the source code is entirely available on GitHub.com (http://github.com/drupalmel/drupalcampmel) for anyone at all to contribute to. This year I want to push forward and get more people involved, let’s ensure the site is more usable in the future, makes more information available and the site provides the missing communication it needs.

More generic

There is absolutely no reason that this project should be specific to DrupalCampMelbourne, nor even a DrupalCamp at all, it could apply to any type of Camp style event in any locale.

Genericising the existing work and building a new DrupalCamp/Camp Drupal distribution has been a goal from the very start, and with Drupal8 out it’s the best time to do exactly that.

So come along to DrupalCampMelbourne 2015 on Saturday (and Friday) and get involved. This is only one of the various sprints that will be being run during the Code Sprint. And don’t forget, a Code Sprint isn’t just for developers, there’s something for everyone, from novice to professional.

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