Talking Drupal #508 - Drupal User Groups & Meetups

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John: This is Talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design and development from a group of people with one thing in common. We love Drupal. This is episode 5 0 8 Drupal User Groups and Meetups. On today's show, we're talking about Drupal user groups Drupal meetups and why they're important with guests, Lee Walker, Bernardo Martinez, and Bo Shipley.

We'll also cover Drupal Core 11.2 as our module of the week.

Welcome to Talking Drupal. Our guests today are Bernardo Martinez, Lee Walker and Bo Shipley. Lee Walker is a veteran software engineer with over 30 years of experience. He's the principal engineer at Code Journeyman, a Chattanooga based agency known for its Drupal [00:01:00] expertise. He's a passionate advocate for open source.

Lee founded the Chattanooga Drupal users group, the Chattanooga PHP users group, and organizes Drupal Camp Chattanooga. Bo Shipley discovered Drupal through the Chattanooga Drupal users group in 2013 sparking a decade long career in Drupal development, believing that strong communities drive growth.

Bo annually participates in regional Drupal camps and DrupalCon North America, where he is known to extend Drupal conversations beyond the official sessions with a beer in hand and a genuine eagerness to keep the dialogue flowing. And last, but certainly not least, Bernardo Martinez is a Chattanooga based front end developer who shares a passion for both higher ed and the government sector.

He's been active in the Drupal community since 2018 and actively contributes through mentoring, module support, theme work, and speaking at tech [00:02:00] conferences. Bo Lee Bernardo, welcome to the show.

Lee: Glad to be here. Nice to be here.

John: I'm John Picozzi, solutions architect at EPAM and today my co-hosts are joining us for the next four weeks.

JD Leonard, freelance Drupal architect and developer at Modern Biz Consulting. JD Leonard is a freelance Drupal architect and developer in Austin, Texas. With nearly 19 years of Drupal experience, he focuses on the development and implementation of complex web applications using Drupal and enjoys organizing local meetups and conferences.

Jd, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. And filling in this week for Nic Laflin as he's taking a much needed vacation. Stephen Cross, founder and former host at Talking Drupal. Hey Steven.

Stephen: Hello. And I am not from Chattanooga, just so everyone knows,

John: man, let me tell you how many times there's Chattanooga in that, in that [00:03:00] intro section there.

It, it, you know, I was, and, and I nailed each one of them, which was great because I was definitely like, oh man, this is gonna get real, real funky, real quick. But I think I did okay.

JD: I was really tempted to edit my intro to include Chattanooga a few times, but I'm not from Chattanooga.

John: Yeah, no, Austin's a lot, a lot shorter.

To say not as fun maybe, but, but definitely definitely shorter. Alright, and now let's move to our module of the week. We'll turn it over to Martin Anderson-Clutz, a senior solutions engineer at Acquia, and a maintainer of a number of Drupal modules and recipes of his own. Martin, what, not so much module but core version do you have for us this week?

Martin: Thanks, John. Have you ever wanted a version of Drupal core that lets you get rid of dot module files? Install modules significantly faster and leverage more flexibility when working with single directory components. There's a new feature release of Drupal that offers all of these and [00:04:00] more. It's Drupal Core 11.2, and as of this recording, we expect it to be released in the coming days, likely created by catch.

Now, single directory components have been a focus of excitement for Drupal's frontend developers since they were added to Drupal 10.1 as an experimental module. And merged into 10.3 as a stable feature with Drupal 11.2. SDCs now have a concept of variance to allow for different ways of presenting a component's information.

Some component frameworks like Storybook have a somewhat different concept of variance, which is really a set of property value presets that are useful for testing variants with Drupal. SDCs Strike me as being analogous to view modes for content types, and that you can have separate template files for each variant, or you can have conditional logic within a single template based on the variant in use.

Our own Nick x van, CHX, and some others have put some significant work into allowing pre-process hooks to be defined as object oriented classes, which brings us a significant step [00:05:00] closer to not needing dot mile. Do module files anymore? Hooks and dot module files are Drupal, so removing the need for them is a big improvement for developer experience and makes it easier for developers to get started with Drupal.

In 11.2, the module installer has been updated to only rebuild the container after several modules have been installed, which significantly speeds up installing modules at once. Drupal 11.2 also brings us a recipe unpack composer extension. So when you composer require a recipe, the dependencies get automatically added to your site's composer, JSO file, so you can apply and then remove the recipe and still have a fully functional site.

Package Manager is now a hidden module in Drupal core, which is critical for initiatives like automatic updates and project browser that the community has been working on for years. And Dral Core now also supports the next Generation A VIF format with Web P as a fallback for [00:06:00] servers that don't support generating av.

IF of course there are also a variety of dependency updates as well for CK editor, symphony Composer, and more, as well as too many minor improvements in bug fixes to cover in detail here. But let's talk about Drupal Core 11.2.

John: No, no. Martin, I think I'd like to hear you go through all the minor improvements and bug fixes that were added.

No, I'm kidding. I mean, I always get excited for a new version of Drupal. This one seems more, more code code better than, than maybe other versions. But there are still a lot of other like, you know, I think average user facing issues that, or, or, or improvements that you'll see. So, super excited about this.

I think the single directory component bit with the variance is interesting to me. I'm gonna be interested to see how that, how that works, plays out. Yeah. You know, always excited for a new version of Drupal core. It just means we're, we're progressing. [00:07:00]

Martin: Yeah, I think it will be interesting to see there, there will probably be sort of, component libraries or, you know, sets of components that people wanna share that now will probably have to require 11.2 or newer if they're making use of variants.

So it'll be interesting, sort of see how that shakes out. But but yeah, I think it, it definitely sounds like it'll be, you know, add a lot of capabilities to the, the whole single directory component system.

John: Yeah, I imagine that will. Help or, or accelerate experience builder as far as like being able to do more stuff with that.

So, that's definitely definitely interesting to me. And I know, I know Nick has, has put in quite a bit of, quite a bit of work into into this version of Drupal under the hood. So, as well as CHX. So, you know, those, those guys are working behind the scenes as well as thousands of other people to kind of, to bring Drupal greatness to the masses.

When do we anticipate this being released

Martin: this week? So usually it's towards the end of the week, I would say. Like, you know, [00:08:00] late in the day Friday sort of thing.

John: Ah, yeah.

Martin: Fairly typical. So, okay. Whenever that works out too. I'd have to, don't have my calendar in front of me, but yeah, hopefully by the time this is released, folks, we'll be able to install it and try it out and not have the, you know, whatever RC one or one, two.

I think RC two I think is the most recent as of this recording.

JD: Now, I have to admit, I am familiar with Web P, but A VIF is is new to me. What do we know about that format?

Martin: I used to know the answer to that question by heart, but if I recall correctly, it's another one of those image formats that started off as being using a compression algorithm that was originally developed for video, but has been found to have in a number of cases, some, you know, additional compression savings.

So from a, you know, overall performance standpoint, it should make your website just a little snappier. And I think the, I checked on, can I use yesterday? And it was about 94%. So. Okay.

John: Pretty good support out there. Yep,

Martin: yep. [00:09:00]

John: Wait, where does, where does the compression stop? That's where I want to know. Like, every time we come out with a new format, it's like it squeezes out just a little more compression like, and I'm like, okay.

I mean, everybody's kind of working. Well, I, I guess I can't make that generalization that everybody's working with like a cable cable connection. 'cause there are still some regions of the globe where people use, use cell phones to connect to to websites. But I'm like, I don't know. I thought web P was gonna be like it for a while and now we, now we have A VIF.

So I don't know, maybe, maybe A VIF will be it for a while. We'll see.

Martin: I think, I feel like Google actually put a lot of effort into promoting Web P, including sort of, you know, dinging your lighthouse score if you weren't using web P or A VIF. So, I'm not sure who's really led the charge on A VIF, but I suspect that, you know, before long there will be some, you know, newer one that is even that much, you know, higher level of [00:10:00] compression.

So

John: more compressed. It'll be like literally a, a sponge with a brick on it. That should, that should, maybe we can work that into a, a a a image format.

Martin: Sponge Brick compression.

John: Yes. That's, that's perfect. Alright, there we go. That's it. That's it, right? That or

Martin: middle out? Maybe.

Lee: So who doesn't like artifacts in their video?

John: I mean, hey listen, I don't know. Alright. Any other thoughts on Drupal 11.2? I. Going once, going twice. All right, Martin. Well, as usual thank you for bringing us not so much a module, but a collection of modules known as Drupal this week. And if folks wanted to suggest a module or a core version or, or, or something for the module of the week section segment, how could they best do that?

Martin: We're always happy to talk about interesting candidates for a module of the week in the talking Drupal channel [00:11:00] of Drupal Slack. Or folks can reach out to me directly as man clue on all of the Drupal and social channels.

John: Fabulous. Thanks a lot, Martin.

Martin: See you next week.

John: All right, let's dive into talking about Drupal user groups and meetups. And I imagine we're gonna cover quite a few different areas of this topic 'cause it is a, it is a large topic, but before we do I wanna kind of dig into how each of you got introduced to your local Drupal user group. So, going back to the great introductions that we did, Lee, I'm gonna start with you because you actually started the Chattanooga user group.

So how did you kind of get introduced to user groups, Drupal user groups, and then how did you decide like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go start one in my, in my local area.

Lee: Well, the I weirdly, I started Drupal with without any community. I just picked up the, the Drupal six book and kind of started working through it.

I [00:12:00] managed, I dunno how I didn't realize drupal.org existed. Managed to find Dral account Boone for the one time it was on in like 2010. And I like, that's not too far away from me. Went, met a bunch of, sorry,

John: where, whereabouts is that?

Lee: Boone. North Carolina. North Carolina. Okay, cool. But that's not too far away.

The, and there were about 30 people there, I think. The only one time they've ever had it. And when I came back I was like, oh, that was, that was great. Like talking to people. That was fantastic. And then I sort of, Drupal org came through and, oh, there's a group, stop drupal.org found a Chattanooga one as far as I could tell they'd never met.

Sort of reached out to the, to the guy on it. Eventually got a reply and he added me as a co maintainer. I've, in all these years, I've still never met him. And then I sort of picked it up from there and said, let's have one arranged for, arrange for a, a space to use. And thought let's grab people together, see what happens.[00:13:00]

And how often does a Chattanooga user group meet? We meet every month.

John: Every month. Okay. Every

Lee: month.

John: So then going, going to Bo now. So Bo jumped into this user group x number of years ago, right? He found the group jumped, jumped into it. How, how did you get introduced to the user group, Bo? Was it like, Hey, I looked on triple.org and found that there was one near me, or was it, you know, something else?

Bo: It, I actually found it from meetup.com. I was a, I was working as a, I was gonna school computer science and was looking for some groups that actually met so I could, you know, hang out with developers and learn other things. And none of the other groups met, you know, I signed up for everything. The only one I ever met was Drupal, and it met about two blocks from where I worked at.

So I ended up just going one evening after work, and it was at Lee's office. And you know, we, they, I didn't know anybody there. There was about eight or 10 people there at the time. And I. They, they talked shop for a couple hours and then we went over to [00:14:00] this little, you know, beer bar and continued the conversation.

And then I, you know, came back the next month and that was, you know, 12 years ago.

John: Wow. So were you, were you doing Drupal as a job at that point, or was it more of a hobby?

Bo: I didn't even know what Drupal was at the time. I was a, I was a CNC machinist. I was machining aerospace parts for a for a defensive contractor.

Just a couple blocks down the road. But I was, I was going to school for computer science, so I was learning, you know, your, your programming and things, but, and I was just trying to get into the community somewhere. 'cause I knew that the only way I was ever getting a job would, you know, be to find other people probably.

And I just kind of fell into Drupal.

John: Hmm. Interesting. And then Bernardo how did you get into a Drupal user group? How did you, how did you come into the fold? I.

Bernardo: So I actually started going to the Atlanta Meetups. Okay. That were listed on meetup.com. So I went to the JavaScript one, a couple on Ruby, on Rails, and they were interesting.

They [00:15:00] were large and they were usually like a mini conference setup, and I liked them, but I miss that aspect of a personal connection with some of those. And then about that time I went to graduate school and I was here in Chattanooga and I knew there was the Chattanooga Drupal users group, but I used workers and June lab before I actually used Drupal.

And then I thought, oh, maybe I should go check it out. And I think a month or two passed by and I missed it. And then I was like, oh, let me go downtown. And then I stumbled upon the guys meeting up one day down there.

Stephen: Wow. I'm, I'm fascinated by the fact, Bo, that you mentioned you learned about Drupal.

Through meetup.com. So I'm curious how meetup.com has played a role in the journey of your user groups. And let's start with Bo there.

Bo: Yeah, I mean, like I say, I was just, I signed up for every group that was on meetup.com [00:16:00] for developing and nobody ever met. So I, I went, you know, so I went there and went to Lee's office and hung out and, I mean, I didn't even talk to anybody for a few months probably because I was an imposter.

I mean, I, I, I didn't even, you know, do any web development, didn't know what Dral was. Hung out, started talking to and kept showing up. And, and I think it was the, the first or the second meetup that I went to that Lee was trying to get everybody to pile in his van and leave to go to Florida the next day to go to triple count Florida.

And you know, my first, you know, like I said, just with that, with the meetup, it, it just, it. You know, introduced me to Drupal and I, you know, I started playing with it a little bit when I got home, you know, after a couple months, I guess, you know, just trying to figure it out and, you know, it, it, it, it's what helped me find Drupal anyway.

John: So it's, it, it's funny because I, in my, in my head I have this visual of like, Lee being like, Hey, you just, you just came to this user group, jump in this van and go to this camp down in Florida. Like, [00:17:00] oh, okay. I've done that

Lee: more than once.

John: Huh. All right. I mean, that's one way, one way to grow the community by like, you know, opening, opening a van or, and then promising a trip to Florida.

I like it

Stephen: as a tool meetup. I guess you guys have used that tool. Have you used any other tools and how would you recommend someone using it for a user group?

Lee: I can take that, the, when we first started putting it together, meetup was the big thing and everyone used it. So it was easy to go to Meetup and groups.user.org group dral.org, use org.

But I frequently forget to add add each month to that one. But other than that, it is a lot of talking to people. Interestingly we do have a hybrid one where we meet at my office and then we fire up Zoom if anyone can't make it. So we have people in different parts of the country that, that join in.

John: Do you, [00:18:00] do you find that Meetup is still useful? So, and the reason I ask this is like I organize the Drupal Providence meetup and, and we use Meetup as well as as drupal.org, you know, events.drupal.org for for posting the, the, you know, Drupal specific events. But like, I feel like early on Meetup was like the place to go to find these sorts of events, right?

I feel like over time it's one, it's become expensive. Two, it's become kind of, noisy and, and, and polluted with like, spammers trying to sell their laptops. I've gotten a couple of messages in my group about that. Right. I just wonder like, are you guys seeing the same thing? Or maybe, maybe it's just a, a, a regional thing where like, for you guys it works really well and you're like, no, it's great.

Lee: No, I think Meetup has suffered from, I. The ification that's going through everything. It used to be great, and it's been slowly getting worse. I mean, one of my pet peeves is I'm signed [00:19:00] up to a bunch of groups. It'd be really nice for Sunday evening for to send me an email that says, this is what your groups are doing this week, but if you haven't signed up and put it in your calendar, you don't get any reminders.

I mean, that's, that's its job. I mean, you have one, you have one job. Right. Remind me when the things are, and it doesn't do that. I feel like it used to, but it doesn't anymore.

JD: Well, certainly when the private equity took over right. They, they started changing things and putting things behind paywalls.

Yeah. And, you know, really limiting the experience both for attendees and organizers.

John: So I do know that the. And, and we can, we can move on from the, from the meetup. The meetup topic. 'cause I don't, I don't want to spend all all show talking on that. But I mean, I think from, from a Drupal standpoint, I know that the event organizers working group is working to bring a lot of the features from both groups.drupal.org and, and some of those meetup features that people rely on into drupal.org.

[00:20:00] So that way the event system there can, can, I won't say replace it, but act as a equitable alternative. You know, I think the, the, the hold up right now is, you know, the drupal.org upgrade from, from seven to to 10 or 11. So I, I've, I'm very confident that once that that upgrade is complete, we'll be able to add some more of these useful features to drupal.org and, and maybe.

Hopefully get meetups and, and whatnot away from, from meetup.com. But we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

JD: All right. So let's switch, let's switch back to, to actual meetups and and conferences. So, Lee, I'm wondering in your opinion, what makes meetups different from conferences, both as an organizer and as as an attendee.

Lee: But personally, a lot less stress for meetups. Organizing a conference and having sponsorships and money and food and shirts. I'm normally pretty [00:21:00] laid back, but every single year I lose sleep over the Drupal camp in Chattanooga. 'Cause I wake up, I haven't done this and I haven't done that. I got, I need to do that tomorrow.

Whereas I find that way we run meetups is a lot less stress if we run it as a, they tend to be. Maybe not lightning talk, but I have an idea of something we can talk about for about 20 minutes. What's happened new this month, what have you worked on? And it kind of goes around the group and people talk and we have a sort of an organic discussion breaks out.

And, you know, in the middle of it, I probably have a rant about something that that annoys me, but they the guys at the group deliberately push one of those in to get me going every time. 'Cause they think it's funny. But yeah, most of it is organically done as opposed to the inma enormous amount of preparation you have to put in for a conference.

JD: Yeah. What, what about you, bill? What do you think are you know, big differences between conference and meetups?

Bo: I mean, I. The great thing about meetups, it's like, well, hours [00:22:00] anyway, is that we meet every month. So we meet on a third Thursday of the month, every month. So it's a, you know, a routine thing.

So that if we have an issue, we can always bring it up and talk to other people and just kind of bounce ideas around. And we have some people that kind of come in for, you know, whenever they have issues, they'll come in and we'll kinda work through stuff. And the conferences, like Lee, there's a lot of stuff going on, being, helping, being an organizer of like Camp Chattanooga during the day of the conference.

You know, we gotta worry about food, we gotta, how everything's going on. So it is kind of stressful for that, and you don't really get to relax until, like, the last half of the day. You know, so it's, I I guess that we just, we make our meetup our Drupal users group meetup just really easy and laid back, so that way it's just kind of open like an unconference, kinda like we was talking about, like an unconference where we can kind of talk about stuff we want to or bring it up or, you know, if, we'll sometimes we'll run down a rabbit hole so people wanna learn and spend 30 minutes or an hour on it, you know, and then we, after we.

Finish the conversation at Lee's office. We just move somewhere else. We may go get food, we may go to a, you know, to a bar or a restaurant or something to kind of continue the conversation from there.

John: So, [00:23:00] question on the term user group versus Meetup, like in your mind. And, and Bernard, I'll direct this question to you.

Are those kind of the same things?

Bernardo: Yes and no. 'cause the user group can be the people in the Chattanooga area who are involved in Drupal and not necessarily involved with the Meetup. 'cause our meetup is not as big as our user group is. 'cause we have people all over Tennessee and sometimes people who are in North Georgia who are part of our user group.

But the meetup itself might be a little smaller and a little more niche. And the meetup is mostly for when you're ready to network, you need a back to basics training or questions. 'cause that's how I used it at the beginning. I came into the group and I was like, oh, you know, I'm wondering about the difference from Dog root to web in Drupal and why one is named Dog Root and one one is named Web.

And then the guys were like, oh, it's because of this and that. Something [00:24:00] small but relevant because sometimes the dogs out there miss that point that re and Panion decided to have their own naming convention. And that's not necessarily something that's unique, but it can be confusing when you are new.

'cause that's not something that's prevalent in other systems.

John: So, so the, so the user group is really like the group of people, right? And, and that's a wider group of people for you guys? It's, it's a majority. Or it's, you know, maybe folks that are in the, in the Tennessee area, right. Within, within that geographic boundary.

Maybe. Maybe there, it's a little bit wider, but and then for a meetup that's like a physical meeting of people in like maybe closer to the Chatanooga area. Is that, is that a fair assessment of how you guys are kind of using those, those terms?

Bernardo: That is fair except for right after COVID we open up or a meet up to have a Zoom link.

So people who are remote or who used to be part of our users group doesn't really miss that on the conversation or just [00:25:00] hanging out with us. 'cause part of that is just coming in, seeing some friends catching up and why not going out for a meal or just hearing about the new job that that person got or where they're at now.

So every now and then we get people who might leave now in Asheville, Florida or Seattle or somewhere else and then drop in and then just chitchat for a little bit.

John: Got it. So it's opened up to a much, much wider area, which is, which is nice. But I'm so confused.

Stephen: What is it, what is the difference between, I'm missing do, do you have user group meetings and meetups?

Are they different things?

John: No. So like, the way I'm, the way I'm, I'm positioning it here, I think is like user groups and, and, and Bo Lee and Bernardo can, you know, agree or, or tell me I'm wrong. Like user groups are like the wider group and they may just converse in Slack or on on, on message boards or something like that, right?

They might go to the, the actual Drupal camp. Right. That happens, I'm assuming once a [00:26:00] year, Lee. Is that how Chat? Chat that's, yep. But then the meetups are like usually you know, in real life or maybe in real life and Zoom meetups that happen more in like a, a smaller, a smaller group or a subset of the user group.

Stephen: So, so a meetup is a scheduled event for the user group.

John: Yes.

Stephen: Okay.

JD: And let me share, we've got a bit of a weird setup in Texas. So, I'm an organizer of the Austin Drupal Users Group, which is a part of TX Doug or Texas Drupal Users Group, which is sort of a loose confederation of Drupal event organizers across Texas.

And we call our events meetups. So it's, it's a bit of a, a word scramble, but I honestly, I don't think it matters too much what we call it, right? As long as people understand how to participate. And how do they get involved

John: and that their user group is there to support them, and the meetups are there to like connect people, right?

Like, [00:27:00] you know, you can use the kind of the terms interchangeably as long as, as long as people understand kind of the, the meaning, the meaning of them. I wanna go specifically back to meetups for a second. And Bo I I wanna ask you as kind of a, a user a, a, a. Participant of a meetup, right? Somebody who kind of like found a meetup, got involved, jumped into Drupal.

Right. I'm wondering what, what kind of attracted you to the meetup versus something like DrupalCon? Was it you know, the kind of unstructured unstructured sounds, negative kind of the, the looser format and the fact that you could kind of go and maybe ask a question, get an opinion was it the lack of like, structured sessions and more of just kind of like connecting with peers that, that you know, made you gravitate, made you gravitate more towards the meetup?

Or was it just simply like, Hey, the meetup is close and that could have that, that was kind of a lead in to something like bigger, like DrupalCon?

Bo: It, it was a last, I mean, [00:28:00] it, for me it was, you know, I wasn't in, I wasn't a developer at all when I found the Dral meetup. So I had no clue that Dral Con even existed or even any other Dral camps that existed.

So it was my introduction to Drupal. And, but you know, soon after I, I came into the meetups, you know, Lee always tries to take people to different events whenever we can. So I went my, I went to Atlanta Drupal Camp Atlanta first, which is only two hours from Chattanooga. Mm-hmm. And we usually try to go to our, you know, regional camps and stuff and kind of have a presence of where we go 'cause we travel together.

And, but, you know, yeah. To me it's just the meetups are really important because they're accessible to every, a lot of people. And because DrupalCon costs money to travel to, you know, you have to pay for the hotels or whatever it is. And if you're not a developer, you know, it, it, now that, you know, it's kind of pricey to get to the, to be able to afford.

Drupal if you're paying out of pocket. Yeah. Especially not being a developer, just trying to, you know, have a dream and trying to chase after it. That's what I told my wife whenever I, you know, honestly, I, I was talking to the guys at the, at our, our meetup [00:29:00] and kind of found out how much money that people made in Drupal.

And I'm like, I told my wife, I said, this is what I wanna do. I'm gonna chase this dream and try to, you know, become a developer. And she said, well, what do you need to do? And I said, I wanna go to Dral Con. So it was Dral Con la, which was in 2015. So I paid my way out to Dral Con. I wasn't a developer then, but I came back and, and 30 days later, 30 days later, I had a contract for, it was a 90 day contract, you know, it was for somebody local in Chattanooga that I met at a meetup.

And, you know, he just gave me a chance to interview and, you know, hired me on as a junior developer,

Lee: of course, he didn't tell us he was going to la we just bumped into him.

John: Well, I mean, sometimes those are the best, the best interactions. Right? And you know, DrupalCon la I seem to remember was a pretty good time. So you picked a, you picked a good one to go as your first one.

Stephen: So Bernado for you, I'd like to like to know what do you think is the most important thing about a user group or a meetup?

Bernardo: So the most important thing [00:30:00] is the opportunity for you to ask the silly questions that you don't feel compelled to ask at a conference, which only lasts two days and you're probably overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge that people are giving you in Drupal. And also the ability to have somebody close by so you can see them then the month after and the month after that.

'cause the problem with conferences is the follow up. I could have gone to any given conference, but if I did, I have to wait 12 months to get back into that conference and potentially see some of the same people. That might be a little too long for me to keep my interest in Drupal or to answer some of the questions if I have something that I'm trying to build or get started with.

Stephen: How about you, Lee?

Lee: Yeah, it's good to meet people. I mean, when people come, I. And so new guys turn up to the user group. I always try and we try and feel 'em out to see where they are. 'Cause all of us have been doing Drupal for quite a long time [00:31:00] now. So, sometimes we can overwhelm people. So, we have a couple of people he said to us like, it looks like magic.

I'm like, it's just experience. Like, give it a year and a half and you'll be doing this. And people will look at you thinking you are doing magic as well. How can you do the that fast? So yeah, it's getting people in, meeting people. I, I consider I do more of the community organizing than I do you know, module development and things like that, that on dribble.org and had people turn up.

I, I quite enjoy it. It's, it's kind of my bagman as you say, right? So. I like dragging people in, whether they like it or not.

Stephen: Bo do you, do you have any additional important what's most important about the meetups for yourself?

Bo: I think the most important thing about the meetup is consistency, right?

So that we have it every month and it's something to kinda look forward to. And like a few months ago, Lee [00:32:00] was in the UK and we just done it virtually instead of going to his office. And, you know, it's that thing to where a lot of people we, like, I work from home, I've worked from home for several years, and it gives me a, you know, a, a reason to go out to it's about 20 miles to Lee's office.

I'll go downtown and hang out with them and, you know, spend an evening talking about Drupal and you know, trying to learn something new. So it's just being able to, you know, have, have the. A sense of community with the, you know, people we have, like, there's been many times over the years it's just been me and Lee in his office and nobody else show up.

And we'll talk about what we wanna talk about for a, you know, an hour or two, then we'll go somewhere and have either get dinner, have a beer, whatever it is, and continue it. But then there's been other times when we have, you know, 10 people in the room and we have, you know, four or five people sign up and come in virtually.

So we'll have, you know, 15 or 20 people in the group. So, you know, it's a, it's a wide, you know, the big difference in audiences you can have, but I think the biggest, the most important thing you can do with any kinda meetup is be consistent and have it every month. Don't just get, and, and that's why we make hours easy.

[00:33:00] So it's just kind of free flowing and there's no real responsibility or pressure put on anybody. We can just show up and talk about things and whoever wants to come in and talk about something can,

JD: you know, I'm so, go ahead. I'm so encouraged to hear about meetups that have wide attendance, right?

That got lots of people coming and participating, but I think there definitely has been. You know, less attendance recently. So my question for our guests here is why has attendance dwindled? And perhaps more importantly, what can we as organizers do to combat that and sort of reenergize people participating in meetups?

Maybe we'll start with

Bernardo: Bernardo. Sure. So I think something that has affected meetups is probably just the level of responsibility people take on when they try to either lead or co organize a meetup. I know, I like to say that os is loosely structured. 'cause sometimes we will have [00:34:00] something coming up.

Sometimes I will get some slides together and demo to the guys, but sometimes it's just about chatting about what we did that week and just about being there present in the moment. I know some of the meetups I went to in Atlanta had the problem that because they grew up too big, the organizers felt like they had to structure it.

So it was like a mini conference. And if you set up a meet a meetup as a mini conference, you are probably gonna burn out and burn out some of the community members. 'cause at that point you are having a conference every month and that is a lot to take on.

JD: Good points. And, but what do you think.

Bo: I'm in the same way with, with Bernardo. I think that, you know, we, you keep it easy and make it where it's you just come in and, and wanna be, you know, approachable for people, you know, and, you know, it needs, it needs to be, I guess, you know, back to the consistent thing of where you need to have a, a, a dedicated location if you can that way it's always available at the [00:35:00] same time.

And then have it where it's hybrid so you can, somebody can dial in if they need to because you're not always available to, like, I'm not always available to drive 25 miles to, to he's office. I bet I can, I may be able to dial in and listen to it on my phone or watch it on computer or whatever it is, depending on where I'm at or what I'm doing.

And then, you know, I think that, you know, attendance dwindles because we don't really try to grow it, you know, if we don't, whenever. We, we, like this week we have Cenic City Summit in Chattanooga that we're gonna go to and be like the, you know, the, the Drupal, you know, community there. And try to, you know, bring people over to our to our side to get 'em to come to our meetups and hang out.

And then a few years ago we would go to Chattanooga State, which is a local community college and do one of our meetups there every year, you know, one, one month and see if, just introduce it to students to see if we could get anybody to come over. And, because that's where we always done our our Drupal camp.

And we, we actually got, we only, we only recruited one person from there, but now she's a Drupal developer. You know, so it's, it's the, I guess it's the [00:36:00] small wins, but we have to be able to always be always be selling like a salesman, right? Just be out there and try to grow the community. And then the more people you talk up to, 'em talk to about it, the more people will show up.

John: So some, something that, something that I think you, you brought up both in the last question, Bo and in this question, right, is having that, that kind of virtual option, right. I wonder Lee, as, as kind of the organizer of the, of the meetup, right? What's your, what's your feeling on the virtual option and do you feel like it gives people kind of an out not to not to attend in person?

Lee: Well, you can kinda look at it that way, but generally anyone close enough to make it. Because we've now been doing this for so long together, we're, we're all buddies, so we like to meet each other. Everyone's, you know, working from home, it is nice to have a, an outlet for that. So people will make it if they can make it.

But if they can't, at least they can. Make it on Zoom. Then we have [00:37:00] people, you know, from Knoxville and Nashville sort of dial in who won't drive the two hours, and I don't blame them. But at least they can meet and talk.

John: It's, it's around lunchtime here in the in the northeast and you just mentioned Nashville and now I can think about is hot chicken.

Lee: Hot chicken

John: which is delicious. But anyway yeah, I, I, I struggle with the virtual thing. 'cause like, like Bo I, I work from home and like, I like to get out and get to get to events and meet people in person. But I, you know, I think Lee, you bring up a great point as to like, you know, it can be, it can be helpful for folks that maybe can't get into you know, get into, get into the meetup to meet in person.

So you, you may have, you may have converted me into maybe, maybe hybrids are the way to go. I. Going back to COVID

Lee: did that to us. Right. The we had to do the more, yeah. I mean that's kind of

John: the, that, that's kind of the other thing for me is like another, another Zoom meeting, like is just like, feels like nails on a chalkboard to me a little bit, but [00:38:00] I can see it as an, as an alternative.

Like if you have it in person and virtually Lee, I wonder, do, is it hard to manage the, the in-person and virtual and, and kind of make sure that the virtual folks are getting the same, same value, same experience out of it?

Lee: Sure. It can be the, I try and spin the camera around so they can see as many people as possible.

And as long as you remember to, you know, put, put what you're seeing out on, you know, so on the TV, on the wall, so everyone's seeing it through Zoom.

John (3): Yeah.

Lee: I feel it works reasonably well as, as well as it can. I'm not sure there's anything we can do. And sometimes I forget that there's that there that I, I haven't shared it, but people will normally remind you.

John: Yeah. Have, so going back to j D's question, do you feel like the virtual aspect, you know, kind of the hybrid aspect has helped you maintain your attendance? Attendance or grow your attendance?

Lee: I think it gives people a chance to drop in and they can [00:39:00] listen to us, talk to each other and see it's not formal in any way.

And we're all quite clearly, we're quite clearly all Buddhists. So it's easy to fit into a a group like that.

John: Interesting.

Stephen: I'm curious if you find that new members may try the Zoom meeting a few times before they show up in person?

Lee: Not that I've noticed. Okay. Normally is people that we know from neighboring cities.

Okay. Sort of Japan, maybe people just like us too much. They want to come up and drink a beer with us. That's probably what it's, Bo and I are always found together, walking around conferences and encouraging people to, to come to the after parties and things.

John: So let, let's talk, let's talk a little bit about, about success.

Right. So I I organize meetup. I, I have, have been affected by kind of dwindling attendance throughout, throughout [00:40:00] its you know, life I guess you could say. I'm wondering and Bo kind of touched upon this a little bit previously where he said, Hey, you know, you have to have that consistent place and that consistent time where every month somebody can, can, can.

You know, join, you know, meetup if, if possible. But Lee, I'm wondering what other kind of success tips you have for folks that might be thinking about starting Meetup or, or for me that already has a meetup.

Lee: I think in reality it takes less effort than you think. If you've got a couple of like-minded people who are interested getting together, just go ahead and do it. Like Drupal Camp Chattanooga started because I was at Drupal Camp Asheville when and they had the guy who did the fish dis the the cod distribution.

And he was talking about that and he is like, we started and our logo is a dead fish, right? And it's like, oh, it's not even a lo fish, it's a dead fish. Right? [00:41:00] And, and at the end of it, he said, what I've gotta say to people. About thinking, oh, I don't know enough. I dunno what's going on is you can all start it because dead fish.

And at the end of that, I walked up to him and went, I've got to have a Drupal camp this year. So that actually was 20 20 13, so that was the year we had our first Drupal camp. And it just takes a little bit of effort to pull together some like-minded people. You, you can do it. It's not as. As bad as you think it's gonna be, I think is the way to say it.

John: So it's like, it's like the KISS principle. Like just, just keep it, keep it simple, stupid. Like you don't have to overcomplicate it. And it sounds like, it sounds like you guys don't necessarily have a topic every month where you have a speaker that you bring in. It's more just like maybe some months you have a topic.

Mostly it's just lightning talks. People come in and kind of, Hey, I'm having this problem, or, Hey, I did this cool thing, check it out. And that's kind of, that's kind of how, how you guys run it. Is [00:42:00] that, is that fair to say?

Lee: It, it is. What, what I say is we all come and we open our toolboxes, we share some of our tools.

When everyone closes their toolbox, everyone's got a bigger toolbox. And we do that every month. So even if it's just a little thing. So it's just talk, talking through. Generally in a month, especially these days, stuff happens so fast, right? New AI things have come out. It doesn't necessarily have to be Drupal related, but in the wide web development related there's always something happening.

So someone's read something, someone's tried something new. The idea is to just spread a bit of that knowledge around a bit. So what do you think,

John: And I'm, I'm, I'm seeking, seeking feedback here. Providence, the Providence Drupal meetup has switched to like a quarterly cadence. Like is that, is that, is that good as long as we keep it quarterly or is it like, Hey, that's too long in order to, to kind of like be useful to folks?

Lee: Personally, I [00:43:00] feel if we went to quarterly, I'd literally lose everybody.

John: Yeah.

Lee: People forget three months is so long.

John: Yeah.

Lee: Okay. If I I also run like a board game meetup and we slowly get people building up and if I, we do it every other week, if I miss one it, we half the number of people that turn up for the next one, and then we have to slowly build up, back up again.

Then a second you miss one, boom, it that plummets again. People just forget, right? They don't mean to, it just falls off their, their calendar and they move on with other things. And it's just, I think it's just, you know, how, how it works. It's then it's not mean or anything or deliberately forgetting about you.

It's just you have to keep pushing yourself back into people's consciousness and then it becomes a habit.

Stephen: Lee, it sounds like your approach to organizing meetings would prevent organizer burnout. So I'm wondering if you [00:44:00] guys. Have experienced burnout or if you know, organizers that burn out, maybe how they could prevent that.

Lee: Okay. Yeah, I mean, I used to try and do something Lee,

Stephen: go to Lee and then Burna.

Lee: So I used to do something every month and we, the joke was, it was called the Lee Show. Right. Whereas we, as soon as I went to a bit more freeform and it was more by accident, like, I haven't got anything, let's just see what, how it works.

And that seems to work. We've got a lot of good Drupal guys and they've all got something to say. Right. And you can't know it all. So it

Stephen: so just find a place and a time Right. Place

Lee: and a time.

Stephen: Yeah.

Lee: And it just kind of happens. Yeah.

Stephen: How about you, Ben?

Bernardo: So when it comes to that, I think it's a little bit of helping your leader organizer or your organizers balance themselves out a little bit.

'cause I know in the past few years, the rest of the community members, we stepped up to [00:45:00] help more with the camp. 'cause it used to be a lot of lease time and energy. And we noticed that that was something that we needed to help a little more if we wanted to keep having it and not necessarily have that weight on him.

Too heavy. So then we step up and then we kind of help through that a little bit. So sometimes it's how much you appreciate the community that you have, how much you appreciate the lead organizing and the organizers. And sometimes it's about the organizer letting other people take some of their responsibility off their plate.

'cause I know that's something that can be a concern with some organizers. Sometimes people wanna do it all, but they have to rely on others if they wanna balance that load.

Stephen: Great advice.

JD: Yeah, that's a great point. I, I've experienced burnout as an organizer and I think one of the challenges is letting go and kind of empowering other people to, to, to take the reins and, you know, make it, make it their own.

So. Okay. Lots of people here organize meetup groups, user [00:46:00] groups. If you could snap your fingers, what would you change tomorrow about your user group? Why don't we start with Bo

Bo: For me, I mean, we've, I've been going to our meetup for 12 years. Pretty much every month. I, it's rare that I miss one. And there really, there's not much that I would change about ours because it just, it just works for us. You know, it's easy. We show up, we kind of do the same thing. And like Lee was saying, it was a.

The lead show for a while. And now with Bernardo, he goes out to a lot more conferences and if he has a new session that he's gonna present or something, he may come in and kind of run through it, do a rough draft for us just to get practice with it. But like for me, I don't think that I would change anything with ours.

JD: And John, what about you in Providence?

John: Oh, man. I, yeah. I, I think, you know, going back to the previous question about burnout, there was definitely there was definitely a, a burnout factor there. So if I could change something it would probably be you know, I don't know. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna learn a little bit [00:47:00] from these guys and, and maybe just simplify it and find a spot.

And maybe we, next year we go back to, we go back to monthly. I don't know. I think, I think Lee's point about you know, three months being kind of too long is not something that I necessarily thought about. But you know, I, I was thinking of it in the frame of, Hey, I gotta find a speaker. I gotta find a space.

So like maybe I, I spend the rest of the year just finding a space that we can kind of inhabit for for you know, one time a month. And then, and then we can you know, we can kind of make it, make it a more simple simple format. I think that's probably, I. Probably what has been part of the demise here?

I actually wanna ask a follow up question there. Si simply, you know, kind of around the, keeping it simple and, and, and maybe things that you, you know, you might want to change. But like, Lee, it doesn't sound like you're offering like food and drinks at your meetup. It's just like a place to meet as opposed to like, and then maybe you guys go out and like, everybody kind of pays for their own, [00:48:00] own thing, right?

Is that, is that accurate or have you gotten like sponsors in the past to try to like, sponsor stuff?

Lee: I've never had anyone sponsor, except for my own company. Occasionally coming up to Christmas, sometimes we do a gift, everyone pays $10 and we do a gift exchange and I'll live in Tennessee so I can go and get some fantastic barbecue from around the corner and I'll, I'll lay that on for everybody.

But. I mean, it's really, it's the same space, right? Where I'm lucky 'cause I have my own office, so we can hold that. But before I did that, it's finding someone that would let you use it. Use one.

John (3): Yeah.

Lee: And sometimes you put, I mean the burnout partially as well, I think, is you go, yes, I want this to be the greatest one ever.

And you get some things set up and do all this work. And then, you know, one person turns up and it's what I like to call shouting into the void. You do all of this effort and then the payoff is so little, it's quite, you know, it is quite disheartening. But it's one of those things that [00:49:00] nothing happens overnight.

You have to, it, it's a little piece at a time that you need to build on. And it's surprising how often something will come along, kick you in the teeth and they, it all drops and then you have to keep at it again to, to work it up. The, the attendance drops off way faster than it picks up. Yeah, that is the problem.

So it's interesting to

John: me because, 'cause you, you, you have a space, you have a, a company, but you're not looking at it as necessarily a marketing initiative. You're looking at it as just bringing people together and kind of doing professional development, which I, which I think is an interesting take on it.

Lee: Yeah. The you might be able to find some companies that will let you use their like libraries and things. Use their conference room. We got one from, there's like a startup incubator thing here, and I don't know how I met the guys, but I was introduced and I mentioned, Hey, do you mind if I use that one evening?

And they're like, here's the key after hours that, you know, as long as you, you know, treated it and cleaned up behind. It was, it was great. [00:50:00] So. Yeah, I was quite surprised with that. I was like, you, you know, you've known me two weeks and I've got a key to your office. Like, what's going on?

John: Sorry. Sorry jd, I hijacked your question.

So, Lee, going back to j D's question, if you could change one thing, what would it be? Change one

Lee: thing.

John: And you don't, and, and you can definitely say nothing. 'cause it, it works. That's fine

Lee: too. The, the one thing not as it's sort of adjacent to it is people ask like, how did you get into it? What's going on?

They're like, oh, you know, come to my, you know, come to the meetup. You have to spend a bit, you encourage people to come. And the hit rate on that is quite low. I mean, when we, when we go to Chattanooga State and show people there, we're looking at 55 students. One turns up afterwards. So I'd like, what I'd like to change is more, everyone's kind of interesting, but no one will follow through.

I'd like to improve people's follow through to. So, I feel like I've actually made a change. I mean, every time we have a camp as well, I always say if we get one new community [00:51:00] member, we've done well. And that's remarkably low I think, for how it should be. I'd like more people to, that are showing an interest to keep following up on that interest.

JD: Yeah, that makes sense. Bernardo, any thoughts on a change you'd make?

Bernardo: So for me I would probably say reaching out to other communities and other conferences sooner. 'cause this year we're participating and being active in Scenic City, which is a local conference that involves do net developers and a bunch of others.

And I know Drupal for a time was very involved in, the Sowest Linux user group and a couple of others. And so just coming out there and then sharing with those people, we've done it maybe very little in the past and we're doing it more. So if I could snap my fingers be getting started on that sooner.

John: So you, you guys all just touched on something that I wanna, I wanna dig into, pick at, pick at a little bit more if possible. And it's kind of like [00:52:00] that thing of, of understanding how people find your user group, right? So, you said that you've gone to local colleges, universities, you've gone to other, other groups in the area.

I'm wondering how you, or if you, if you guys know how people find your user group. Like when a new person walks in the door, how do they typically find you?

Bernardo: So the last person we had was somebody who was an ambitious side builder that was living in Signal Mountain, and he started playing with something that one X Internet or another one of the European companies has as like a bundle version of Drupal. Mm-hmm. And he wanted to like set his side up and then he came down to meet us and ask about a little bit of troubleshooting.

So sometimes it's just by Drupal doing cool stuff and then people having questions about it, Googling how to meet Drupal community members and us popping on it.

John: Do you guys, do you [00:53:00] guys find that folks in your area kind of like do Drupal as a job? Right? Because I'm sure there are a ton of companies in the, in the Tennessee.

In the state of Tennessee. Right. That do, that have Drupal sites that do Drupal as like a job or, or you know, a government agency that runs, runs Drupal for their website. Right. But I'm wondering, like, do you find that like people that do it for, for a job or as part of their work tend to like turn off at five o'clock and go like, I don't wanna go to a Drupal meetup about Drupal because that's my job and I don't like, want to take my personal time to like, you know, interact or do that, that thing anymore.

Like, I don't know if that question makes sense, but like

Lee: Yeah. I think there's a lot of truth in that, especially as Drupal's moved up into the enterprise level. There's a lot of government and sort of [00:54:00] university people that are, I. You know, sort of, and I'm done. Right? The I'm not coming on a Saturday for a, for a I don't wanna go after hours and I don't wanna come on a Saturday for a camp, which is why you're seeing some of them shift into Fridays, I think.

John: I see, I will say with the, the New England Drupal camp, we do see a lot of people still coming on Friday and coming on Saturday. But, you know, running the meetup, I would see a lot of, like, I would know that there were agencies, there were organizations, there were higher eds using Drupal, and like none of the people that worked there would show up at a meetup.

Or maybe one would come once and then like you wouldn't see them again for like six months or something like that. Yeah. So, it's interesting to hear that you're seeing the same sort of thing. I don't necessarily know what we do to, to, to combat that or to, to like attract people to wanna want to come in, but

Lee: I think that's where the friendliness and being budd about the thing comes in as soon as they realize, [00:55:00] oh, you know, these are people I'd hang out with normally.

That might help a lot as well.

John: Yeah, good point.

Lee: Kind of leads to, we had go ahead. The Nashville Group came down to see they, when Drupal Camp Nashville was running, those guys came to meet us really early on for one of our user groups and came and chatted with us and said, oh, by the way, in two months the Drupal camp's on and they gave me a lot of when I was starting out, didn't really know what I was doing.

They gave me a lot of advice and things, which helped out to a whole bunch. Hmm. So that was the neighboring community came, came over to help.

John: That's it. I see what I need to do now. I need to get a Drupal con to come to Rhode Island. Perfect. Makes perfect sense.

Stephen: Do you ha do you have any tips for getting new members to join?

Lee: It does feel like shouting into the void a lot. Okay. We talk to a lot of people. The people, you, people have said you seem to enjoy what you do. You seem to be around people. You enjoy being around. I'm like, yeah, the [00:56:00] whole community's like that. It's not just us. So sometimes getting new people is a matter of stumbling across them generally at other conventions or, or whatever it is.

And inviting them along, like per a personal invitation, goes a long way. But they've got to want to do it. That's the thing, you know, I was like, I'd like to change overnight. Let's make that a bit more, make them want to come. They, you know, at that moment they're like, oh yeah, we'll definitely come and then you never see them again.

Stephen: Well, I have kind of a related question to that is how do you communicate with the members of your user group? So you, we we're talking at the beginning of this episode about how there's a user group that's a large thing, and then the meetup might be a little bit smaller. Do you have, are there any particular tools you use outside of Meetup itself that you use to communicate with the user group at large?

Do you have a forum or Slack or something that people communicate with, with each other regularly outside of the actual [00:57:00] meeting?

Lee: We, we talk on a chat and a Drupal Slack. Okay. We tend, tend to invite people that we've met, we tend to invite to that. 'cause then they're, instead of going into the Drupal Slack and just being overwhelmed by the number of people in it.

It's a small number of people that they know or at least know the names of and they know to see and they can talk to us and then introduce them for to further things. But yeah, it's yeah, kind of one at a time. I guess the answer to that is person in person one at a time. You introduce them into things.

But we have Slack and we, I tend to send emails out and Bernardo here tends to have these fantastic ideas and then he just goes, and Lee will deal with that.

JD: So Lee, I'm, I'm so curious about your use of Slack. It seems to me like a lot of the different regions, you know, and user groups sort of spun up their own Slack workspaces maybe before Drupal Slack was really.

Sort of a thing and was really well used. And I've [00:58:00] seen some groups that are transitioning away from their regional Slack workspaces and saying, Hey, let's direct people to the Drupal Slack, right? Where there's a place for our community, but also it helps onboard, you know, new people into the rest of the Drupal community and get communicating and have other resources.

What, what are the positive and negatives that you see of continuing to host, you know, a Chattanooga, Drupal Slack workspace?

Lee: It seems to work for us right now. I know a lot of the younger guys, like, what? You don't have discord or like, just pick a place and stick to it, right? Put use Slack for work and, and lots of other things. So Slack works, right? It could be worse, it could be teams. That's all I have to say about that.

John: Yep. I will say, you know, jd, my, my personal view is like, yes, Drupal Slack is the place to place to be. I know, you know, for, for Providence, we don't have our own Slack, we just use the Drupal Slack. But [00:59:00] I know for new England Drupal Camp, we do have our own Slack, but that's 'cause we, we have more channels than just, just one and, and we need to have different con types of conversations.

So it makes a little bit more sense there. Right. But I mean, I think, you know, my personal view is like bringing people into the Drupal Slack for meetups, right, for meetup related conversations makes a lot, a lot more sense. And in some cases could be cheaper than kind of running, running your own own Slack.

'cause it's just that one, one other place for people to look. Right.

Stephen: Well, well I'm not trying to put myself in the younger guy. Group there. I would agree that I think for these kinds of organizations, a discord makes a whole lot of sense. It's kinda getting back to the old forum days, you know, when you would log into a forum, the, the content is always there With Slack, if you're not there instantly, it kind of goes away, right?

So something like Discord, you can have announcements, you could have, you know, easily have an agenda for [01:00:00] the upcoming meeting. When the meeting dates are kind of like a website in a forum environment, and you really lose a lot of that with Slack.

John: Yeah, I think that's kind of what Drupal drupal.org in the events section of drupal.org is working, working to, to, to be right is to be that kind of calendar of events so that way you can look by like, oh, what's happening in my area?

Oh, look at that. My meetup is happening, you know, tomorrow. I should put that on my calendar. But yeah, I mean, I, I, I don't know. I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily put a, put an age on it. Steven, you might just be cooler than the rest of us. Who knows?

Lee: It's something I'd like to see on the front page of drupal.org.

Find your local community a massive call to action on the front, right? You've done it. Now, find the people. And it's never had that, right? You have to dig for these things. And I think the DA could do a much better job of I

John: will. I will say to that, that we do, I think on the new [01:01:00] Drupal homepage, I'll, I'm, I'm looking right now because I don't actually remember, I think there is an event block somewhere on there, but maybe I'm wrong.

However, I will say if I am not correct on that, there is a, an event organizers issue queue where you can add event improvements for drupal.org in there into that issue queue. And then we'll the event organizers working group will you know, kind of take those things up with with the, to the dev team at the DA to see if we can, we can kind of implement some of them.

So, if you have suggestions like that one, feel free to put an issue in for it and we'll we'll triage it appropriately.

JD: I will say the drop times has done something pretty cool in this regard. So they use like geo IP location to figure out where you're visiting their website from and they will have a little toast pop up saying, Hey, here's the, you know, upcoming Austin Drupal users group meetup, and it has a link, you know, to their page and a link to the, you know, whatever the pertinent details are.

They're, they're doing some good work as well to try to [01:02:00] surface local meetups to people based on where they actually are. I,

Bo: yeah, I looked, I looked at that last night and it was they have a really nice setup for finding events and I noticed a popup too that, you know, jail located me for Chattanooga.

'cause our meetup is this week, or supposed to be this week. We pushed it to next week. But it's a good, really good place to go find, you know, events that are happening for Drupal.

Lee: And I'm just about to go and paddle down the nun inhaler with Tim from the da, so I'm gonna bend his ear all the way down.

It's not like he can get away, right?

John: Yeah. So I, we, the event organizers working group does work with Tim to, to kind of put in you know, to advance these features if, if possible. But on a different note I know that there is an initiative out there, some work being done to kind of add more meetups to kind of the Drupal ecosystem.

And I'm just wondering, and, and maybe we can do this in kind of a lightning round fashion, but like, do we really need [01:03:00] more Drupal meetups? Bo what do you think?

Bo: I don't know that we need, well, I mean, I, I guess depends on what you're after, right? If you're after in-person meetups, probably because you, we don't cover every town and city across the country or the world.

But you know, I think we need a better calendar to find things. So that way, if you want go learn something or wanna keep up with you, you have a, you know, free evening or morning depending on what time zone the, the event's in, where you can go find a meetup and hang out, you know, for an hour or talk, you know, talk shop for an hour or two and make, maybe make new friends that you meet at the next event, or Drupal Con or whatever it be.

John: Oh man, you just gave me an idea. Maybe we do Drupal coffees instead of Drupal meetups at night. Maybe they're in the morning. Lee, what about you, do you think, do you think we need more meetups or should we just foster the ones we have?

Lee: I think we need to foster the ones we have, but there are cities without any, right?

I think I'm the only one in Tennessee now. So Tennessee's a big state, so, generally when people go, oh, I really like this. And I'm always [01:04:00] like, well, you know what you've gotta do, right? Unfortunately, you've just put that big volunteer sticker on your back. You're like, now it's up to you. Go ahead and do it.

And when that happens, I always try and say, call me. I'll, I'll help you out as much as I can.

John (2): Sure.

Lee: But yeah, I mean the in in-person ones are great, especially with the remote working now. Yeah. Allows you to get out and find your community. So definitely more if you can get, if you can find one other person who commits to it.

Right. Then maybe the two of you can slowly grow a community. 'cause there's that thing that says is, is the crazy person the person that starts it? Or is the crazy person the first person that says yes? And now there's two of you, which one's crazier? Is, is, is the question. Right.

John: Both, both equally crazy, I would say.

Okay. What, whatever. Bernardo, what about you? More meetups or are we good with the amount of meetups that we have?

Bernardo: Definitely more meetups. I know we have that saying of comfort, the code stay for [01:05:00] the community. And I think the community part meetups are at the heart of it. If you don't have a connection with somebody in the community, you will likely struggle more with the code and you potentially could be missing out on that learning curve.

And I appreciate the fact that talking Drupal has been around for so long, 'cause I've been listening for a while. But the one problem we have with this environment, it is that it's kind of like a meetup, but you don't get to hear from listeners. It's a one way meetup and the meetup comes in to strengthen that and gives you that feedback and that, that position where you can have a conversation, like, there's been plenty of times that me, Bo and Lee have disagreed upon some implementation in Drupal or something else, and we go back and forward on why one way is better than the other. And that part, that's where the meetups strength lies.

John: I will say for our listeners, if you have feedback or you wanna comment or question on anything, you [01:06:00] can find us in the talking Drupal Slack channel on Drupal Slack.

There'll be more at the end of the show about that.

JD: And so as we come to a close here I'm hoping that some people listening have been inspired by hearing these event organizers talk about perhaps how little it takes to start a meetup. And I wanted to ask our guests what advice they have for someone considering starting or restarting a local meetup.

And Lee, why don't we go to you first.

Lee: I'd say go ahead and do it. The do it. Like the, like we said, the sort of the lightning talk initially, you're gonna have to have something to talk about. But normally, you know, 10 or 15 minutes or show it. I mean, we, when we met this morning to talk through this, we were, we, we've decided what we're doing for the next six months for our meetups is because we're trying to get new people in.

We're doing the back to basics thing. Let's start sometimes when people turn up, they're just blown away. Like they can't follow, everything's going too fast. We're talking way higher than they, they expect they're [01:07:00] all new to it. So let's try a, a beginner class for the next six months. 'cause almost all of us can do that on the fly, right?

So pick content types, views, pieces show people how to site build, right? So you, if you can do that, you can run a, a meetup. Just come along, show people, be open to questions, come and talk to me afterwards. It's, it's a fun thing to do. Everyone Fantastic. That's the other thing, right? After all this time, every, everyone knows Bo and I and Bernardo, we can literally go anywhere.

And if I don't know someone in the community, I know someone who knows 'em personally.

JD: Well, that's a great point. So the, the networking opportunities, right, not just as an attendee, but as an organizer. I wonder if any of you wanna speak a little bit more to that? Have there that led to any opportunities, you know, that you wouldn't have otherwise had maybe Bernardo or Bill?

Bernardo: Sure. I [01:08:00] actually came to the camp in 2018 and I came to the camp 'cause they guy, I went to the meetup and the guys told me, oh, we're gonna have the Chattanooga Drupal camp coming up in like two, three weeks. And I probably wouldn't have gone to the camp if I hadn't met the guys. 'cause I thought, oh, well, you know, I don't know that I, I used Jula, I used workers.

I know Drupal is there, but now I know some of the people and I know some of the organizers. Let me go see what that is all about. And that's actually how I got started at University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. And yeah, and I kind of started my journey there. And then I have since then moved on into government and done a couple of different things.

JD: Fantastic. And Bo any final advice for prospective user group organizers?

Bo: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I go along with Lee is just, you know, go ahead and do it. Try it out. You know, make it easy. Try to, you know, just come up with a, you know. I plan to have it for, you know, six or eight months in a [01:09:00] location if you can make it hybrid so people, it's available for people and that way they may be able to come in a later month and, you know, realize that it's gonna be a slow roll in the beginning.

And you know, just be approachable and be, you know, always be selling it whenever you go somewhere. If you go to other events, talk about it. And because anybody can join the, the Zoom link for you and, you know, and hang out for an hour and then, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be two hours at a time.

It can be, you know, 30 minutes or, you know, an hour or whatever. And whatever time works for you if you wanna do coffee. 'cause there's a plate, there's a meetup in Chattanooga that does coffee on Saturday mornings. You know, and then Lee does his pH p group at, at lunchtime on on Wednesdays. So, you know, just figure out what works for you and and, and get started.

Lee: If anyone wants any help, just reach out. I'm happy to talk about it.

Bernardo: Something else I will add in there is before you start one, join another one and, and check it out and you know, see what works for you and what works for that area. 'cause I've joined a couple of different ones. The Boston one, the one that we have, and everybody does things slightly [01:10:00] different, but if you're gonna start it probably be better if you start as an attendee and see what other groups are doing, and then move on to your own.

Lee: I can re recommend the Northwest Drupal user group over in England. Phil Norton's one. There, over here it's in, it's like lunchtime, so it is not too bad.

John: There you go. Well, Bo Lee and Bernardo, thanks for joining us and definitely appreciate your insights and continued success with your, the Chattanooga user group and camp.

Stephen: Thanks for having us. Do you have questions or feedback? Reach out to talking Drupal on the socials with the handle talking Drupal or by email with [email protected]. You can connect with the hosts and other listeners on Drupal Slack in the Talking Drupal channel.

John: You can promote your Drupal community event on talking Drupal.

Learn [email protected] slash td promo.

Stephen: We have a newsletter. Did you know that you can get the [01:11:00] Talking Drupal newsletter? To learn more about our guest hosts show news, upcoming shows and more, you can sign up to the [email protected] slash newsletter.

John: And thank you patrons for supporting talking Drupal.

Your support is greatly appreciated. You can learn, learn more about becoming a patron and all the [email protected] and choosing the become a patron button in the sidebar. Alright, if folks wanted to get ahold of you, Lee, to talk about meetups, to talk about Drupal, to talk about. Anything and everything that you do, how best could they go about doing that?

Lee: I am on Drupal Slack everywhere. You can get me at [email protected]. Alright. Find the, find the meetup and ping me.

John: There you go. Join. You can, you can attend the meetup, right? They can find you at the meetup. Oh my gosh. It's a, it's so meta. Bo what about you?

Bo: I'm simply Shipley [01:12:00] everywhere on the internet, so, and I'm, I travel to several events, so, you know, just come up and talk or send me a message.

John: There you go. Bernardo, what about you?

Bernardo: Same here, bernardm28 in all the different places.

Lee: So yeah, reach out and we'll be in Asheville in a few weeks. If you wanna meet in Drupal Camp Ashville.

John: There you go. That sounds like fun too, huh?

Lee: And And if you're going, we're paddling the ante haer on the Thursday lunchtime.

John: There you go. Well, everyone's

Lee: welcome.

John: Jd, what about you?

JD: I am simply JD Leonard on dral.org and Triple Slack.

John: There you go. Steven. @stephencross with a pH. There you go. I'm John Picozzi. You can find me personally @picozzi.com, or you can find me on social media and drupal.org at johnpicozzi. And you can find out about EPAM at EPAM.com.

Stephen: And if you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking.

John: Thanks a lot, everyone. That's a wrap. [01:13:00]

Lee: Thank you. Thanks for having us.