 Hello everyone, thanks for coming along to the Drupal South Stairing Committee panel and open discussion. So I'd just like to introduce the rest of the committee. You know me, I'm Dave, we have Julia, Chris, Marge and Mike. Hello. How are you guys going? Good. Good. Absolutely fired up after lunch, not just sitting there digesting or anything, yeah, cool. One of the topics for us to talk about today on the Drupal South Stairing Committee panel and open discussion is the upcoming elections. It is election year for us on the Drupal South Committee. We are due to run those through the middle of the year to settle the spots that are coming up and have a new committee in place by November. We're not sure what the makeup of the committee is going to be post-November and we're not sure how many seats we're going to have on the committee. For the last few years we've been running with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 people on the Stairing Committee and in the post-Covid era I guess the Stairing Committee has also kind of assumed the responsibilities of activities that were generally run by subcommittees, subcommittee and working groups. And so I think that, I mean you tell me, I think it's been pretty successful so far. Yes. And we're really keen to build on that success and increase the amount of things that we do, the amount of activity and the variety of activity we have. So things that we're going to talk about today are a retrospective on events, this conference, but more particularly the conference last year and the community day that we ran in November. There's a discussion to be had about the future of the community day and the Drupal South Conference. What do we want? What do we want from the future? Also hear a little bit from Mike about the Drupal Booth initiative. And for those of you who are sponsors, we've got a Booth session coming up at 3 o'clock to talk about sponsorships, the sponsorship model and changes and developments and advancements to that. Yeah, but before we get into talking about the elections I'd just like to maybe run through the panel and hear a little word from each person about how it's been, what they are getting out of being on the committee and why they would recommend it to their friends. Am I kicking that off? Yeah, go on. Okay. I was not prepared for this question. No, that's a surprise question. That's okay, spontaneous. So I joined the committee about a year and a half ago. It has been a fantastic experience. I think probably the best thing for me because I'm not a coder, I'm not somebody who can contribute to CORE. This is a way that I can give back to the community and contribute in different ways. It's also been an opportunity to connect with other people and that's been amazing to make new friends and learn new things. As always, I think when you volunteer your time you get so much more back. It's an opportunity to learn and practice skills that you might not have had previously. So those people who know me really well know that I'm a really shy person and yet you wouldn't really know that if you'd seen me at the Splash Awards yesterday afternoon. That's sort of a demonstration of some of the skills that you can develop that you might earn but be too scared or not courageous enough to tackle and I think that that volunteering does that. Kia ora. The question. I think I've been on the committee about the same period. It's an opportunity to do some community work and help shape this. Yeah. Yeah. I think Julie's tundered up for everyone. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to say something? Two of them. Yeah. I think what Julie has said is similar to how I feel. I always want to give back to the Drupal community. I don't feel that my anything I'm doing on a website is really worth seeing a light of day. So this was my way of giving back to a community that I feel like a part of and I guess I started at the same time as you guys like November two years ago about 18 months ago. I guess what I really my favorite part of the whole process so far was actually running the community day because it's quite hard to articulate what we want to do is like we kind of knew what we wanted to do but it was hard to get people on board to start with. Yeah. Massive success and it was really sort of you felt so good doing that. Again I would I would echo so much of that. I think what I would like to tell this group I hope some of you are here because you're thinking you'd like to be on the committee and I would just stress that when I came on the committee in November twenty twenty two I had no event management experience or nonprofit management experience. I very foolishly put my hand up to be treasurer. I'd never worked in a capacity like that before. So again to what Julia was saying I learned a tremendous amount. Being on the committee is as much or as little as you want it to be and I would encourage you if you if you have a lot of energy and you really want to give back to the community you're the sort of person who we would love to see stepping up and taking part. It is tremendously rewarding. Not just in the sense of you give back to the community that gives you so much but also in terms of the skills that you develop and the connections that you make as you do it. So if you're thinking about it I would highly encourage you to take part. Nice thank you. Don't say foolishly for treasurer it's the best job. It's the it's the highly coveted treasurer job. Yes boss. I see you laughing through the tears on. Twenty twenty three we had Drupal South Wellington which how many of you here went to that came along to that. Yeah good numbers. Yeah cool I thought it was a fun time. Yeah yeah nice we we have Drupal South in New Zealand one out of three years traditionally that's our cycle of New Zealand and we realise it's logistically challenging for the larger population of our community members in Australia to get to New Zealand. I have heard the calls for Drupal South Queenstown. A lot of a lot of support behind that from our strong snowboarding and skiing community. We'd need a large increase in sponsorship to make that possible. But come and see me if you can. The event went well we had good numbers. Numbers exceeded expectation for coming to Wellington and financially I think we broke even. No it was it was profitable. Oh whoa okay yeah yeah yeah good awesome. Yeah nice yep it's always nervous that I run up to the event. You never know how it's going to shake out. And then the community day in Canberra at the end of the year I think was very successful. Numbers exceeded expectation for that and positioning that adjacent to at the same venue in the day after the GovCMS mega meetup really was a big factor in that success and participation. I know that it was a new format to try and do something that was hands-on that was somewhere between a conference and a code sprint. And I think that we really want to do more of that. In terms of the conference and the community day we're at a little bit of a crossroads I guess in terms of who we are and what we do as a community with our events. It's a balancing act to try and keep things as accessible as possible to as many in the community as possible. And by accessible that generally means financially accessible. The run-up to the conference here in Sydney was really interesting and when I say interesting I mean interesting. Unprofitable. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you guys have realised this, Sydney is quite an expensive place. And in the events and hospitality industry we've heard this from other conferences that are being organised other Linux Australia conferences that have been organised under their auspices that is harder for sponsors to find money. But in today's cost of living crisis era the cost of venues and catering and travel for everyone has increased not just incrementally. The cost side of the equation from the first Drupal South Conference I organised to this one has, it's more than half again, it's not quite double. I'll be overly dramatic if I said that the cost side of the budget has doubled but it is expensive to organise conferences. And we take it really seriously that we want this to be a community conference. But from a sponsor point of view, from an agency point of view, from an industry point of view there is a demand for a return on investment in sponsorship. And so that crossroads is how do we negotiate the competing or maybe complementary goals and aims of the corporate industry Drupal marketing side of things. And I was really pleasing to hear at the keynote yesterday and the panel talking to the Drupal Association about the goals for Drupal marketing to ensure our kind of future health going forward. So we've all got work to do. But we need to balance it off against community concerns, getting new people into the community, broadening the community in terms of diversity and inclusion and who can come along and making sure the doors of Drupal are open in our region for people to come along and participate and see what's going on. So that's a more complex discussion than we can unpack in a 25-minute open panel discussion. But does anyone have any questions that they'd like to ask about that? Questions or comments? Silence. Thanks, I think that the response from the community is always awesome. I talk about sponsors because I worry about paying for everything. But we don't have a conference without speakers, presenters and attendees. And so we can actually do stuff without sponsors. We can't feed people or put them in a venue. But we can share talks, we can share experiences and I think that the shared experiences is where the real... That's the real goal in our community, right? That's where the action is. Over the next kind of six months leading up to the election and the 12 months leading up to the next conference, we need to have more active discussion in the community about who we want to be, what we want to do and how we want to do it. And that's quite a logistical challenge as well. There's a number of us who are active in the Slack channel. That Slack is a walled garden. It doesn't get to everyone and it doesn't get to new people. Our main communication channel is the email newsletter which doesn't get to an increasingly large number of people. So it requires some active participation from you to be available to have conversations and talk about stuff. Otherwise things are just going to happen. Speaking of things happening, there is a lot of action happening and I'd like to talk about something new and exciting which is the Drupal Booth initiative. So can you have a little chat about that? Absolutely, I would love to. Just to provide a little bit of context, this steering committee has made a pretty conscious effort to be a little bit more sponsor mindful, I suppose in terms of, you know, we reach out to sponsors of the events. Sponsors are two-thirds of the revenue so if sponsorship drops, it's very hard, as Owen was mentioning, it's very hard to... Sorry, not Owen, Dave was mentioning. It's, I forget who they all are. It's very hard to make up the difference and what a lot of sponsors have said to us is that they want to be able to justify a greater marketing budget for Drupal South and other events and in order to do that, there needs to be more clients and more purchasers and more decision makers and there's a lot of conflict in that with the community members who want it to be more more of a camp feel, more of a dev environment so we are always working to balance those two priorities that are both equally important. The Booth Initiative and before it, the Splash Awards are both efforts to find a way to give sponsors more reward for the investment that they make in Drupal South and their contributions to Drupal South. So Splash Awards has been really good for bringing clients into Drupal South. That makes sponsorships a lot more rewarding which makes it easier to get sponsors. More sponsors means better events for everybody. The Booth Initiative is us working to break out of our little bubble where the Drupal South Steering Committee and the Drupal Community looks inwards. We are working to set up a Drupal Booth with key sponsors at non-Drupal events where clients and decision makers are and that's conferences around the country like Tech in Gov and EduTech and other government and corporate focused events. So we are calling out to sponsors to come and have a chat to us about what they would want to do with a Booth like that. It's Drupal branded. It's about getting people interested in Drupal rather than presenting one particular sponsor's version of Drupal or capabilities. And we wanna have that in conferences where there's a site called Booth or a WordPress Booth or an AEM Booth so that people can come up and learn that Drupal is a viable alternative. And by doing that, sponsors get more value out of their sponsorship but also the Drupal marketplace grows as well and that's fantastic for all of us. So if you're interested in that, we've got the sponsors birds of a feather session at three o'clock so you can come around for that as well. Cool, I'm just throwing a move into the final topic. Is there anything else that anyone from the panel wants to add or I'll say, no. Yes. I just, I would, can you raise your hand if you would be interested in taking part in the steering committee and running for the election? Okay, some very slow hesitation to put some hands up. 2026. 2026, okay. Would you be more interested in volunteering some of your time to support the steering committee on the initiatives that they want to do but without being a member? Okay, wow, that is fantastic. So that's, I think that's what may have been lacking in the last couple of years is that the steering committee has taken on quite a lot to do itself. It's up to you guys to come to us and say how I've got this great idea for something that I want to do. I want to do a Drupal camp in the other half of the year or I want to get involved with the booth or I want to help you with the website. There are so many great ideas and initiatives that we want to do and that the community brings to us and says we want to do. And we need help to execute on them. So I would encourage you all to run for election but if that's not quite yet what you want to do, you absolutely can still take part and give back and we'd love to see that. Yeah. Mike, what's the point of contact? How would someone who wants to volunteer reach a, like I know right now they can talk to us but, you know, two weeks from now, how do they find the steering committee to say that? Just come up and say, yeah, I can do this, I can do that. Yeah, I think that's a really good idea to have a point on the website where you can make those submissions. I don't actually know if we have a contact us form on the website but we do, we do, great. So you can go to the website and use the contact us form, that's one option. The other option is, and I think some people don't know this, the steering committee meetings that we do monthly are open. You can attend those meetings and take part in the conversation, so. Online. Online, yes, yes. Yeah, we'll have to go to the pub. You can do that as well. We could just go to the pub. We could just go to the pub. We could just go to the pub. Yes, we have online sessions, Google Meet observers are welcome to come along and join and they do. Can I just add to that that my guess is out of all the people who put their hand up out there, you're a buddy of one of us. So maybe the first thing is just to hit us up for a phone conversation or a text message or a Slack Convo, you know, where we're all here to talk through your ideas, concepts and encourage you to be part of the gang. I think we are running out of time. So I think that the two big issues that we want to kind of canvas today, as well as addressing the flood of questions coming back from you guys is committee structure and how we engage with the volunteers and having more of a porous border, open border on that. You don't have to be an elected committee member to do something for your community. The steering committee has some responsibility to make sure that things go well and adhere to our principles, charter and guidelines. But if you want to volunteer and organize something that fits with that charter, we are here to support you and have some experience and some resources to make that happen. There are elections coming up and we welcome people to come on board and to run for election and engage with the community. But our vision is to have more people involved without having to have that responsibility and commitment where you can do what works for you and the doocracy vibe and it's supported by the committee and more things happen so that we can have our annual or every two years conference, we can have our community day but we can do more to support the local organization groups or camps and it's not that we are reluctant to do so. It's just that time is our biggest constraint to try and make that happen and comms takes time as well. And we're gonna talk a bit more about the BOF if you're interested. But the way the Drifle South used to be set up was that it was an event that happened once every year or every two years. There was a budget for the event. Money came in, boom, the event happened and then the money stopped. And the reality is that events are nice. I had a good time. But we need to be active all year round. We are active all year round. We need an annual budget to fund activity and we need a calendar of events and we need a calendar and a program of activity to carry on throughout the year so we can fit everything in. And so we've talked a lot about changing the sponsorship model, the financial model and the underpinnings of the Drifle South committee. And now we've got this Drifle South Sydney thing out of the way. It's gonna clear the decks a little bit to actually act on that. And I feel like that's my personal mission. If we can't get that done in the next five months I'll just consider myself a failure. So come to the BOF if you're a sponsor or a sponsor interested. Let's talk about how we can promote Drifle South, give back to the community, organize events, open the doors, enrich people's experience and do it all the time in between the events. Not every day, not every week, not every month but regularly throughout the calendar and regularly across the regions, across Australia and New Zealand in different places. So that's our message. And I think out of time, any last questions? So according to the charter and the process it's November to November two years, so 2022 and apparently 2024 this year. So I'm not ready for that. I still think it's like 2023 but we're in March 2024. So the elections, they take a wee while to run because people need to go through the process of nominating, promoting, getting votes in and getting the tallies up. It all has to be done and dusted by November. I'm not sure how long that process is gonna take. We need to set up some volunteers in a subcommittee to do that. Dave, can I say one more thing over here? Sorry, I know everyone's sick of hearing from me by now. I just wanna say Drifle South isn't just the five of us. There is a huge number of volunteers that get involved to help make the event possible. Track leads, photography, track chair. It's 12, 16 volunteers overall, something like that. And they also put in a tremendous amount of work to make this all possible. So if you see them, some of you are in the room and I'm not gonna out you, but if you see these people walking around, say thank you. And if you are one of the people who put your hand up because you might be interested in getting involved, ask them about the experience and how they found it and would they do it again? But absolutely say thank you because without them, it doesn't happen. Can I just add to that that many hands make light work? And I think one of the big wins has been Nicole, our event manager who's been with us and has done amazing work. Thank you, Nicole. Yeah, thanks, boss. That's it for this session. If you wanna have a chat about anything and you don't feel comfortable asking a question in the big room, come and hit me up. I'm wandering around. I'll be here for a wee while. But yeah, we're here because we love the community. It's hugely beneficial to us and we love to give back. And I think that experience should be easier for everyone to share in. So thanks for coming and yay, Drew for South. Yay!