Drupal Meetup Etiquette

I've been working with drupal and have been a part of the community for a fews years now. Although I may not be the most active member around, I have attended a decent amount of drupal meetups all over Massachusetts and New York City. I've seen what works, and I've seen what doesn't, the reason for this post is to state my opinion on what the purpose and goal of a meetup should be, and how it should be conducted.

Let's start with the general format, there should be at least one moderator, ideally someone who is not a beginner, this is the person that organized the meetup and posted the location and details to groups.drupal.org. The moderator's job is to start off and end the meeting and to basically moderate during by loosely upholding the rules of the meetup.

So, let's say a group of people have found their way to the meetup location and are sitting around mingling and/or looking around at each other. When it's time to start, you, the moderator starts things off by quickly introducing and saying a couple of words about yourself and having everyone do the same.

After this, you'd explain the idea of Lightning Talks , (A Lightning Talk is a short presentation given at a conference or similar forum. Unlike other presentations, lightning talks last only a few minutes, 5 to 10, and several will usually be delivered in a single period by different speakers -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Talk) and ask the room who wants to give one. People will volunteer, talks will be given, questions will be asked, all the fixins for an interesting and informative meetup.

It's the moderator's job to make sure presenters keep things short, if the room wants to keep the subject alive they will ask questions and conversation will continue, if there's no more interest then presenting for another 45 minutes will just make people tired and bored, it's the moderator's job to not let this happen. I have seen people leave meetups early because of this, I have also seen people decide not to present their own topic just to help end the meetup and get the hell out of there.

The idea of a drupal meetup is closely related to the ideas of open source and free software. The meetup is a place to share ideas, methods, techniques, and code, with a downplay on business. It's all about the software, in our case drupal and it's extensions, and how we're using it, how we've adapted it, to show and learn what is possible with it, and to brainstorm with others about how to make it better. Nobody wants to hear a sales pitch, or learn all about your business, or listen to any kind of advertisement.

We're there to learn from others and share what we know, because that's how the software grows and improves. In a way it all fits in with the mystical aspect of the web and it's effect on human evolution, we help build the software which brings us together, which helps us make the software better, which benefits everyone.

We at Agaric think that's a positive cycle and with that in mind, I'm happy to announce that we're taking on organizing a monthly metrowest [between Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts] drupal meetup. The time and location for the first meetup will be posted at http://groups.drupal.org/boston when everything is finalized, so check for that soon.

Update: Set for next Wednesday, December 10, 6 p.m. at Natick's public library, the Morse Institute Library, 14 East Central Street, Natick, Massachusetts. This is less than one block from the Natick stop on the MBTA Commuter Rail's Worcester/Framingham/Boston line.