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Planning Meeting 1
WHEN: Tuesday Dec 7th at 19:00
WHERE: Online in the #yegrb channel on irc.freenode.net (web-based irc client) or in person at Pub 1905 on Jasper Ave
(add it to Google Calendar)
- What is our mission?
- What is a mission?
- Review feedback
- Draft a mission
- Approve a mission
- What opportunities are out there?
- What are our objectives for the next year?
- Who's doing what?
A mission is a single statement of our aspirations and dreams. It's meant to direct us when we're not sure what we're doing and inspire us when we're lagging!
Over the past month I've reached out to the YEGRB community to find out there dreams and aspirations. Some of the comments included:
- "YEGRB's mission is to make Edmonton a world-class destination for Ruby software development by inspiring, empowering, and connecting the Edmonton Ruby community."
- "To promote and encourage the use of ruby as a viable platform for developing applications of all types an complexity."
- "Raise awareness of the ruby community and make people better at what they do."
- "Bringing people together to share the wondrous side of Ruby while building a community of enthusiastic software developers/designers."
- "To offer the Edmonton community an alternative to .net and Java as the de facto platforms."
- "A chance to shake up conventional, 'enterprise' thinking for software development."
- "A vibrant/welcoming ruby group with around 20-30 people who are excited about ruby/web/technology and are doing something interesting with it."
- "People will be brought together on the commonality of web development. Membership will increase, which will potentially get some sponsors and an increase in talks/stand ups."
Trying to bring these together into one ambitious statement I propose we start with:
"YEGRB is a community of like-minded ruby enthusiasts in Edmonton, Canada. Our mission is to transform Edmonton into a world-class ruby destination by inspiring and raising awareness of ruby and local successes, empowering community members to shake things up, and bringing together a vibrant community of local developers, designers and organisations."
Thoughts?
Scott - In two years I want to see us doing big things. Doesn't have to be Ruby. More hackups.
Nathan - Draw inspiration from seattle.rb Open-source projects that we hack on.
Mark: Send out an email linking to yegrb account
Fletcher - raise profile profile yegrb. Reach out to other ruby groups. A lot more talent in YEG than people realise. Bring in more people from outside the ruby community. (especially design) Vote to work on a gem at a hackup. Grow the ruby community with events like an installfest
Daniel - Meetup with other groups (road trip or railscamp), have a day long conference, go talk to university (UACS, comp eng, business), day long local conference, corporate lunch and learns, do more non-ruby things, full day hackups, have a group of "public members"
Ryan - Things to know before you come (ruby primer kit), brindges from other languages, ruby resources on the wiki
Mike - training and matching jobs
Chris - more releasing projects and hooking up with designers, UX and MBAs
Kat - more mentoring and practice
- Don't want to be YEGpy
- Don't want to lose focus on Ruby
- Don't want to stop
- Don't want to turn people away
- Don't want it to become intimidating or scary. It should welcome all.
- Shouldn't try to do everything and fail. Do a few things well.
- Don't want it to be the same people talking all the time. More open conversations, less of the same people.
- Don't skip meetups. Fill time without something else (reverse talk)
YEGRB has lots of opportunity to make a difference. Some examples I've heard include:
- meetups
- hackups
- a YEGRB wiki
- shared resources
- tutoring
- mentoring
- code camps
- volunteer work
- outreach to schools, universities, and colleges
- cross pollination events
- invite a speaker from other groups
- provide speaker to other groups
- sitting down and talking about ideas, or how to do thing
- create a git repo to show Edmonton skills (DONE! https://github.com/yegrb)
A mission is great and all, but what do we actually want to do over the next year? Here are some of the ideas I've heard already:
- "Talks and hackups are always good stuff. Inviting people from other communities to compare and contrast the programming world (how would you do this in C#?, for example)."
- "A 'cottage industry' of economically viable developers that can tackle ruby development for clients around the world."
- "YEGRB could become a foundation for launching new businesses and projects using Ruby in Edmonton, a social network for local creators, a resource for new rubyists, an outreach to other local organisations, a host to Rubyists from outside Edmonton"
So what are our objectives for the next year? I've got some examples to get us started.
- Get a kickass logo!
- Regular hackups
- Regular meetups
- Collaborate on an official YEGRB projects
- Create a directory of local rubyists and organisations to help connect them together
- Run a ruby event in conjunction with one of the local schools or universities
- Create a showcase of local ruby success stories
- Build a great website
What are we doing?
- During the talk have someone guiding questions ("the plants") (Scott)
- Hackups (scott, fletcher, guitarkat)
- github projects --> manage the set of projects (nathan, chris)
- ruby primer kit (daniel, ryan)
- training, a weekend training course (mike)
- website (mark)
There's a lot of work we want to do over the next year. It's time to decide who's doing what!
- Meetups (mark)
- Hackups (scott, fletcher, guitarkat)
- github projects --> manage the set of projects (nathan, chris)
- ruby primer kit (daniel, ryan)
- training, a weekend training course (mike)
- website (mark)
- public people (fletcher, daniel, mark)
Our next planning meeting is going to be in three months in Feb-March