Nat Meysenburg
Thu, 01/10/2008 - 16:48 — gnat
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?:
I have been part of the Drupal community in some sense since late 2003, and it has been the most positive experience that I have had with any Free Software project and the community around it. As I have improved as a developer, and my knowledge of Drupal has grown, I have been happy to help out where possible, and the community has always been positive about that participation as well.
Aside from Drupal's incredible growth as a platform since my first install of 4.3, Drupal has become the emblem of how complex Free Software can be part of an ecosystem that welcomes the learners, without making them feel bad that they didn't learn X in a Comp Sci course they (I) never took.
I want to be part of the Association because I want to make sure that the community grows in dynamic and positive directions.
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?:
I want to see local Drupal communities grow and have more face to face meet-ups, camps and conferences. This is important to me because the community benefits when we can put user names to faces, and actually see what makes the Drupal community the Drupal community in its full diversity. I want to see this meat-space environment become the basis for local group collaboration on projects for the entire global community, modules, infrastructure sites, documentation rewriting etc.
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?:
I aim to start locally, and build the NYC Drupal group by helping to organize camps and other events. I also want to engage the local community in the face to face collaborative efforts by proposing and following through on projects that are focused on building the Drupal community locally and globally.
I work with a shop that has used Drupal for several of our projects, as well as direct participation in the local Drupal community and have made many contacts that way. I am also active in community oriented tech groups, which give me several contacts in the (small) non-profit world.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?:
I do not need a budget to extend and continue my work with organizing locally, however association funding for events may be helpful, but I have no particular need or figure.
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?:
I have been involved in several forms of community organizing for the last eight years, including physically bounded communities (neighborhoods), as well as internet communities. These experiences are transferable to organizing and building a stronger Drupal community, that is both locally and globally focused.
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?:
I originally started using Drupal in late 2003, when I installed Drupal 4.3 to replace interactivist.net's static site. That site has been running Drupal ever since, though now its running 5. A friend, and coworker had been using Drupal for a couple of their own projects, and spoke highly of it. I had just learned php and was looking for a platform to help me expand my knowledge while delivering great sites. I was an early theming enthusiast making that one of my top Drupal skills very quickly after my start.
I have since installed Drupal for several dozen sites both professionally (with Openflows) and for personal projects, in every major release since 4.3.
Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?:
I have been a long time volunteer at ABC No Rio (abcnorio.org), helping to run a public access computer center, put on DIY punk shows, and bottom line Food Not Bombs (which I did for 2 years). I am also a core member of the Interactivist Network (interactivist.net), a project of No Rio, that provides skill sharing and tech infrastructure (email, lists, hosting etc), to the arts and activist community in NYC.
More recently I have become very involved in the NYC Street Memorials Project, which erects memorials for pedestrians and cyclists killed by cars in New York. Mainly I have been working on the Ghost Bike project as both a tech and someone who helps install the memorials and organize events, such as a memorial ride this past weekend which drew over 200 people. www.ghostbikes.org -- is a Drupal site I built as part of my effort with them
I have contributed to other tech focused collaborations like the tech team for the US Social Forum, and a stalled project to build a database for lawyers, researches, advocates and interested citizens of public record legal documents; which the US likes to release in the most useless formats possible.
I am also the maintainer of the OG Contact module, and frequent #drupal-support (as gnat_x) and help out where I can, when I have time to devote to answering lots of questions.
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?:
7 hours/month
Apply for Board of Directors membership:
Apply for Permanent Membership only
Statutes:
I have read and understood the Statutes of the Drupal Association. I am prepared to participate by following those statutes.
Comments
Primary goals appropriate, but local focus only?
There's lots to be done to catalyze more local groups, but your strategy focuses only on NYC. What is your plan globally?
My focus on NYC is part of
My focus on NYC is part of my global plan. The NYC group is growing, diverse, and has succeeded in holding several Drupal Camps and meet-ups. What I want to do is take the size and success of the user group to provide ideas for organizing and infrastructure to the global Drupal community. Personally I would like to participate in communicating those ideas to other groups, and sharing models that are proven and adaptable to local communities.
I want to figure out how a local Drupal community can participate, as a group, in meaningful ways to the Drupal community globally. For example, in a discussion planning an upcoming Drupal Camp, the idea was suggested that the NYC group either start, or add momentum to configuring a Drupal based site for camp type events, and working to make that available to anyone planning a Drupal event. Other threads have mentioned posting session videos, and other documentation generated out of the event. These are examples of my goal, which is the local community collaborating to build pieces of a larger global community infrastructure; the collection of local individuals collaborating and participating as a group in the larger community.
mmm this is something the
mmm this is something the association might need to clarify a bit. It has been stated around (http://buytaert.net/drupal-association-organization-chart-2008-wishlist & http://buytaert.net/applications/) that Permanent Members are also known as 'Community Ambassadors' which make me think of a person acting locally on behalf of a broader institution. I might have not been the purpose of the use of this name but this is what I get.
In any case, I don't see any problem that there were Permanent Members acting locally while there might be other PM acting within a broader strategy. I guess it would depend also on the size of the Assembly, which is something also not being discussed. So, the actual Assembly might need to discuss this during/after the election of new PM.
Apart from loving every organization you've been part of...
I like the focus on DrupalCamps and local events on a global scale. I know when I was first getting involved these were the most valuable aspect of the community, and the single thing that cemented the viability of going with Drupal -- more than any pretty Drupal Handbook page every would...
Can you flesh out any of your experience, if any, in helping plan any DrupalCamps or other events in NYC, and/or any outreach you've done with ericg or OpenFlows? I think your community organizing cred is clearly apparent, but any experience you have in applying that to the Drupal community would, I think, be useful.
(Ghost Bikes! So great!)
I have been an active
I have been an active participant in DrupalCamp NYC, and have lead a couple of impromptu sessions. My interest in playing an active role in organizing the local group is relatively new. I have recently come to appreciate the value of technologists working together in physical space, it creates an excitement, motivation and comradery that you cannot achieve through IRC and forums. This realization came in the wake of work on the US Social Forum tech project; when the event was over, and the meet-ups stopped, I watched a momentum die out. It has made me want to put the same energy into a lasting community.
I am leaning largely on my community organizing experience to illustrate that I can organize and adapt to a wide range of communities and circumstances successfully. However, I do have a relatively long history within the Drupal community, and my interest in the project has remained high for over four years. I have contributed code and support where I could, and would now like to contribute my organizing skills in a serious way.
Chiming in...
I'm a bit too tired to provide a really detailed response, I apologize its 1:35am my time.
Nat, similarly to Ericg, has played a role in DrupalCampNYCs and has led several sessions at the camps. I guess you could call them impromptu but all the sessions are impromptu so I'll just call them sessions.
I like the idea of local ambassadors that think globally and Nat would make a good one especially considering his work on/at the U.S. social forum. An event that I sadly didn't attend but heard a ton of good things about.
Local groups definitely a good area of focus...
Do you go by another handle on groups.drupal.org than gnat@drupal.org? I could only find one post by you in http://groups.drupal.org/new-york-city.
The honest answer is that I
The honest answer is that I am terrible with forum posting. Something about the format makes me over think every reply. I will spend half an hour crafting two paragraphs, so forum posting becomes a giant time sink for me. That is mainly why I have not posted in the New York group much. If you look at my drupal.org posting record, you will see this forum deficiency backed up. I am much quicker in IRC.