RE: [UG-ADMINS] Refactoring the Vancouver PHP Association

> Nevertheless, Zak posted this to his blog, and I thought it was
> relevant to us:
>
> http://zak.greant.com/refactoring-the-vancouver-php-association

Interesting...

Hey wait, how'd they get vancouver.php.net  :)

Are there mailing lists?  I think this is vital to a user group - ours are still very active.  Sometimes, too active, but we do encourage people from all over the world - not just NYC - to join.

Anyway, what we've done for a while (with varying degrees of success) is to have SIGs as part of the user group itself.  This has been especially successful for Joomla.  They are, in essence, their own group, with their own site, meetings, and they organize themselves.  But we give them visibility and a mailing list, and perhaps most importantly cross-present to each other on a fairly regular basis.

This has worked well, and we're considering doing something along these lines for Drupal and other CMSs/frameworks.  However, I think there are some Drupal meetups in the city, so perhaps this would be less successful.

As a quick aside, the type of person at a meetup or at a user group (at least in NY) is very different.  Let's just say that user groups are generally more serious, and professional.  Perhaps this can be food for thought for those considering the best route to take.

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Hans Zaunere / Managing Member / New York PHP