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

I've attended both Drupal and Joomla meetings here in Dallas.  For  
the most part, the members are great folks, but they're generally  
small businesspeople using the platform, not developers at all.  Most  
do not use PHP itself for anything other than customizing their  
template artwork.  We've invited them to the DallasPHP meetings, but  
in general, they're far more concerned about internet promotion  
strategies and SEO - they rarely WANT to know the mechanics of their  
own platform, let alone the language itself. (Note: a few wanted to  
hire PHP freelancers, but again, mostly for template work.  They want  
to spend their time on their business, not coding.)

We've had more success working with the local MySQL group and had a  
successful cross promotion with the local Flex user group.  I've also  
been working with the local community colleges to try and draw  
student programmers - the faculty get really excited about it, but  
the students almost NEVER show up.  Our biggest growth in membership  
comes from employers hearing about us, showing up to recruit, then  
specifically sending their people back in following months.

We also re-launched the after-meeting party at the Fox and Hound last  
month to good result.  (More than a few old faces showed up for  
beer.)  I'll be asking around to see if Members want this every month  
or maybe staggered to keep it from getting old again.


There is definitely evolution going on: we spent our formative years  
moving our members from PHP4 to PHP5, introducing frameworks, IDEs,  
MVC and teamwork strategies.  Lots of fodder for talks in those  
areas.  But nowadays, most members are caught up with those hurdles -  
we have a core audience that's been with us for three to four years.   
I want to aim at application theory and architecture strategies, but  
it's hard to even begin such lofty topics in an hour and a half.  Not  
without having it defined by the framework discussion, which they're  
getting a little opinionated about.


Tim Stiles,
Co-Organizer, DallasPHP
WatchMaker, Icomex.com



On Feb 17, 2009, at 9:57 AM, Ben Ramsey wrote:

> I'm not sure if Zak Greant or any other representative from  
> Vancouver PHP is on this mailing list. If they aren't, maybe  
> someone can encourage them to join. :-)
>
> Nevertheless, Zak posted this to his blog, and I thought it was  
> relevant to us:
>
> http://zak.greant.com/refactoring-the-vancouver-php-association
>
> In the post, he talks about how their members' interests and needs  
> have been growing and evolving:
>
> "Over the last four or five years, we've seen the interests of the  
> core participants growing broader and broader. Where PHP used to be  
> the key tool in our toolbox, platforms built on PHP (like Drupal)  
> and other languages have grown to be of equal importance to many of  
> us."
>
> Moving forward, their board is opening up for suggestions on how  
> they can evolve and grow with the changing interests/needs of their  
> membership.
>
> I'm interested in hearing your thoughts and comments on what  
> Vancouver PHP is doing. Are your user groups experiencing some of  
> the same growth challenges?
>
> In Atlanta, for example, I've seen the proliferation of other  
> "special interest" groups such as the Joomla, WordPress, Drupal,  
> SugarCRM, etc. groups, while the Atlanta PHP user group somewhat  
> takes a backseat. Perhaps this shows that Atlanta PHP is not  
> catering well to the needs of people using PHP in this area?
>
> -- 
> Ben Ramsey
> http://benramsey.com/
>
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