Happy New Year, Radianteers!
Apologies to those who get the allegory in the subject – no cannibalism
today. What I’d like to do is get some feedback from the community
about a few ideas I’ve had swimming in my head for a while.
The first, the more modest one, is to start a series of articles on the
blog where we (who “we” is will be determined) interview creators of
prominent sites that have been built with Radiant and discuss their
experience with it. This could eventually progress into a sort of
“gallery” of sites similar to shopify’s gallery.
The second proposal, a bit less modest, is to hold a one-day
conference/meeting/powwow/thing about Radiant sometime in the next
year. Nothing concrete has formed in my mind about how this would work,
but I’d like to get a reading on the community interest before I pursue
it more seriously.
I appreciate any of your comments!
Cheers,
Sean
P.S. I will be at the Boulder Ruby (http://boulderruby.org/) meeting
with Loren J. on January 17th (16th?) – hope to see some of you
there!
Great ideas.
I think the best way to judge interest in a conference is to go ahead
and issue a CFP and see how many submitted talks there are. Then you
could get together with the probable presenters and schedule the time
and location.
Hi Sean,
I like both ideas. Being a developer and having struggled a lot with
different aspects of Radiant during the past 8 months or so, I
wouldn’t mind if some of the articles had a technical aspect in them,
but maybe that is what you have in mind? I’m thinking; not just “which
extensions do you use?” and “what are your approach to language
versioned caching?” but also stuff like “how do you decide when to
build your own extensions?” and “how is a balance found between
between pure radiant and other rails functionality?”.
As for your second proposal I see several ways. One way is to start
out modest with minor gatherings (which makes it kind of expensive for
us in Europe to attend if the meeting is in the US), aim for a real
conference (is the audience big enough?) or to use - say - RailsConf
and have a Radiant workshop or track. But I’d definately like to talk
to other Radiant users (and perhaps use that as a platform for
contributing to Radiant) one way or another.
Happy New Year!
Casper F.
Copenhagen, Denmark
Hey Sean,
I like both ideas. Since I’ve helped organize a conference I’ll
attest that it can be serious work. It all depends on how big you
want to make it. One thought on it that comes to mind is what if we
connect the conference to RailsConf? Such as have it on Thursday or
maybe Wednesday? Not sure how many of the potential attendees would
already be coming to RailsConf but it might make it very easy
especially if O’Reilly can hook us up with some space.
Cheers,
Marty
I’d love to help with this effort, and would like to nominate New
York City as a possible location. I can volunteer to help find a
suitable venue, and of course would happily provide sightseeing
assistance to those visiting from afar 
The reasoning for NYC (besides me living here) are many:
- high population density (better chance of high participation)
- handy for European attendees (closer than SFO!)
- I can find a venue for no cost (about 90% sure on that)
- major transportation hub, easy to get here
- best cheesecake on earth
As for speakers and talks, I agree with Todd that a CFP would be
quite telling - if there’s nobody to talk, then there’s little
incentive to attend
– Mitch, happy to talk to curious PHP developers as an intro session
Sean – I think both are great ideas. As for a conference, I agree with
the others in that tagging it onto RailsConf would be convenient but I’d
be down with a standalone 1-day conf.
I second the idea about RailsConf. If we could tack it on as an extra
day, that would be very convenient.
An alternative idea would be to do a BoF (Birds of a Feather) at
RailsConf. That way, a lot less planning and expense would be involved.
Sean C. wrote:
Happy New Year, Radianteers!
Happy New Year, Sean, et al. I know I’m running a bit late but work’s
been extremely busy of late!
The first, the more modest one, is to start a series of articles on the
blog where we (who “we” is will be determined) interview creators of
prominent sites that have been built with Radiant and discuss their
experience with it. This could eventually progress into a sort of
“gallery” of sites similar to shopify’s gallery.
This is a great idea! I think it would be good to have a site that has
snapshots and brief interviews and I’d go one step ahead and say that we
should include:
- Who built it?
- What it is about?
- Which extensions were used (and perhaps a rating per extension)?
- How much time did it take to get to deployment?
- What kind of hits is it getting and does it stand it?
- What is it deployed to?
- If there were 2 things you would change about Radiant to suit your
project better, what would they be?
- How much custom development was needed?
The second proposal, a bit less modest, is to hold a one-day
conference/meeting/powwow/thing about Radiant sometime in the next
year. Nothing concrete has formed in my mind about how this would work,
but I’d like to get a reading on the community interest before I pursue
it more seriously.
Seriously, if this is in the US or Europe (since they are the most
likely locations), I don’t think I’d be able to attend. But, it’s a
good idea. If it does happen, I’d like to see a session there (about 2
hours) where all the people in the room do nothing but update the wiki
with their experience! Think of the great documentation that would
follow in those 2 hours 
Cheers
Mohit.