Drupal Business Summits: Expanding the Drupal Circle

Most folks who are familiar with Drupal are well aware of what a Drupal Camp is, but what's a "Drupal Business Summit":http://www.drupalsummit.com? A Drupal Business Summit in plain terms is an event designed to help expand the Drupal circle. Drupal Camps have been fantastic at helping train up an army of developers but weren't necessarily intended to draw in the unconverted less technical audience. Business Summits help interested decision makers explore in understandable terms how Drupal solutions can positively impact their business, government organization, non-profit or educational institutions. Presently "Drupal makes up 6.5% of the CMS space on the web":http://friendlymachine.net/posts/2012/marketing-drupal and if we want to increase that we're going to need to do a better job of "marketing Drupal":http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/drupal-crisis-point-losing-marketing-war. And that's where the Drupal Business Summits come in, as they're a great way to learn about the benefits of migrating to Drupal and have attendees hear first hand case studies and best practices on how to implement and use this world leading CMS. Acquia kicked off the Business Summit movement back in 2010 with events in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and DC. In 2011 a handful of Drupal firms decided to carry on the initiative as Business Summits were launched in Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto. This year we've seen many more happen with San Diego, Vancouver, Los Angeles and the Myplanet Summit trio in Toronto, New York and Chicago too. Two of those shops, "Achieve Internet":http://achieveinternet in San Diego and "ImageX Media":http://imagexmedia.com in Vancouver decided to build a website to help make it effortless for Drupal evangelists to launch their own Summit site. "Mediacurrent":http://mediacurrent.com from Atlanta assisted in the contribution and provided a stellar "how to organize a Drupal Business Summit guide":http://groups.drupal.org/node/185524. "Kwall":http://kwallcompany.com from LA jumped on board to help with the building and ongoing maintenance of the website. "Volacci":http://volacci.com joined in to help write website copy. Since then "Myplanet":http://myplanetdigital.com, "Acquia":http://acquia.com and the "Drupal Association":https://association.drupal.org/home have joined in to assist with marketing support, video resources and assistance with lining up strategic media partners. We are excited to say that Drupal Business Summits are now lined up for "Dallas - Sept 7":http://www.drupalsummit.com/city/dallas, "Atlanta - Oct 26":http://www.drupalsummit.com/city/atlanta, and "Boston - Nov 15":http://www.drupalsummit.com/city/boston. Additionally dates will be announced shortly for Business Summits in Portland and San Francisco. A new vertically target Summit will soon be announced too and launched on our site network as the Drupal Business Summit for Higher Education will be happening in San Diego on Oct 11. h3. Why Add Your City to the Summit Network? Should you wish to launch a Drupal Business Summit in your city here are some of the benefits in joining our network: *Website* - get a free site on our Drupal Business Summit website and have all your info up in an hour. Our Summit Network site is built on the "COD distribution":http://drupal.org/project/cod/ and comes equipped with an online store so you can set up your registration for the event. You can choose to go free or charge an entry fee. All funds are set up to go through the Drupal Association's Paypal account. Also on the site is a scheduling system that allow quick entry of each of your presenters and session talks. Sponsorship is a synch as sponsors can be easily added in seconds. Event media can be added later too should you video sessions. *Graphic Files* - receive access to our logo master files & fonts so you can adapt the Business Summit logo to your city. Gain access to the master files for the print and web ads that we've sent out for various promotions. Make use of the presentation files for your Keynote or Powerpoint slides or access the HTML email graphic files to tailor your own email campaign. *Video Files* - we've shot a lot of footage at past Business Summits and edited together a promo video and will provide you with the master file and motion graphic animation so that you can edit in your city name and dates. You can also insert your own footage too if you want to customize the video and then just add on the accompanying music track or the other song of your choice. *Knowledge Share* - at each of the Summits we've been surveying the attendees and are seeking to learn from each event and share the lessons learned with our network. Additionally Summit organizers have been experimenting with a number of different approaches to promote or run the events and we're happy to share this information too. *Media Sponsors* - presently our media sponsors are "TechTarget":http://www.techtarget.com, "CMS Wire":http://www.cmswire.com and the "Linux Journal":http://www.linuxjournal.com. All have a massive reach and will be promoting our Summit event info through their banner ads or newsletter updates to help extend our reach. We will continue to look to expand our media partner network too so that we can continually help in the growth of the Drupal Business Summits. h3. How Can You Access the Resources? We only have two stipulations. 1. That the organizing company(s) behind the Drupal Business Summit be regular contributors to the Drupal project (ie. through sponsoring events, committing code, organizing events, etc). 2. That the organizers agree that the Drupal Business Summits are not intended to be high pressure sales events. We don't want the name or image of Drupal to be sullied by events that are more about taking than giving. To ensure this happens, organizers will need to communicate their vision and manage (vet) those that don't abide so that we can consistently deliver events that add value to attendees. If you can commit to these two standards for your event, we'd be happy to support you. **Getting Started** If you'd like to apply on behalf of your city please fill out an application here: https://www.drupalsummit.com/about/join-network Hosting a Summit in your city not only brings value to the industry, but also provides endless networking possibilities. We hope you will join us in helping expand the Drupal circle.