Governance Taskforce Recommendation "Provide Greater Support For In-Person Events"

In-person events need more support to enable them to be sustainable and engage new people. There needs to be an opportunity for common standards so people know that they are participating in something of quality and value.

What we heard:

In-person events (conferences, camps, meetups, sprints, etc) are often the primary entry point for new community members. They are the social lifeblood that keeps people engaged, contributing, knowledge sharing and networking. The more we support local organizers, the more successful these events can be.

The Drupal community has been independently organizing events for more than a decade, clearly demonstrating that we have members who possess a wealth of relevant knowledge — but we are not doing enough to support those people, or to help them share that knowledge.

There are currently no formal standards, guidelines, or best practices that community-led events can follow. This leads to inconsistencies, a lack of information sharing, and the risk of misrepresentation of the community’s interests and values.

What we recommend:

We recommend the creation of a Community Event Working Group. The purpose of this group would be to caretake knowledge sharing, develop standards for events, and to provide a mechanism for escalating concerns to appropriate leadership bodies. This group can offer support to those running events, support training initiatives, and identify resources needed to help community events flourish.

We further recommend the creation of an opt-in event certification or badge program to clearly identify events that meet defined standards. Such a certification would prioritise things like transparency of event management, financing, acceptance of a shared Code of Conduct, minimum accessibility standards, and more.