Drupal Global Sprint Weekend Wrap-up and Thoughts to the Future

15% more locations this year.

(To get your location on the map next time, make an event of type Sprint on groups.drupal.org in your local group. drupical.com gets its information from there.) 18 locations met on two days. (33% did in 2013, 46% did in 2014). About half the locations this year were new locations compared to Sprint Weekend 2013.

What worked

Some locations used hangouts.

(Saint Petersburg, Russia, from Konstantin Komelin) Tables where people can sit together were nice.

(Portland, Oregon, USA, from @oswebguy)

Drupal.org novice tag on issues helped. A direction of recommended priorities to work on helped: change records. Having a list of good issues for people to work on helped. Strategies for organizing issues varied from a sprint tag on drupal.org, sprint tag on drupalmentoring.org, google spreadsheets, and low tech:

(Toronto, Canada, from Chris Luckhardt)

Small breakout sessions of specific topics (writing a patch, contributing to drupal documentation, how to find an issue to work on). Demos with a projector on a screen, or on big TV. It helped to have instructions for doing a task (on drupalmentoring.org or links to contributor task documents). Some locations were at a shop (and had the location donated), some locations had sponsors and rented places, some got support via the Drupal Association Community Cultivation Grants. Food. People liked having food on location. :) Working in groups/pairs worked well, especially when pairing an experienced contributor with a new contributor. A relaxed ask any question, discuss any topic atmosphere helped people who may not know each other well communicate. Mentors and experienced contributors were available on irc.freenode.net in #drupal and #drupal-contribute. (But not 24 hours round the clock, and some locations may not have known they could use irc as a resource when trying to find issues.) Having a separate "sprint preparation" meetup before the sprint weekend worked well.

To do next time

Next time? When?! Well, the January time of year seemed to work well, as there is a lull in the Con/Camp schedules. So January 2015? (If *you* want to organize another Global Sprint Weekend before then, I know you will receive lots of support to do it.) Remember to give the testbot folks a heads up so we can get more bots during the sprint.
Do more to encourage organizers to meet once during the couple weeks before the sprint to get any of their questions answered. Email each organizer to invite them. Not all of them know about core mentoring office hours times (which are also used for mentors and sprint organizers to support each other). A slide deck, or an updated sprint instructions handout would have helped some locations get their new people going faster. (We had some locations write up preparation blogs, which were tweeted and linked from the g.d.o main event. Maybe next time send links directly to organizers.)
Some asked for more advertising of the sprint in advance. Local organizers want more help picking issues, prioritizing issues, identifying good novice issues.

More info

The g.d.o overall Sprint Weekend 2014 event page is updated with links to every blog I could find. Check them out for more insights and pictures.

Organizers include: asifnoor bmadder cecycorrea chakrapani Chris Luckhardt christefano ckrina clemens.tolboom Cottser craychee csg diarmy dsnopek el22or fadehelix finkatronic forestmars gloob Greg Boggs harijari helmo henk hexabinaer impboy_ie japo32 jessehs jlbellido joe_pixelrow joelpittet Jos Doekbrijder jrdixey jsbalsera konstantin.komelin luckow mariacha1 mfernea micha_milz mikebell_ mikispeed mrbaileys mukesh.agarwal17 netzkoop nielsonm oseldman pakmanlh pcoleman penyaskito piyuesh23 qchan rabellamy Rajesh Ashok rene Meisel rgon Robert Castelo rootwork rvilar SteveK Stew-bee stpaultim Sweetchuck theMusician tobiasb weal webflo willyk wundo YesCT (Please let me know if there are corrections or omissions, and I will fix the information.) Thanks everyone!

YesCT