LocalGov Drupal Week

Come and join us for our second annual LocalGov Drupal Week.

November 11th - 15th, 2024

In a week of virtual sessions, we’ll be sharing best practice, code and experiences.

It’s an excellent opportunity to network and solve problems with digital professionals from councils and their suppliers.

We’d love to have as many community members designing and participating in sessions as possible.

Session callout details and sponsorship opportunities are outlined below.

 

Call for sessions

There’s a simple form to fill out to set up your session

Please review all the information below before you submit (it should only take 5 minutes).

Sessions will be: 

  • short (45 minutes) and interactive to combat Zoom fatigue
  • around lunchtime or the end of the working day to try and accommodate as many people as possible.
  • free to attend for councils, subscribing suppliers and supporting partners
  • advertised to subscribers, contributors, and others outside of our community
  • require registration via our Luma account

Please keep these things in mind when thinking about your proposal.

 

Timeline

2nd October - Call for sessions opens
14th October - Call for sessions closes
21st October  - Accepted presenters and facilitators notified 
23rd October - Facilitator and presenter acceptance deadline
24th October  - Full schedule published

 

Program Details

Sessions will be presented virtually on Monday, 11th November - Friday, 15th November.

Three slots per day:

  • 12pm - 1pm
  • 1pm - 2pm 
  • 4pm - 5pm

 

Session ideas

Here are some ideas for sessions generated from a recent community session. You are welcome to pitch in these ideas or come up with your own.

Collaboration

  • How do we improve our collaborative tools?
  • LGD goes worldwide - how?
  • What non-code collaboration could we do?
  • How do we reduce our climate impacts?

Products and features

  • Publications: keeping up with demand to convert pdfs to HTML
  • Events: multi-channel events - how to do it?
  • What are your frustrations and challenges with our products?
  • Consultations: how do councils handle surveys / report on them? Could it be built or integrated in to LGD? 
  • Content types - how do they work, what's the evidence that they work. How have they been customised? 
  • What would we like in a live preview/no-code site builder module?
  • How can we get the most out of Microsites?
  • How can we develop intranet as a product?
  • How do we fund big new features?

For new councils

  • What were your challenges / barriers to joining and how were they overcome?
  • Theming for those who don’t code
  • How do councils communicate their LGD journey?
  • Moving from another platform to LGD

 

Other Focus Areas

Below is a list of other ideas your sessions could focus on:

Community Health

This track is meant to help all Drupalists be happy and healthy at work, be a productive team and community member, and ultimately build a strong, diverse, and welcoming community.  Encouraged sessions include those about building community and increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion within the LGD community and tips for improving mental and physical health.

Content design & strategy

Calling all content designers and digital strategists - we need you! We’re looking for sessions on LocalGov Drupal’s capabilities for content management and design; as well as creative ways to use LGD for meeting council’s needs.

User Experience, Accessibility, & Design

Designing for usability, accessibility, and universal access and inclusion should be a priority. We would love sessions on making LGD and the web more usable and accessible.

Contributions

This track is for active and prospective contributors to share big ideas about the future of LGD or just talk about how to get started, as well as discussions about where we want to go and how we're going to get there.

Development & Coding 

for front- and back-end developers alike, covering all things front-end, back-end, migration, decoupling, and more.

LGD Showcase

Inspire your peers and spotlight your recent LGD projects. We’re looking for case studies that show the inner workings of the project, who participated, the process and methodology, the problem or opportunity addressed, and how it was all made possible with LGD. Note: This track is for showing, not selling.

 

Session Types

Birds of a Feather: Small, informal group discussions that allow attendees to exchange information, discuss best practices, and network with others around common identities, interests, and issues. Access will be limited to 20 attendees. (45 minutes, 1 facilitator)

Demo: Demos are hands-on demonstrations of new technologies, tools, or projects. These sessions should share knowledge and enhance the community rather than sell products or services. (15 minutes, 1 presenter)

Fireside chat: Fireside chats are casual conversations between a facilitator, an interviewee, and the audience without the aid of slides. (30 minutes, 1 facilitator and 1 interviewee)

Lecture presentation: Your typical conference presentation. Q&A is highly encouraged. (30 minutes, 1-2 presenters)
Lightning talk: Lightning talks are short, focused lecture presentations from a single speaker, often with slides. No Q&A. (15 minutes, 1 speaker)

Panel: Panels unite diverse perspectives for dynamic debate and discussion between panellists and attendees without slides. Panels are not a series of short presentations. (45 minutes, 1 facilitator and up to 3 panellists)

Skill Share: Session content is consumed asynchronously. Facilitators and presenters are available during the conference for discussion and Q&A. (30 minutes for live element, 1 presenter)

Social: Social events bring attendees together in a social and/or entertaining way. Example social events include, but are not limited to, chair yoga, music performances, and games. (No time limit, up to 3 facilitators and presenters)

Workshop: Workshops provide active and in-depth learning through hands-on activities. Attendees should leave with a tangible skill or product. (45 minutes, 1-2 Facilitators and presenters)

 

Submission Guidelines

Sessions should share knowledge and enhance the community—rather than sell products or services.

Preference will be given to sessions that aren’t already available online.

Sessions that include contributions from councils are preferred. Suppliers should try to partner with councils where possible.

We encourage longtime contributors to lift as they climb by partnering with other community members- new faces are especially welcome!

To create well-rounded presentations with varied perspectives, we encourage session partnerships between service providers and recommend that session facilitators and presenters represent different organisations.

The number of facilitators and presenters per session is limited.

Manels (men-only panels) will not be accepted.

Facilitators and presenters may submit up to two session proposals.

Accepted facilitators and presenters may participate in a maximum of two sessions, only one of which can be a solo session.

Facilitators and presenters are required to read and adhere to the DrupalCon Code of Conduct. 

 

Making LocalGov Drupal Week Diverse & Inclusive

With only 4% of contributors who are women or non-binary and 16% who are members of ethnic or national minorities in the country where they currently live, it’s clear that open source has a diversity problem. This imbalance is also present in the LocalGov Drupal community.

Creating more diverse and inclusive LocalGov Drupal events is a step towards addressing the diversity disparity in the Drupal community and beyond. 

We strongly encourage submissions from facilitators and presenters who have been marginalised due to racism, misogyny, transphobia, and other forms of discrimination.

 

Source: https://events.drupal.org/drupalcon2021/sessions/cfp.html

 

Sponsorship opportunities

We’re looking for sponsors for LocalGov Drupal Week 2024.

It’s an excellent opportunity to reach, network and solve problems with digital professionals from councils across the UK and beyond.

Our series of events will allow sponsors to talk directly to a community of hundreds of digital professionals who control millions of pounds of budget for their authorities' digital estates.

This event gives sponsors highly targeted access to council representatives from the UK and beyond.

By sponsoring the event, you’ll position yourself as a digital innovator in the local authority sector.

This is a unique opportunity to feature alongside the most talked about and successful digital project in local government of recent years.

 

The LocalGov Drupal community in numbers

360 attendees throughout LGD Week 2023 (mostly from councils)
42 subscribers - 26 councils and 16 suppliers
52 councils contributing
+750 email newsletters list (with open rates of +35%)
+560 active Slack users
+1500 social media followers
 

Pre-event

  • Newsletter, social media and Slack mentions
  • Placement on our event webpage
  • Placement on our event listings channel (Lu.ma)
  • Promotion of your dedicated session
  • A dedicated guest blog on our site related to the topic of your session

During the week

  • A dedicated/branded session 
  • Mention on all pre-session splash screens
  • Mention as a thank you at the end of all LGD sessions (some sessions will be hosted by other community members and will run independently).

Post-event

  • Mentions/ thanks yous in social media posts, slack posts and newsletter
  • A recording of your session hosted on our YouTube channel.


For more information including pricing please email Tim on hello@localgovdrupal.org 

 

LGD Week 2023 Sessions

You can check out all the sessions from last year on our YouTube playlist.