this is a further outgrowth of http://groups.drupal.org/node/112639#comment-418719 so that people can throw in their two cent.
my two cent:
on the subject of the LA Drupal name. its kinda bogus. Drupal is community. its strength, like other FOSS projects, is involvement by people. doing. (talk is cheap) Chris and I have been working together to organize LA Drupal meetups since - (time warp). we met at DrupalcampLA 2007, he's a chill guy. last year more people volunteered to help us - so now we're all listed as organizers. recently, we reflected on the last nine months, and decided to have a single main meetup per month. i don't think we all decided this was important for the same reason, so the rest is just my opinion.
why one LA Drupal meetup? well from my perspective of last year: there were a bunch of people having meetups in the LA area (benno sebastian, techivist, matt2000, cgrant3d, sg3524, Sknight17, thund3rbox, jgordon, apperceptions, chris charlton, christefano, rainbreaw, plus me). that's awesome! Drupal is vibrant. but, with so many meetups, I believe it leads to a couple problems. the problem I heard about most was which meetup do I go to? the side effect, IMO, is smaller attendance of the larger meetups. neither the westside or downtown meetups had growth in attendance when compared to 2009 -- unlike 2009 to 2008, 2007, or the continued growth of the Drupal community as a whole. smaller meetups means fewer networking opportunity's. also, busier organizers spread thin between many meetups also felt to me like the presentations weren't at the same level month-to-month as in years past.
to me, having a single large meetup per month is vital to the health of LA Drupal. (I personally like smaller, very technical, very fun meetups where evil apple or microsoft workflows are not entertained... but i digress. plus, my interests are not always shared).
so, how to create a better usergroup? there isn't a single answer, right? i believe the only way to address all individual needs is to offer multiple solutions. let the community be organic. kinda drupalish, too, huh?
building on that, implicitly, one of those solutions must therefore be a big main monthly event. so, how do we start growing a main event, again? clarify. remove confusion as to which is "the event." something in the LA Area that everyone knows they can attend if they want a good presentation, good networking, good learning, good fun, maybe some banter, and hopefully some free stuff.
also, implicitly, one of the solutions is multiple meetups. and a small meetup. and that's the beauty of community. do it. i say we should all have meetups. lets share. grow. help each other. have a small event. or a design event. or an xdebug walkthough of Drupal going through each bootstrap phase.
having other small-ish meetups (aka, "non-big LA Drupal meetup") should address "other needs". such as people that don't like large meetups, or those geographically impaired by their bubble, or only want technical, or only want beginner, or designer, or... joomla. ack~! I'm kidding. obviously noone would ever want that. :-P
however, calling all of the meetups LA Drupal meetups, by its nature leads to (at least some level of) confusion. I mean, what if two LA Drupal meetups happen the same week, or day? run by different people? what if two are called "LA Drupal Main meetup" or "Downtown LA Drupal meetup?" hmm. keep in mind SEO and google are important for people to find us.
so, it's not that anyone wants to own the name -- even though LA Drupal is an unincorporated association -- but rather, in my mind we're shooting for clarity in order to better address the overall needs of (the weirdness of 80F in February that is) the Los Angeles metro area. Oh, and this last weekend's weather was an anomaly.
p.s. what about meetups on the west side. why? well, we had to pick. and probably mostly the result of "lazy" or maybe just reminiscing -- where those of us that have been going to LA Drupal meetups for years, still associate the west side as LA Drupal (RMI, Causecast/Mahalo, Causecast 2, SM Library, and now Media Temple). The westside has a lot of tech, web in particular. But more importantly, the westside has had more companies be kind to us. Seriously, if there's a company that wants to throw us a FREE VENUE that can hold 100+ people for a presentation, plus an area for breakout rooms, multiple projectors, wifi, guaranteed location for 1-2 years, free food,,, then hell ya, we're all over it. heck, even without the food. But that's the problem. free venue for lots of geeks. and consistency.
anyway, that's my logic on the la drupal schtuff.
omg,,, I totally rambled. see, talk's cheap. hope to see everyone at the main meetup. :-P tldr;