The other night I attended the first ever meeting of the Toronto Drupal User's Group at the Linux Caffe.

I would say that for a first meeting it was a success. While there was a little confusion over the date and time of the event, several people showed up and we got to the business of deciding what the group was going to be all about and what format we would like the meetings to use.

We decided:

• The group will meet monthly - likely the 3rd tuesday each month
• There will be beer at all meetings
• There will be short individual introductions to start meetings off
• There will be some sort of professional development presentations made (Demo of some cool Drupal feature, or exciting Drupal site - or related Drupal coolness)
• There will be free form networking / mingling after that
• The purpose of the group would be to promote Durpal and bring exposure to its growing community

James Walkah (who was in attendence) was kind enough to donate a portion of the Drupal.ca domain to the group... Look for http://toronto.drupal.ca (coming soon to the web near you). Three cheers for James.

James discussed the idea of the group being a prototype for other user's groups across Canada to help Drupal gain exposure.

I am of course all for this. Its not entirely selfless though - as independent Drupal service providers (like Be Circle (my company) Bryght and Web Networks - just to name a few -) ultimately reap the benefits of this increased exposure and awareness of Drupal.

At any rate - as far as we know this was the first meeting of a 'Drupal User's Group' anywhere in the world outside of a conference setting. We certainly hope that we won't be the only ones - and that pretty soon there will be a meeting in every major center around the globe.

But, first things first...

Sign up for the Mailing List and keep up to date on what's going on with the group and when we will be meeting next. Chances are it will be in January because of the holidays next month - but I'll keep the world up to date right here.

andre