Request for Canberra, Australia

[elena]

Small community here, but probably active enough to consolidate the folk interested in Neo4J in to one group.

We're holding GGDC event here: https://www.meetup.com/Canberra-Python-Meetup-Group/events/268518896/

[neo4j_devrel]

We could make Sydney group into Australia and just have tags for different areas since most of them are hyper-focused all around the country. What do you think?

[elena]

Hello Karin!

I love the idea, but I'd be reluctant to group Sydney and Melbourne together as the two cities are both large (>5M) and both have large and proud (and I hazard to say "competing") technical communities. They both have a very different character (I know having lived and worked in both!) and it would be sort of not right to group them together.

As little Canberra, we're accustomed to being grouped together with Sydney, as geographically we're not too far away (3hrs to Sydney v. 8hrs to Melbourne), we're only a small city (but the political capital, and a large university town, so we've got a solid technical community).

"Sydney (and surrounds)" would make sense to everyone in the know

Sydney and Melbourne are the "big deal" cities -- but the other regions in Australia that might seek representation are the state of Queensland (city of Brisbane) and the western states (cities of Perth and Adelaide) though these are all smaller by population but occasionally are known to have significant communities.

Thank you for the discussion! Personally I don't mind ever which way!

[elena]

Actually on re-read both:
"Sydney (and Canberra)"
"Sydney (including Canberra)"

even make sense to locals.

[elena]

Whoops! Looks like Melbourne already has a community group (with a lower number than Sydney!):

https://community.neo4j.com/c/local-groups/melbourne-au/99
https://community.neo4j.com/c/local-groups/sydney-aus/120

Though I'm confident that I put in a request for the Sydney group in January last year when I went up to Sydney to attend their meetup at the time, even though the group there seems pretty organised.

Note that the names are:
Melbourne, AU
Sydney, Aus

If it were up to me to resolve this whole situation I'd name based upon state/regions (like it looks like is the case some of the UK groups) which would usually end up with 4 Australian regions: Vic/Tas; NSW/ACT; Qld; SA/WA/NT

I'm confident the majority of locals would think this makes sense.

"Melbourne, AU" could become "Victoria, Australia"
"Sydney, Aus" could become "NSW/ACT, Australia"

Note that we're wary of getting mixed up with Austria, so often put the whole word "Australia", as I see other groups (like Malaysia) have done.

Also finally, I note that the Sydney group intro says "Welcome to the Philadelphia Neo4j User Group!".

Sorry for going on! But would love to be able to point my local group to the community here -- I think this forum is genius!

Thank you so much!

[neo4j_devrel]

I'm seeing that the local groups aren't being utilized as well as I was thinking people would use it. I'm wondering if we should maybe make these groups language based instead of by locations.

Can you please share with me what would be your top goals would be for having a local group? I can brainstorm solutions based on that feedback.