Posted by Anonymous on April 18, 2008 at 7:14am
I thought it'd be perhaps good for us to introduce ourselves and see where people are, seeing as there 100+ members of the group.
I'm kelly, live in the midlands, near coventry. I'm reasonably new to drupal, not a developer (as in PHP), but build sites with it and enjoy working with it.
I hang out in the freenode #drupal-support IRC channel quite often, helping if I can.
I'm 29, currently not working, and have a number of interests, including music, science fiction/fantasy, history, reading, computing, gaming and crafts amongst other things.
I think that should do to start us off :)
Comments
Coventry eh?
I'm Steven, I also live in the Midlands, not near, but in Coventry.
I'm just finishing a Mathematics degree, and am in the process of launching my own Drupal related company. I love to teach and hope to start a series of workshops about Drupal.
Getting married in the summer, yey!
Really want to see DrupalCon UK sometime, and would very much like to help get it here.
I maintain a few projects, and the other day my first patch got into core, which was nice.
Regards
Steven Jones
Midlands too
Well heyup, I'm Hadrian and I live in Derby. I work at Sheffield Uni as an IT officer in The department of Journalism. I use Drupal lots there for student projects and even an equipment inventory.
I do web dev on the side using Drupal too and wouldn't mind doing that sort of thing full time, buy a cottage in the dales etc.. One can dream!
More in the Midlands!
Great to hear there's some many other Drupal junkies in and around the Midlands.
I'm Joe and live here in Birmingham. I've been a Drupal freelancer for quite a few years now (started doing nothing but Drupal sometime around v4.6), and have done too many Drupal sites to count, of all kinds of scales. I have just taken a 12 month post at Oxfam International as their website technical developer. They're in the middle of a migration process from Plone to Drupal (I'm wading through the data migration at the moment!), and have taken me on as an in-house sure-and-steady-Drupal-hand to take them beyond the migration phase.
I've been trying to get a Drupal Midlands group off the ground. Have tried a couple of times to meet up, but it's not quite worked yet. Anyone interested...?
I've been trying to get a
I'd be interested. Haven't been able to do much in recent months due to ill health, but should be able to manage stuff given enough notice and funds, etc.
Drupal Midlands user group
Cool. Good to know. I'm planning to organise one in the near future, so I'll keep y'all posted (will try to give clear warning, too!).
What was your experience of
What was your experience of working for a charity? Were you employed by them directly? I find that it is hard to do consultancy for them because they often go for the (cheap) volunteer rather than the (expensive) expert
Working in the Third Sector
A mixture of experiences, depending on the size of the charity. As a sector, charities are very conscious of their spending patterns, certainly, and will go through a thorough diligence process. However, Oxfam, being on the larger side, do have good, well managed budgets and are conscious of doing what is right to get the job done right. Smaller charities, I guess, will scale things down.
The thing with working in/for the Third Sector is that the pay is not just financial - there is also the reward of making the world a better place, which for me is highly valued. I know it's what everyone says, but it is true. I've been really impressed by the things that motivate my colleagues to do their jobs. I'm obviously not working for nothing - I'm being paid a fair wage (yes, I'm employed by them on a 12 month contract), which I'm obviously happy about. In the private sector, if I found the right type of clients, I could certainly expect more. But then I might have to see my values bent by commercial expediency, which could easily result in moral conflicts that I'd find difficult. Tricky one, I know, but I'm very glad to be able to put my head down on the pillow at night knowing that I've helped to make the world a better place today.
oxford drupal meeting?
Michael U - Hi Joe, I've met Edward Peters,so that makes three Drupal-interested people in or around Oxford. I'd be keen to get a meeting in Oxford sometime. It would be fascinating to hear more about Drupal sites.
Michael U
London Contractor
Hi Kelly,
I'm a London based contractor and entrepreneur.
One of my Drupal sites is http://www.eastercon.org/
The British National Science Fiction Convention.
I have tried to create a Drupal consultancy but I still get too much money working in the City to have any spare time :-)
Business website is http://www.owal.co.uk/ - but that is REALLY old.
My current interests are mostly Grid Computing and (sort of) Semantic Web. I'm thinking of using Drupal for front ends to big compute farms - and am keen to use taxonomy and rdf features of Drupal as front ends to big web crawling and analysis systems.
One of my Drupal sites is
One of my Drupal sites is http://www.eastercon.org/
The British National Science Fiction Convention.
I considered going to the last one, sadly couldn't afford it.
I';ve been to the Discworld Convention several times, but won't be going this year sadly as didn't have the monies to afford the membership before the Con sold out.
Hey guys, I am 24, currently
Hey guys,
I am 24, currently living in East London, originaly from Prague - Czech republic.
My site http://sotak.co.uk
Interests besides drupal: nature, climbing, running, etc... :)
I'm...
23, living just outside London. Entrepreneur and web developer.
My site: www.enjoystudios.co.uk
Hi
I'm on the east coast of Yorkshire, where I'm using Drupal to power the website for a community radio station.
I'm hoping to use Drupal for a few other projects too.
(and where are all the northerners?)
Hey, I'm the old man here.....
I am Edward and am 54, live in Oxford, and have been working with Drupal since last summer. Am rolling out small sites for clients, but mainly doing a major port of a multisite/multilingual proprietary-CMS system into Drupal for an international NGO (www.drupalproject.iofc.org). It is a big learning curve to figure out how to meet all our requirements with Drupal, but we think we can get 90% of the way there without any new modules. But we need help, if anyone is interested. I was at DrupalCon in Boston which was terrific. Also interested in joining any meetings in the Midlands/London, as long as they are not TOO techy, as I am not a developer (though I do some coding and developing). Would be particularly interested in sharing case studies of solutions for various use cases, looking at D6 porting issues, etc etc. Also keen to start a Drupal Oxford group but no takers so far....
Oxford
Also in Oxford working for an educational charity. Also interested in an Oxford group (preferably not in a pub tho)
York
Hi,
I'm Steve, based near York. I run a small group of media businesses, and we use drupal for our own sites and increasingly for client sites too now. Our own sites are www.podexec.com and www.redaudio.co.uk.
cheers
Steve
=======
Steve Parks
WunderRoot
http://www.wunderroot.com
Map...?
Greetings,
My name's Dan: I'm a wannabe geographer geek based in Leeds. I used Drupal for setting up the UK Cohousing Network website:
http://www.cohousing.org.uk/
... with some rather ugly hacks to get a bespoke google maps module to work with groups and gmap/location.
I'm planning to use an eight week placement in the summer to do something very local with Drupal - perhaps on the model of Front Porch Forum in the US, which is a site that seems to have the right recipe (minimal traffic, specific boundaries, a Goldilocks number of members, restricted only to those members...) It's website-as-trellis for local social connections to grow on like climbers - this is the stuff that gets me going at the mo.
http://www.frontporchforum.com/
On the subject of maps: who might we ask about getting location data in our profiles? Or perhaps that's something that should happen over at www.drupal.org.uk? At any rate, seeing where we all are on a map would be a splendid thing.
Map...?
Greetings,
My name's Dan: I'm a wannabe geographer geek based in Leeds. I used Drupal for setting up the UK Cohousing Network website:
http://www.cohousing.org.uk/
... with some rather ugly hacks to get a bespoke google maps module to work with groups and gmap/location.
I'm planning to use an eight week placement in the summer to do something very local with Drupal - perhaps on the model of Front Porch Forum in the US, which is a site that seems to have the right recipe (minimal traffic, specific boundaries, a Goldilocks number of members, restricted only to those members...) It's website-as-trellis for local social connections to grow on like climbers - this is the stuff that gets me going at the mo.
http://www.frontporchforum.com/
On the subject of maps: who might we ask about getting location data in our profiles? Or perhaps that's something that should happen over at www.drupal.org.uk? At any rate, seeing where we all are on a map would be a splendid thing.
Hello
I'm Hayley, living in Buxton at the moment but probably moving back to Nottingham fairly soon - another one from the Midlands. I'm also a science-fiction fan and in a moment of 'it's a small world' I'm on the committee for both the Discworld Convention and the next Eastercon.
Currently working hard on a DrupalCon UK proposal to send to the Association :)
Welsh Drupalers
Hi, I'm Tim Millwood, I am a web developer based in Cardiff working on a few drupal sites.
As well as joining the UK group i have setup a Welsh group http://groups.drupal.org/wales-uk
Hello from Derby...
Hi, I'm Victoria, a web designer currently living in Derby and taking my first steps with Drupal. Good to know that there's a UK Drupal group as I've plenty to learn to get up to speed! Wouldn't mind meeting up now and again with other Midland Drupalers - if anything just to get some pointers on Drupal best practice etc.
Bye for now...
West Midlands DUG on the way
Hi all,
just to let you know that a West Midlands Drupal User Group (DUG) is on the way.
http://groups.drupal.org/west-midlands-drupal-user-group
I'm also involved in organising a Midlands Drupal Conference in September
http://conference09.illuminateweb.org.uk/
cheers,
Karl Craig-West
Business Skills Trainer and Adviser
Phone: 07703 885305
Training in Leicestershire in the East Midlands
networkingclubs.co.uk">networking club