This is a place holder for our meeting. (gg contributed)
Discussion
We had a great first meeting and many thanks to Mark for hosting; love those pastries. Eight folks came. We had introductions and told of our hopes for the Vermont Group. Among the consensus items was to use this space for sharing knowledge and, occasionally, seeking help. A concern was raised that we would, in effect, be duplicating the process that goes on in drupal.org, but when we have a whizz bang solution to a problem or a cool idea, let's also share it there.
Generally people felt the group should promote collaboration and offer an opportunity for us to get together, perhaps monthly to sharek knowledge, problems and ideas; we'll try to stagger the meetings so folks from the central/south can be sure to participate with us northerners... Several folks noted that it was just plain good to get out and see what others were doing with Drupal. I think all of us thought the session was very useful (even beyond getting some jetfuel coffee and did I say pastries?)
Drupal 6
We talked some about what to do about Drupal 6. gg showed his latest test site that will become the backbone for the next generation of Young Writers Project online classrooms for schools. Pros: CCK, Views and OG are available in working versions; we are on the cusp of great module developments for Drupal 6; and it's a better core. Cons: Some key modules are not available, including batch upload of users and audio/video fields.
gg showed how FCKEditor can be combined with IMCE to offer users wanting a very lightweight wysiwyg setup and image control. One final glitch is trying to find out why imagetools is not providing users presized formats such as thumbnails.
Drupal 5
af showed the primary site he works on, http://hub.witness.org/ -- a site devoted to exposing, discussing and creating community to fight human rights violations. af talked about the module he developed, media mover, which he says nears the 1.0 stage for Drupal 5. Very impressive piece of work. He also showed another of Civic Actions' modules, asset -- a very handy way to insert media files of all types. Something that generated a lot of discussion was how the witness site strips out ip information of those uploading material to the site to prevent tracing by opposition or a country's government.
Rating systems
one of the cool looking parts of witness.org was its system of rating a video. Check it out.
Next Meeting
We hope that more folks can make it. We should schedule a couple of folks to present. Feel free to sign up to present or present a "Call for Help" in the agenda space below.
September 9th, 4pm, Burlington, location TBA (Joe and gg are going to try to hunt down a decent spot. check back in a week.)
September Agenda
- Introductions.
- Presentations.... ( )
- Call for help .... ( )