Intro Session at DrupalCamp
At the last DrupalCamp in the spring with the help of a few others, I did an intro to Drupal session, which people really seemed to value, and I'd love to do this again.
One change that's been suggested is to do a separate session first, probably for an hour or 1 1/2 hrs, to help people set up a development environment on their own laptop using Xampp for Windows or MAMP for Macs. This took a long time last time round, and some people already had it, or didn't want to do it - they were happy just watching.
So - first request: I'd love to have some help from perhaps two people who are confident in setting up MAMP, and ideally someone who knows how to do the equivalent on Linux.
Then the second and main part of the intro session would be much the same as last time - how to install drupal, basic configuration, creating content, managing users, and then how to install and use a few of the main contrib modules - CCK and Views.
I'd love to have suggestions on key things to include and any other improvements on last time's session.
The other difference is that we have all the rooms available both days, so the Intro Session will probably run on the Sunday alongside the hackathon/code sprints/etc. The intro session takes most of the day, and I wouldn't want to take away the space from the normal DrupalCamp sessions on Saturday (and also I want to go to as many of those as possible!) Does anyone feel that this is a really bad idea?
Second request: I'd love to have a few people to help out with this intro session - there's always people having problems with different steps, and Robbie and Peter and others were a huge help last time. You wouldn't need to help the whole day - even a few hours would be wonderful.
Cheers!
Thomas
Ical feed
Glad To Help
Hey everyone,
I've done a somewhat similar (around 20 minute) talk at a few local Central Illinois Drupal BootCamps, and I'm moving to Manhattan next weekend, so I'd love to get involved. I know there's been a lot of activity on this group, and I'm not fully caught up, but this is presentation (more or less) that I gave at each of the those talks: http://www.slideshare.net/smerrill/intro-to-drupal .
Let me know if that's along the lines of what you normally do, and/or how I could help.
Thanks,
Steven Merrill
Great presentation
Excellent presentation Steven - a really good overview of Drupal. The jargon section's a great idea too. This would be a great way to start the session - would you be happy to do that? Then we can move on to the hands-on installation stuff, which last time took three or four hours.
One question I forgot to ask earlier - should this intro be for Drupal 5 or 6? I'm in favour of D5 as I've much more experience with it, but I'm totally open to D6.
Most of these things are
Most of these things are still true to drupal 6.
I think we could pretty
I think we could pretty easily add in a quick section on what's new in Drupal 6 from a user perspective: better caching, nicer drag-and-drop controls, teaser split, and things like that, and maybe also talk about the status of Drupal 6's adoption (with CCK and Views just now getting there, etc.)
Regarding the 6 vs 5 issue
Tom,
Can you remind what contrib modules you used in your presentation? If they are all well upgraded for 6 perhaps it is good time to switch over?
Happy to help again + more thoughts
Hey Thomas,
Peter here. Definitely happy to help again.
However, doing the intro session on day 2 was an anomaly. Not sure we want to do it on day 2 again although it is certainly an idea that should be considered. My hope would be by being better organized that the main "Intro" session can be done by lunch so you would be free in the afternoon. Other follow-on intro sessions could be taught by others.
Regarding the session itself. So to reiterate the idea was to have a 60 minute session before the normal Intro Session where anyone who wanted help getting an environment set up on their machine (WAMP, MAMP, or LAMP) could do so. This is where we would need support from folks who are familiar (or willing to become familiar) with how to do this - the more the better. Robbie and I helped with this at the last camp and here are the lessons learned on this...
Better to get this sort of setup out of the way before you start the actual intro session otherwise everyone gets bogged down on this. The major benefit to someone delivering the session like Tom is that he can go very quickly through the "how do you install drupal" and "how do you install modules" without having to slow the presentation down if everyone already has the requisite files on their machine.
Having extra USB thumb drives already loaded with the following is a BIG HELP
Reason this is important is many folks have trouble getting their wireless to work at Poly and it is just easier to be able to stick a thumb drive in their machine and dump it down. This is what we ended up doing last time, but not having the thumb drives ready to go made it tedious and slowed us down. So anyone who can bring an extra thumb drive with this stuff on it would be a big help even if they are not otherwise involved in the intro sessions.
Post on the PB WIKI (or whereever we are posting session information) how to do this for folks who would rather do it before they come. Here are three links we can refer them to (courtesy of lullabot)...
http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/install_local_web_server_mac_osx
http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/install-local-web-server-windows-xp
http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/install-local-web-server-ubuntu
In fact, presumably we could put these videos on thumb drives to!
Totally Agree that Steven Merril's session should be the opening before the hand's on session that Tom does. However, Steve I suggest you expand your session to 45 minutes, and add some even more basic information on "What is a CMS?" and "What are the basic things a CMS does?". I found there were definitely some at Drupal camp who would benefit from this addition.
So that would give us a timeline as follows
Thoughts?
Peter
Does it make sense
To reverse the two sessions?
My thought is to expand "How to setup a web server environment on your machine hands on" TO something more like "What are the Drupal dependencies (LAMP or WAMP stack), how and why does drupal interact with them, and How to set up a localhost."
I suggest this, because in intro sessions I've taught at other camps, a LOT of the newbies didn't understand the basics of how apage is rendered to a browser, which made a MAMP/WAMP/LAMP setup turn into a complete blackbox. They learned that they needed it to make Drupal, but not what it was.
I realize that in many ways such a session is Web101, not Drupal101, but I think the bedrock is important.
I would be fine teaching this, but would up the time to 2hrs.
-S
Advomatic
Oops
I mean reverse the first two session. Not all of them.
Advomatic
Respectfully disagree
Sam,
I respectfully disagree on this issue. The "How to setup a web server environment hands on" session is in fact not really a teaching session at all. It is really "Hey you, if you want to actually have your laptop ready to go with a dev environment then make sure you are here and we'll help you!". No real teaching. Just a few experienced folk going around (maybe with thumb drives with WAMP, MAMP, etc.) helping newbies get a WAMP or MAMP env set up on the PC. We would also put the Drupal files and Modules that will be used in the intro session on their PC, but ONLY so they don't get stuck during the intro session if their web connection is down etc.
This idea comes straight out of our experience at the last Drupal camp where the intro session got really bogged down trying to help some folks get WAMP, MAMP etc on their machines while others were able to do it really quickly (or had already done it before showing up).
AFTER that, the "basics of how a page is rendered", "what is the purpose of the MAMP/WAMP/LAMP stack etc. can be included in the presentation Steve would do, and then finally Toms presentation hands on how to setup drupal on your machine and create a basic site using some popular and "standard" modules.
I realize it seems backwards because you are helping folks set up something on their machine when they may not understand why they are doing it. But logistically it works better to level set the machines before trying to give presentations.
Regards,
Peter
Here is a slight mod to my suggestion
Modified description of 1st item so it is clear that is less a training session than a "Hey we'll help you get your laptop ready FOR the sessions". And added a bit more to second session - Sam is right that many new folks won't really understand even the basic of what the AMP stack is for and how it fits in with a CMS.
Peter
Sure thing
Ok, I'll go along with that, I'll just caution that
1 Hour "What is a CMS? How are pages rendered by a CMS in general and what is the function of the AMP stack? What is Drupal and why do we love it ;) ? by Steven
Is not a single hour session and could leave people 'swamped out' for getting 'Hands on Drupal'. I just remember the biggest issue I had in teaching an intro to Drupal was people not understanding basic web premises.
Advomatic
Yes, I don't have experience on that one...
Anyone else looking at this thread? Any opinions on the "What is a CMS? How are pages rendered by a CMS in general and what is the function of the AMP stack?" presentation?
Extending it would allow whoever is doing the following "Intro to Drupal" a 2 hour block when they could attend another presentation. On the other hand I'm fearful that many folks coming to the camp will have some idea about that already and will be discouraged that "Intro to Drupal" isn't happening till halfway through the day.
I think a discussion is definitely in order here.
Peter
I agree that the "What is a
I agree that the "What is a CMS," basics of the AMP stack and the page request cycle are fundamental concepts for understanding what Drupal is. I also agree that explaining these concepts adequately shouldn't take an hour. I'd estimate roughly 10-20 minutes, depending on the depth that one goes into.
@Tresler: These happen to be topics that I've been thinking of writing about recently. I would be happy to collaborate on this presentation. I'll find you in IRC or please feel free to private message me to discuss further.
I was not clear
By 'not an hour' I meant I thought it was /much more/ than an hour. I could be wrong though. I just remeber 2 camps ago when I spent half my session explaining how browser accessed a page.
Anywho, sounds good, catch me on IRC at some point.
Advomatic
Just wanted to reaffirm
Hey guys, I just wanted to reaffirm that I'll gladly give an updated opening presentation based off the SlideShare link I previously posted.
I think that my presentation is fairly non-technical, although some parts of it talk about versions of PHP and MySQL and the like.
I'll update it to cover Drupal 6, the state of the 5/6 module ecosystem, and anything else that you think we would need in it.
Passing the buck
Unfortunately something's come up and I'm going to be out of New York the weekend of the DrupalCamp, so won't be able to help do this intro session. Sorry about this, but there's so many great people and ideas that I'm sure it will go fine without me! I'm gutted to miss this though...
We'll miss you for sure
I'm certainly willing to give it a go. I'm probably not going to be the most advanced person who could do it, but I do have a training background and have been working with Drupal for a couple of years so willing to give it a try.
Of course if someone else really wants to do it I'm also happy to attend other sessions, and definitely would help get folks set up with a dev environment in the morning.
In any case I'll put a plan together just in case.
My wife always says you should give up something good to get something better. Tom, I hope that is the case for you!
Regards,
Peter
I'll Help out
Added my name to the wiki.
Advomatic
Thanks all for volunteering!
I think I may start a new thread with the "official" outline (as much as it can be at a Barcamp!!) once I have a moment to put together the pieces from this thread (since tom_o_t started this thread I can't just mod his original post...). For now, off to enjoy labor day weekend.
Yes new thread
Hi, Yeah, I think it would be great to lay out the day and what you need people to have prepared.
I think it makes a lot of sense to have an intro to the intro where we split out the whole local environment build and some of the basics. Can you generate a list of what people should be prepared for at the start of your session and maybe we can map out the day a little? Does this make sense?
Advomatic
I've created a wiki page for
I've created a wiki page for the intro section: http://groups.drupal.org/node/14569
An extra set of hands
I'll be there as well, if you need an extra set of hands to help the newbies.
Mike