DrupalCamp Florida - Comments

We're eagerly awaiting John Learned's Importing presentation! :)

Sincerely,

Jason Graham,

Hi all!

I moved to Miami from New York just as this DrupalCamp was being finalized, and unfortunately for me it was set on a Saturday. I can't attend Saturday events as it's the Jewish shabbat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat) and so I'm hoping the next one is on a better day.

In the meantime, I'd love to connect with some other South Florida Drupal folks and those needing Drupal talent for their projects. A bit more about me: I run a web development shop called D202. We build beautiful sites based on the Drupal platform with a focus on online communities and social networks. I serve as product manager and lead engineer, and I manage a distributed team of hand-picked individuals from all over the world.

I've been working in the Drupal community for over 4 years now, and the folks I work with bring excellent skills to the table as well. Our portfolio includes sites like www.data.org, www.roushfenway.com, www.gethealthyharlem.org, beta.denatale.com and more -- all Drupal-based.

I'd love to connect with some of you. I'm on Miami Beach.

Best,

--D

http://www.d202.org

A big thanks to all the organizers and presenters. I really enjoyed attending DrupalCamp and appreciate all the work that went into planning and carrying it off.

There was a lot of great information for Drupal newbies like myself. In particular, the intros to which modules are most useful and what they do is a great kick-start.

I might suggest for consideration: there were different categories of newbies in the group. Some of us are developers (of different levels, but with some type of technical or CMS background) that are new to Drupal... and some are competent users/implementers, who are less likely to be developing but want to learn how to use Drupal for their websites. If there were room for a more diverse track, a small track devoted to those competent "newbie implementers" might be something to consider as well. I saw some of them become discouraged as the day went on, because the camp was moving too fast for their needs.

These aren't my comments, I just typed them up from attendees of the Florida Drupal Group when we asked for comments.

• Liked it that presenters weren't there just to brag
• Wide spectrum of people (beginner - to very advanced) attending which is hard to hit all of the targets
• Beginner track was too advanced
• Labeling system for the seminars
• Spit up the start to finish with breakouts for the modules to better go into it
• Provide the PSDs for the creative portion of the site
• Networking "corners" during lunch could help
• People weren't aware the Lullabot video was playing that early in the morning as an intro

have a pre-work packet for people to follow through before coming.

• Push the non-profit angle for users
• Ask people to come to the meeting before to get them up to speed.
• Add defined labeling to the tracks (beginner, intermediate, advanced and designer, developer, administrator)
• Need better chairs
• People introduce themselves (or have a biography on the site) so people know who's there and what they do
• Slow it down
• Have a Why Drupal class (for people who don't even know what it is)
• Focus of Drupalcamp is to make a bigger tent, people who know what drupal is, but don't know too much about it
• Add a Q&A (high level) to ask the experts (not the general Q&A we had)
• It's hard to service the top and bottom of the experience levels in drupal all in one camp, one day with two tracks
• We need some vegetarian lunches
• Tee-shirt distribution - mediums and XL sold out very quickly
• Presenters should recommend that people get out and walk around to avoid pain from the chairs
• Chairs weren't great but even more expensive chairs start hurting after 3 hours in the same place.