Drupal Global Training Day is a worldwide training day designed to introduce people to the Drupal project.
The next #learndrupal day is Friday 14th December!
Previous Global Training Days.
These are training courses that are designed to bring a student from no-Drupal knowledge to a place where they can choose to be a developer, themer, designer, site architect, engineer, etc.
Working with training providers from around the world, Drupal day is a single day where a student can attend a training in most major cities worldwide.
Measurements of success
- # of attendees annually (1,000 minimum, 2,000 BHAG)
- # of markets:
- Initially: (5 North America, 5 EMEA, 2 South America, 2 Asia-Pacific)
- Program maturity: (15 in North America, 15 EMEA, 8 South America, 8 Asia-Pacific)
- Survey follow-ups
- Per course Metrics
- >= 10 attendees per course
- Course surveys
- # of markets (ex. # in EMEA, # in South America, # in Asia)
- Survey follow-ups
| Who Trains? | Who are the students? | Student Expectations |
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A one-day workshop that teaches the many aspects of Drupal. Covers the framework, the API (why it's important), and the most-important modules. Learning from community experts students will learn about Drupal and why it's the world's leading CMS. Students will walk out with a full website with core functionality including blogs, forums, polls, categorized content, contact forms, and many other features. |
Target Audience
People evaluating Drupal or that have recently switched to Drupal.
Evaluators: IT Leads/IT Engineers/Tech Guys/Tech Gals/Sysadmins/Web Masters/Web Editors/Content Creators
Switched to Drupal: Internal IT staff that has recently moved to Drupal but they did not do the switch (e.g. an external consultant built the site)
The person in the office that is doing the clicking on the website to configure, develop, and build the site.
What Participating Companies can expect from the Association
The Association is dedicated to launching, organizing, and supporting this initiative. We want all Drupal training companies to support and join in this efforts. We are committed to using our resources to bring more students into the Drupal community.
Marketing conduits
Announcement page at: http://www.drupal.org/learn-drupal
Targeted advertisements on Drupal.org
Utilizing media trades
Google Adwords
Geotargeting on our mailing list (Membership newsletter, bizconnect, etc.)
Utilize the community to spread the word (word of mouth campaign)
How we pull this off
Partner with training organizations who will provide the training. We provide marketing and conduit for students to find the courses, the training providers deliver the training.
Would require: marketing and coordination efforts
Funded by: Underwriting, targeted advertisements
History of Global Training Days
- February 24, 2012
As soon as we announced a proposed date, Feb 24th in our draft plans, we got a great response. Kudos to the community members who took the initiative to plan events. - June 22, 2012
On June 22nd we had another great Global Training Day, more locations this time!
Next steps
We are currently preparing next Drupal Global Training Day which will happen on September 14th! If you would like to participate add your training.
Comments
You can count on Exaltation of Larks
You can count on Exaltation of Larks for a "Drupal in a day" training in Los Angeles on or around February 24th. We have capable trainers, a training center and a field-tested Drupal 7 curriculum.
I'm not sure where this initiative is being planned, so please get in touch by contacting us at http://www.larks.la/contact
Founder, CEO
http://www.larks.la
Founder, Lead Burrito Analyst
http://droplabs.net
Organizer, Drupal Adventure Guide
http://drupal.la
Okay, we're doing a free
Okay, we're doing a free "introduction to the Drupal content management system" workshop in Los Angeles on February 24th:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/211718
We like that this coincides with Drupal Coworking Friday, which we're hosting at the same venue on the same day.
Founder, CEO
http://www.larks.la
Founder, Lead Burrito Analyst
http://droplabs.net
Organizer, Drupal Adventure Guide
http://drupal.la
Here's our follow-up from Friday
Here's our follow-up from Friday's training:
Report from the Front Lines: Free Drupal Training Day in Los Angeles
http://www.larks.la/articles/report-from-the-front-lines-free-drupal-tra...
Our experience was so positive that we've added this workshop to our list of available courses. Not only are we planning to offer this workshop again, we’re going to do it every month! We’ve already scheduled the next one for March 30, 2012, which happens to be on another Drupal Coworking Friday.
Founder, CEO
http://www.larks.la
Founder, Lead Burrito Analyst
http://droplabs.net
Organizer, Drupal Adventure Guide
http://drupal.la
Yay!
Thanks. This is really great news. The planning for this day is being done right here in this wiki. So if you have any ideas this is the time to bring them forward.
-Jacob Redding
We did around 80 public
We did around 80 public Drupal training courses just like this across the U.S. last year and will likely do more this year ( http://www.ostraining.com/classroom/ )
We'd be happy to sync one or more of those up with this event.
http://ostraining.com Drupal Training, online and live.
details
I'd love to hear more details on this. It's success rate, attendance rates, and how this could work with cooperation and collaboration with the DA.
-Jacob Redding
Sure happy to help. We've
Sure happy to help. We've been doing classes like this for about 4+ years now. Lots of hard lessons learned along the way.
I basically think of training class as a mini DrupalCamp. There are tons of logistics to get right and tons of potential pitfalls. Here's a few off the top of my head:
http://ostraining.com Drupal Training, online and live.
DD: Drupal Kata resources & comments re DUGs participation
The Seattle Users Group has organized very successful Drupal in a Day Clinics the last three years. Most of the planning materials, discussions, resources, marketing contacts, slide stacks and even video documentation of the full 2011 session are available on or through the Drupal Kata (http://drupalkata.com/seattle-drupal-clinic/).
The Drupal Kata is an instance of Open Atrium used for Drupal Open Learning Projects (http://drupalopenlearning.org/drupal-kata). In the case of the Seattle Drupal Clinic an effort was made to capture as much of the planning and organizational process behind organizing the 2011 Clinic as possible, in the hopes that this will help future organizers to produce such events.
The Drupal Open Learning Initiative will continue to work to expand the use the Drupal Kata as a home for Drupal Learning Projects and the Drupal Dojo (http://DrupalDojo.com) as a repository of Drupal Learning Resources. We would welcome others who are interested in setting up projects similar to the Seattle Clinic on the Drupal Kata. Please contact me eric_sea if you are interested and we can attempt to explore the possibilities.
Regarding February 24th... I think the idea of such a coordinated effort is fantastic. Unfortunately 2/24 is during February break and school vacation week for many. It also seems very ambitious to attempt to pull off a coordinated effort of this sort in under two months time. My guess would be that DUGs are not likely to play a significant role in making this happen. I suspect it will have to be the commercial providers with venues and staff trainers available who will insure the success of a coordinated DD.
For many of the local DUGs which produce such events, I would guess that having additional financial resources to offset the expenses associated with marketing/promotional materials, venues and food/coffee would be helpful--if they have a way to put those dollars to work. In Seattle DD clinics have been an all volunteer effort made possible with the help of in-kind contributions and a small contribution from participants.
While it would be wonderful if DUGs could react in time to meet your 2/24 date, but it is doubtful in my mind. Perhaps if DA establishes dates well in advance, the DUGs can try and synchronize their DD clinics with DA's over the long run. There may be interest within the Seattle DUG in repeating the Seattle 2011 DD clinic prior to our October Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit--perhaps even more than once, but I don't see it happening for 2/24. Hopefully as the kinks get worked out we will be able to repeat such programs more frequently.
Otherwise I think it is a great idea to calling attention to Drupal trainings while maximizing the bang for the DA marketing buck--especially if the resources are there to provide for the demand that might be generated. Thank you.
In Seattle we do have a
In Seattle we do have a history going back 5.5 years of running community lead training events starting with one of the first Drupal camps and including the more recent Drupal clinic events.
While I do like the idea of the idea of a one day event globally for the inertia and momentum of it, the effort may be more manageable if it is parsed out based on geography and then the learning can be rolled into the next round of d in a d trainings.
Another benefit of grouping could be web casting particular training segments across all trainings ( Think a simulcast sessions from leading developers or trainers.
One more thing to consider is partnering w schools, community colleges and universities. In Seattle a few of us are advising the university of Washington extension on developing a certificate program in Drupal development. Dripal in a day could feed students into such a program.
http://GregoryHeller.com
I think this is a great idea
I think this is a great idea if approached the right way. Currently in Dallas we have been running a modified version of this through meetup.com (http://www.meetup.com/dallasdrupal/). We call it our Intro to Drupal Workshop series. We created it because our main Drupal meetup was getting too advanced for beginners and sometimes even intermediates. (thank you eclipsecg)
We basically have taken Drupal in Day and split it into 4 sessions and do one a month for 4 months then redo the cycle. We do it for free. The 4 cycle split was done as to not canalize (too much) the commercial version of Drupal in a Day.
It has been very popular. Our training room maxes out at 36 (for computer based training) and we always have a full house with people on the waiting list. It is also been quite remarkable how many people end up sticking in the main Dallas DUG.
There are a few challenges we have had:
Its free so people RSVP then don't show. We have solved 50% of this problem with pre-session emails asking people to un-RSVP if they can't make it then meetup notifies people on the waiting list that a spot has opened up. But we still have ~25% not showing. It would be good to have something with meetup like functionality to manage attendance. Also meetup does a great job of sending out reminders which really helps boost attendance.
Its free and we loose several hundred dollars every time we put it on. We do printouts, which at around $10+ per printout cost several hundred dollars. We also do drinks and basic snacks. Maybe another $100. All told we estimate we loose about $500 per session. That does not even include hidden costs such as the room, which is a part of our office so it is not a direct cost but not everybody has that luxury.
Its free so we get a lot of true beginners. I love to teach so I don't mind this so much, but I do see the impact it has on the learning experience for the group. True web noobs have lots of challenges and need additional help that we don't see in our commercial courses. There are lots of questions about the basics of the web, troubleshooting old laptops and hosting on GoDaddy (I would lead a much happier life if I didn't have to answer another why you should not host Drupal on GoDaddy question).
I find that in the free classes most of my time is spent helping the lowest common denominator at the expense of the people who can benefit the most from the course. In commercial training we would have 3 trainers for a class that size, but with it being free, we don't have the ability to support extra trainers.
Additionally, the people in commercial training are much better equipped to contribute back to the Drupal community and/or become viable resources for doing high end Drupal work.
My recommendation for doing this would be to charge a minimal fee for the class. Say around $100 - $150. Have lunch, coffee, snacks, etc. Maybe a part of the class fee could go back to marketing the event (through the DA?). I think by charging in that range you still have a very accessible class with some revenue to really do it right.
The WordPress group did something like this and it was very successful: http://www.meetup.com/dfwwordpress/events/26769651/
At the Austin DrupalCamp they did a $150 Drupal in a Day and got around 35-40 people.
I think combining the collaborative marketing force of the DA, local DUGs and commercial training shops with a quality, affordable yet sustainably priced course could be a big win.
Count us in to help with this.
Tom
Website: www.leveltendesign.com
Twitter: @levelten_tom
Learn Drupal: Tutr.tv
more evangelism needed to build interest outside of community
We have a growing network of training partners, who I'm sure would be keen to participate.
http://training.acquia.com/events
I'd like to know how we can help support this.
1) I agree with Steve Burge. Keep in mind, most Drupal training is run at very competitive prices compared with other technical training. There are few locations, that, with even low-cost training, and great marketing can run large courses.
We need to focus on evangelizing outside the Drupal community, and building the demand and interest around learning Drupal, and adding it to people's skills sets.
Examples: Speaking at small business events, speaking at design events, speaking at PHP events, reaching out to colleges, etc. To make this easier, we need more free resources, such as presentations, agendas, etc. In fact, I'd like to collaborate on this kind of work- making free learning materials. Anyone else interested?
2) I also agree with Tom regarding nominal fees. We have run many free courses at Acquia headquarters. A way to help with "free" is to do thorough screening of participants. Even having them fill out a form explaining why they want to take the course.
Acquia Training Partners & Drupal in a Day
This is a great initiative, and we at Acquia super excited to support this in any way we can (as Heather mentioned).
As an initial effort, I'll be working with every Acquia training partner to run "Drupal in a Day" on Feb 24 using the course material we've developed and tested. We'll be waiving our license fee for this course on this day so that our partners can run it as cheaply as possible to ensure the highest attendance.
We'll also run this at our office on the 24th for $25 / person.
Based on our experience, I certainly think that if we do 1 of these global events per quarter, we can certainly hit the BHAG set out. In order to provide the most time to market these events, I suggest that the DA pick dates for Q2, Q3, Q4 now and that we work on getting more and more training companies aligned with these dates.
Thank you,
erich
--
Erich Ludwig | Director, Learning Services
Twitter: @erichludwig
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/erichludwig
Schedule: http://meetwith.me/erich
Get Trained in Drupal : http://training.acquia.com/events/
"I suggest that the DA pick
"I suggest that the DA pick dates for Q2, Q3, Q4 now"
Yes, that certainly would be a big help to those of us who do training full-time.
We've already signed contracts with venues for several classes within days of the Feb 24th date. They're in Boston and Washington where I'm sure there will be some interest in holding one of these DA training sessions ( in fact, Erich has just explicitly mentioned there will be in Boston ).
We'll either need to see if we can make those existing classes part of this event or move them to avoid getting squashed by a sudden wave of other classes.
http://ostraining.com Drupal Training, online and live.
Dates
It is always a great problem to have "too much" Drupal training going on. :)
For Acquia's event on the 24th in Boston - we'll be running this at very low cost (our standard practice for training we conduct at our HQ) and making it open to students/job-seekers only, as we are always sensitive to our commercial delivery partners needs. These kinds of courses tend to actually drive interest in paying courses.
For example, we hope that this attention will help fill the training course our partner Isovera is doing on the 23rd & 24th.
We are also going to work with our partners to make this a generic "Drupal Day" rather than strictly a "Drupal in a Day" day (due to potential name-space confusion with the Acquia course "Drupal in a Day". This may involve some folks running HelloDrupal or other introductory courses, but certainly also still seems like it fits the mandate of a worldwide training day designed to introduce people to Drupal.
Speaking of HelloDrupal, we had great great success globally with it in 2011 (over 800 people trained at over 30 events), and hope to continue that in 2012. Anyone can grab this material and use it for their own efforts, and we're happy to help promote and list these events on training.acquia.com (just get in touch with me to arrange that).
Africa
Though not a target, is it ok if we tag along in Africa? So far, Senegal (2x) and Uganda (1x) will most likely have events. Hope to add Kenya too.
The acquia material looks very useful, btw.
I just added Africa to the
I just added Africa to the wiki. Can't imagine why it was left out, other than lack of resources or perceived interest. AIUI there are quite a few strong communities in Africa - would be great for Drupal Days to be truly global. Leaving Africa out of the mix would be a shame.
Donna Benjamin
Board Member Drupal Association
Executive Director cc.com.au
@kattekrab
EMEA
We didn't leave them out and I agree that there are great communities in Africa. The creator of the Aegir project lives in South Africa and we've had a number of great scholars come to DrupalCon from African countries.
EMEA stands for Europe, Middle East, and Africa
-Jacob Redding
I seem to have an issue with
I seem to have an issue with 4 letter words. let me work on that.
Its pretty awesome to see the success of the idea: Africa alone meets the initial target of EMEA.
Oops! Yeah - sorry - also not
Oops! Yeah - sorry - also not as familiar with EMEA term either.
Donna Benjamin
Board Member Drupal Association
Executive Director cc.com.au
@kattekrab
Africa + France
Joining in with Batje here.
Bantalabs would like to join in and organize a workshop in Bordeaux (France), Dakar (Senegal) and Saint-Louis (Senegal).
When will this initiative be officially announced?
Chicago is on board!
Awesome!
Although I live in Indianapolis, I'll be in Chicago teaching Drupal Site Building February 23, 24.
It will be a BLAST telling the class that we're part of a global movement to spread Drupal to the masses!
http://training.acquia.com/chicago/2012-02-23/site-building-drupal-compr...
Moving Forward!
So - all of us "unofficial" folks - let's rock this hard and set a good baseline for the rest of the community.
By my count, there will be Drupal Training events on or around this date in:
Bordeaux (France)
Dakar (Senegal) - wow wow!
Saint-Louis (Senegal) - wow wow x2!
Kawasaki, Japan - http://training.acquia.com/kawasaki/2012-02-23/drupal-gardens-day-kawasaki
Leuven, Belgium - http://training.acquia.com/leuven/2012-02-23/drupal-module-development-l...
Geneve, Switzerland - http://training.acquia.com/gen%C3%A8ve/2012-02-24/drupal-theming-fundame...
Dublin, Ireland - http://training.acquia.com/dublin/2012-02-24/drupal-dublin-ics
USA
Boston, MA - http://training.acquia.com/burlington/2012-02-24/drupal-day-student-edit...
Portland, OR - http://training.acquia.com/portland/2012-02-24/drupal-day-portland-or-st...
Chicago, IL - http://training.acquia.com/chicago/2012-02-23/site-building-drupal-compr...
Boston, MA - http://training.acquia.com/waltham/2012-02-23/drupal-theming-waltham-ma
Orlando, FL - http://training.acquia.com/orlando/2012-02-24/drupaleasy-presents-acquia...
Washington, DC - http://training.acquia.com/washington/2012-02-27/drupal-day-washington-dc
Washington, DC - http://www.ostraining.com/washington-drupal-intermediate
All of which = awesomesauce in my book...
Can't wait to see what we can all do when we're official, organized, and planned out a bit further in the future. :)
Is there a complete listing
Is there a complete listing of all workshops running in the next few days?
Is Acquia or the Drupal Association doing a press release about this?
Donna Benjamin
Board Member Drupal Association
Executive Director cc.com.au
@kattekrab
and in London
Just found this one in London too
http://groups.drupal.org/node/202788
But it doesn't quite match what's on the website
http://www.ianfairbairn.com/drupal-training/theming-basics-drupal-london...
Donna Benjamin
Board Member Drupal Association
Executive Director cc.com.au
@kattekrab
not part of this effort...
@kattekrab - don't think that's part of this effort - looks like it's £395 for the day...
Oh?! Didn't realise they had
Oh?! Didn't realise they had to be free / cheap? Just Drupal training, happening tomorrow?
Donna Benjamin
Board Member Drupal Association
Executive Director cc.com.au
@kattekrab
tomorrow ;)
Yes, tomorrow, or the day after in our case ;)
The idea is cheap or free, not sure how far a world-wide intro to drupal training day at £395 will get the desired effect.
Unfortunately not going to be able to organise one for Brighton this week as off to http://products.drupaldays.org/ but will organise one soon now I've seen the buildamodule stuff - looks fantastic and perfect as there's people of all levels and backgrounds who come along so it's hard to help all when doing the normal tutored way.
Yeh yeh...
Haven't had time to promote yet but will be also running one in Brightoncisco on 24th along with our Drupal Coworking day @ http://theskiff.org
2 more
You can add Kampala & Nairobi to the list
Registration is now open
For people who want to attend the event in Nairobi or Kampala, registration is here http://events.mountbatten.net
Want to do it in Dallas
I would love to do this in the future in Dallas. We might not do it for this go around b/c we just did Drupal in a Day a couple weeks ago and we are half way through it in our free Drupal intro series for the meetup group. (I am going to poll the meetup group and see if they want to switch formats)
What would be really helpful is to set the next dates (Q2 and beyond) so that we can best integrate this effort with our standard training schedule.
Website: www.leveltendesign.com
Twitter: @levelten_tom
Learn Drupal: Tutr.tv
Adding Dublin!
Feb 24, 9-4:30pm
Bring your own laptop (or indicate in registration and we can provide a computer for you).
A printed manual will be provided.
You will have to buy or bring your own lunch.
More details and to register: Drupal in a Day at ICS.ie
Setting dates and next steps forward
I'm going to start this post with a "WOW!!! Awesome!". Seriously what you guys are pulling together is awesome, I'm really excited for the energy in the comment thread. When I wrote the initial wiki page I added a date as February 24th as an example, I never intended it to run into a real date. But you guys took an idea and ran with it, rocking awesome.
Let's talk next steps. The Association just hired a coordinator to help pull all of this together and stay on top of it. We need to organize marketing resources around it and get a page up announcing it. As we don't have a development staff or graphic designers on staff we're looking to the community for help.
Step 1) Get drupal.org/drupal-days up and running.
This page needs to be designed and should be a one-stop shop for all information about the day and the many locations around the world.
Step 2) Marketing channels
Email copy, twitter messages, etc. need to get ready. @heather has already stepped up in a major way and got us down the road here but like Drupal pulling together a group of marketers will help us pull this together. We're dedicated to using our resources to get that message to as large of an audience as possible.
Step 3) let's choose dates for the year.
Based on feedback from training organizations I'd like to suggest June 22nd, September 21st, and December 7th, 2012.
The above page is a Wiki so let's coordinate and get this party started.
-Jacob Redding
Future Dates
@jredding -
those future dates look great to me.
very exciting to see all the energy for tomorrow - and looking forward to all the modalities of training that will be happening globally.
viva #drupalinaday viva!
(or maybe viva #drupalday viva - to save a few precious characters in the tweeter world)
Adding Build a Module.com Mentored Training to the mix
This is a great initiative, and it's awesome how many individuals and organizations are stepping up for this. I don't know how I missed the discussion, but thank you Christefano for pointing me to it.
Leveraging the Build a Module.com Mentored Training model for this has the potential to really increase the number of trainings and grow participation. Several communities and companies have used the Mentored Training model, and every time it's been extremely well received.
The idea would be that any individual or group would be free to use the Build a Module.com videos and curriculum to put together a mentored training on Drupal Day, which lowers the amount of preparation required and allows Drupal practitioners to be effective mentors instead of requiring the typical trainer skillset.
A few bullet points on the benefits for communities or organizations to use this model:
We've had Mentored Trainings as small as 8 and as big as 60, so the model scales well. The last community-organized training which happened this last weekend in Denver had 40 students, and went really smoothly.
I'd love to do what I can to help with this, so if anybody has any questions or requests, please let me know.
Cheers!
Chris
Chris Shattuck
Learn Drupal with over 600 Drupal video tutorials
Great idea!
I second Chris' motion to encourage organizing a BuildaModule.com mentored video training event. We organized one in January to great success. We had 15 very satisfied participants. With 2 mentors and very little prep on our part we were able to provide high quality Drupal training that allowed everyone to work at their own pace and request as much one-on-one assistance as they needed over the course of the event. Ours lasted 4 hours. Given the very positive feedback we received, we're looking forward to running another video training session in March.
Chris is very generous to provide his video training materials free of charge. To get you started right, he has posted very thorough tips on how to set up, prepare and run a successful mentored training event. If you're looking to build some community through training, consider taking Chris up on his offer. I'd also be happy to share our experience with anyone that has questions.
Barry Madore
Advantage Labs, Inc.
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
Absolutely support this idea
I would 100% support Chris' motion to leverage the Build a module model for this.
I have run 1 course so far using his platform which went really well and subsequently have another 2 in the pipeline. I think it would help this greatly as the need for actual trainers is reduced and I found that the on the job experience of the mentors helped greatly with the questions that were raised.
I have for some time recognised the need to organise some training for the local area, but the workload involved in creating a curriculum, ensuring I knew the material well enough to deliver it effectively in front of a classroom and all the other components needed to run a succuessful training event had always put a massive barrier in front of me. With the buildamodule model nearly all of these aspects were removed and I was able to organise the first training event relatively easily.
Also knowing that the community is getting behind a curriculum would help massively in creating the next wave of developers who would be doing things the Drupal way.
--
G
Thumbs up for buildamodule.com Mentored Training
We just did a 45-student mentored training at CU Boulder this weekend -- as one of the five mentors, I think it rocked!
Students arrived at 9, worked through lunch, and we still had 35+ people working through BuildAModule.com videos at 3PM. We had people that had never used Drupal, folks experimenting with Views and other site building topics, and experienced module developers working through tricky PHP issues. Besides skillsets, we also had awesome diversity in terms of age and sex. We have also had a number of new signups for the Denver/Boulder Drupal Meetups after the class!!
I cannot think of a better model for a community-organized training!
A huge thanks to Chris for so generously sharing his video library!!
Ned @ AppliedTrust
This is a really good idea.
This is a really good idea. I was a mentor in San Francisco and it went very well - people were calling friends to join from other training sessions because the mentored video one was so good.
+1 for BuildAModule.com mentored training!
For all the sky-miles I have gained delivering Drupal trainings coast to coast and here and there... I have never done a full day event here in Indianapolis.
I'm anxious to try out the mentored approach in my own back yard!
+1
I've helped with two of the mentored trainings now, and can confirm what everyone else has said. They're great for trainees, who can work at their own pace and experience level, and also for mentors, who don't need much prep at all.
We've used BaM mentored
We've used BaM mentored training on two occasions so far, the first was a 1.5hr session which wasn't really enough for us to really get into things, but the second time was a 4 hour block where the attendees really had a chance to get into the videos and ask questions.
Provided you are running training for a significant enough block of time I'd have no hesitation in suggesting BaM mentored traoining as a resource to use, we'll definitely be using it again.
@BrianGilbert_
Help make Drupal Melbourne meetups more awesome:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/204518
The best way to grow your local commununity is by participating in it!
Agreed, Mentored Training = Optimal Way To Do This
Drupal training day is a great idea. I think to optimize the benefit of the day and maximize the number of folks doing this, will require two things: 1) High quality pedagogical experience for students + 2) Low inconvenience factor for teachers.
We're doing a BuildAModule mentored training day in Phoenix a few weeks, I've been really impressed being involved with that, and I'm inclined to think it would provide really good bang for the buck on achieving both of the above. Good idea Chris, and thanks for sharing your video library for this.
Introduction to Drupal workshop in Minneapolis
We're running our free Introduction to Drupal workshop on February 24th as well.
We've been running a version of this workshop almost every month for the past few years. It started as a presentation at a conference for nonprofits. The response was so overwhelming that we decided to schedule it on a regular basis as long as people remained interest. With interest in Drupal only continuing to grow, we've filled our workshop every time.
We feel providing a solid overview of Drupal the CMS is important but even more important is introducing the newly interested to the Drupal community and development best-practices.
Good luck to everyone with their Feb 24th events! I look forward to hearing how things go and getting an anecdotal feel for the overall impact of this initiative.
Barry Madore
Advantage Labs, Inc.
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
hashtag
I started using the #drupalinaday hashtag. Adding your #location seems like a good idea.
Lets build the momentum and surf the wave!
Good luck everyone!
How do we get listed on the June Global Training Day?
We have moved our regular intro to Drupal workshop to coincide with Drupal Global Training Days - http://www.meetup.com/dallasdrupal/events/65670682/
How do we get listed on the page at http://drupal.org/learn-drupal?
Tom
Website: www.leveltendesign.com
Twitter: @levelten_tom
Learn Drupal: Tutr.tv
Getting Listed
Hi Tom,
That's great news! I'll connect you with the program coordinator, Steph, who will list you.
Hope all is well,
Megan
Update #learndrupal
Just an update here.
The Twitter hashtag is #learndrupal
The page where trainings are listed (and will be in future) is https://drupal.org/learn-drupal
You can add trainings there and this is just going to get bigger and better.
Learn Drupal Day Marketing
First, thank you to those of you who made Learn Drupal Day happen. In the last couple of weeks, the DA formed the Drupal Marketing Committee to help get the word out about events like this. Please let us know the following:
How did the June 22 training go? Did you fill every seat?
What worked to get the word out? What didn't?
What kind of marketing support do you need?
We want to help you fill 2012 seats in 2012.
Please respond below and we will do everything we can to support you.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Thanks for everything you and
Thanks for everything you and the marketing committee is doing. To answer your questions:
The class went well. We had 6 attendees and 5 of them had advanced technical backgrounds. The makeup of this group made it possible for us to get really deep into advanced topics, such as how Drupal scales, how its database abstraction layer works, and so on.
All of the free intro classes we've done so far have been uniquely shaped by the attendees and their questions. We normally don't go much into advanced topics, so jumping into them this time was a nice change of pace.
We didn't see any signups come through Drupal.org. In other words, the 6 people who attended our class came because of our own marketing efforts and by word of mouth from a previous student of ours.
In the past, we've regularly seen 15-25 attendees at our intro workshops. Admittedly, the attendance was low this time because we didn't do much to promote this event besides announce the class and its outline at a few meetups, on Meetup.com, groups.drupal.org, and http://www.larks.la/training
In the future, we'd like the Drupal Association to provide targeted marketing to businesses and organizations that are in the general area of the class.
While our company already has some pretty decent marketing reach, having potential businesses and organizations hear from the Drupal Association as well will likely resonate with local business owners, CTOs, etc. and that may send more students to our free classes.
This global training day was an experiment for us. We've been offering a free intro to Drupal class every month on the last Friday of the month since February, 2012 and we'll be doing another one next Friday, June 29th. We didn't do much to promote the event on June 22nd and we'll be putting our marketing efforts into the June 29th event instead, which coincides with Drupal Coworking Friday.
Combining our free class with a free coworking day has been highly successful for us. For more about this, see our article at http://www.larks.la/articles/report-from-the-front-lines-free-drupal-tra... that explained why we think this combination works so well.
Founder, CEO
http://www.larks.la
Founder, Lead Burrito Analyst
http://droplabs.net
Organizer, Drupal Adventure Guide
http://drupal.la
As with the Q1 date, it was
As with the Q1 date, it was difficult to schedule live training because the turnaround time was short. In contrast the Q3 and Q4 dates are already picked so this will be much easier to do live events in September and December.
Instead, we opened up all our online Drupal training for the day. What we saw was a lot of people who normally can't pay, specifically people from African countries where credit cards are hard to get and PayPal doesn't reach.
Running down the logs of people we helped on Friday ... Kenya (twice), Ethiopia (multiple times), Ghana, Nigeria (multiple times), Zambia (twice).
http://ostraining.com Drupal Training, online and live.
The training went great. We
The training went great. We had 35 to 40 people. Although we had 62 RSVP on meetup so a lot of no shows.
http://www.meetup.com/dallasdrupal/events/65670682/
We have been running free training for over a year and typically we get only about 25% no shows. I think that is mainly because we originally had it on a Monday evening then moved it to Friday day to coincide with Global Training Day.
The number of attendees was not significantly larger than typical for this event. Looking at the Google Analytics for the meetup group, there were 703 visitors in the last month. 11 were from groups.drupal.org. The bulk of visitors are from Google search and direct.
So it looks like there was not much effect from the listings on drupal.org.
As far as numbers, Meetup has been highly effective in marketing the workshops. Facebook and Twitter help also. It would be great if the DA could generate reach with new segments though. One of the challenges with Meetup and social media is you get a lot of hobbyist. We really want to reach businesses and larger organizations. So far it seems that marketing on our website/blog and email list has been the only effective way to get the business demographic.
Hope that helps,
Tom
Website: www.leveltendesign.com
Twitter: @levelten_tom
Learn Drupal: Tutr.tv
Good questions, Ben.We were
Good questions, Ben.
We were completely filled up from within a couple of hours of announcing the training, which meant there wasn't a lot of room for marketing from the Association's side. We didn't do any tracking of where the registrations came from (can you track that info Event brite?), but they seemed to be directly associated with our newsletter.
It would be great to have outline of what the Association did exactly to promote the trainings, just so we know what happened on that end. Even though my guess is that for most trainings getting signups is probably going to be more due to local initiatives (since a lot of potential students probably aren't on the Association's mailing list), the fringe benefit of getting mentions by the Association, and knowing the reach of that promotion can be a nice thing to encourage future involvement.
Our training went pretty well, and we learned a lot from it. We were forging some new territory by using Google Hangouts as a virtual training space. We limited signups to 40, and had probably 25 actively engaged at some point during the day, though only about half that participated in the Hangouts.
Thanks!
Chris
Chris Shattuck
Learn Drupal with over 600 Drupal video tutorials
Thanks, Chris. I don't know
Thanks, Chris. I don't know exactly what the DA did to promote beyond a mention on D.o the week of. I wasn't involved but I'm going to be for the next one. Do you feel you would not want to do more than 1 class that day? Could you do 2 and/or expand how many were allowed into the hangout? It would be great to see you document your use of Google hangouts to do training. A step-by-step guide that we could provide for other Drupal Day trainers.
I don't know about tracking with eventbrite. Seems like they should have thought of that at some point.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
More good questions! Below is
More good questions! Below is a quick dump of some of the techniques we used and thoughts about it. I plan on putting together something more official later, probably after testing out some ideas that came up after this training.
So in terms of concurrent trainings, or increasing the size, the idea with the Virtual Mentored Training is that it could grow quite a bit larger, potentially to incorporate hundreds of students from the around the world if we had enough mentors, but we capped the attendance at 40 to do some testing and see how things went. We had 6 mentors, some in and out throughout the day, and not a ton of activity in the Hangouts. I think there is some work to be done with the format to make it a more satisfying experience for students, but I'd definitely encourage other trainers to experiment on their own with this as well.
We ran this event using the Mentored Training model, leveraging the videos on BuildAModule.com, and having students choose the videos they wanted to focus on. Each student was given 8 days of free access to the BuildAModule video libray, starting from a couple days before the training so they could watch some and come to the training with questions. We set up a publicly editable Google Doc (after a failure with an Etherpad clone due to a max of 16 simultaneous editors, thank you James Glasgow for the tip that Google Docs can be completely public). We begin with a Hangout On Air orientation so everyone could attend, and talked about the format of the training and how to get started with the videos, and then each mentor broke out and created a Hangout that students could join to ask questions and get help. As mentors or students created Hangouts, they would post the URLs to the shared Google Doc.
Over time, when we got a feel for the activity in the Hangouts, the mentors merged together into just a couple of Hangouts, with the idea that we would break out into more if there was a surge in student activity.
I'd like to measure the success of the training based on student activity in the Hangouts, but it was clear that many of the students were either not comfortable with their mic and video on in an online group setting (maybe their offices look like mine!), or they were focused on video training for the bulk of the day. We had some students check in near the end with questions, after having watched the videos all day. Because Google Hangouts doesn't allow changing the volume of the hangout (which is a little silly), students would leave to watch videos.
I think the biggest hurdle was that nearly all the students were new to Google Hangouts, and either didn't understand why they would connect to one, or what they were supposed to do when they joined. I did my best to anticipate this and prepare students, but you know how it is with long instructional emails. ;)
In the future, we're going to experiment with some different ideas that came up in the post-training mentor de-briefing, like for example having Hangouts focused on particular topics, or having scheduled Hangout discussion time between video watching and practicing. Also, possibly exploring a Google Hangout orientation a day or two before the event so people can get a feel for how they work and feel. We may have more success also in clearly focusing on a particular skill level so that discussions remain on certain strata of complexity.
I definitely plan on putting together a document on the structure we've used so far, but I think we have a bit of work to do on the format before really putting it out there. After spending all day in Google Hangouts, I see some huge potential. It really feels quite intimate and fun, surprisingly close to sitting around with a group of people and talking about ideas and problems. It's fun to watch people talk with one another, and be able to have backchannel discussion right there in the hangout for when a second or third discussion needed to happen. We used screensharing a lot when helping students and also had Skype open for a mentor-only backchannel, which was helpful and also provided us with some entertainment when things got a little slow.
I'll try to remember to post back here when I post something more official.
Thanks!
Chris
Chris Shattuck
Learn Drupal with over 600 Drupal video tutorials
After re-reading this
After re-reading my reply, I realize that you could read it to mean that I thought the DA didn't do anything. I'm sorry! I wasn't saying that at all. I simply meant it literally that I don't know what the DA did. I'm not the person to ask for an outline. Probably Marta could provide that.
"I don't know about tracking with eventbrite. Seems like they should have thought of that at some point." "They" was referring to EventBright. I should have said, "It seems logical to me that EventBright should have built-in tracking but I plead ignorance."
Marta is leading the charge and more than likely has the answer to these types of questions. I'm planning on talking to her this week to coordinate efforts for y'all.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
The Drupal Bus, Coming to a town near YOU!
Hello everybody :)
During the "Young people using Drupal" BOF session at the Oxford Drupal Camp I came up with the idea to have a Drupal bus that travels around the country and visits schools/businesses/events etc and functions as as a mobile training/workshop facility. Since the Camp I've had some more thoughts about the concept and have included them below.
A bit about me
I have experience in working with UK Children's Centres, Primary and Secondary schools and since Drupal hasn't reached those realms, let alone the curriculum, yet I thought of a way to promote Drupal (the web and programming in general) that fits into a regular school day.
The concept
The plan is to set up a presentation package/workshop (Drupal in a day?) and approach schools to schedule in a time to hold the presentation/workshop. The Drupal Bus will be used to hold the workshop, it can have a set of networked computers with 3G Internet uplink. A team of Drupalers, let's call them the D-Team :), will teach young people in bite sized chunks about Drupal, design, programming and web technologies.
And... since it's a bus this can be set up as a rolling (literally :) programme throughout the country visiting as many schools as possible.
The Bus itself will obviously be Drupal branded and eye catching, hopefully functioning as a magnet which encourages people to get drawn in and talk to the D-Team.
A website to go with it
If we build a website where people can find out where the bus will be, include educational content, make it a platform where 'students' can share their workshop/site building experience etc and tie it in with nifty social networking then this could become a great promotional tool for Drupal.
Not just for schools
The bus can off course also be used to approach businesses, universities, charitable organisations, (outdoor) events etc. Anything really that would be appropriate for spreading the word/educating people on Drupal.
So, how can we get this show on the road? Well, let's discuss this further to see if you find it a viable concept and, if so, work on it to make it happen.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.
Stefan van Hooft
iCompute
Web Marketing Consultancy
Feed me: Bird seed | Work
--8<---------------------------
Love it!
I love this idea, it's something I've talked about for years (a mention in my "blueprint" here http://www.edocr.com/doc/473/organic-open-source-cafe-coworking-concept), having an open source bus - code on the road!
Might work better in the U.S. first, depends on costs, funding, etc.
Check out StartupBus for reference
There is a bus, similar to what you are proposing, called http://startupbus.com "StartupBus". They are in the U.S. but also expanding. The organizers might have some tips.
Very cool!
Very cool! I also heard of a guy in Europe somewhere, Belgium I think, who's been working on his own bus built completely out of open source stuff, must find the link...
Oxford Hello Drupal camp
We had 2 paid courses on Thursday before the camp. Those had 24 attendees total. So some went to that instead of the 1/2 day Hello Drupal. We had 24 people for the Hello Drupal at Oxford.
It went really well. I got excellent feedback that those who were brand new were able to understand later presentations at DrupalCamp because they had gone to the session. Doing Hello Drupal on 1/2 day of Day 1 of a DrupalCamp is really useful! (And it's really why I made it in the first place).
People had no trouble w wifi or anything, and got their sites set up, and we worked through the exercises. We had 2 breaks in the three hours and thankfully our hosts also provided coffee which was nice!
We had lots of people who were coming from large HTML/static websites managed still with Dreamweaver, so we spent some time lingering to talk about the page model.
Hello Drupal can be tailored somewhat with detours for those who are "brand new" and "experienced coders". But I think it would even be better with more of a "choose your own adventure" type navigation so the instructor could mold the presentation/exercises.
We've been adding those in, so more ideas are welcome to improve that.
Ideas:
1) A short hashtag #drupalday
2) A presentation slide about Global Drupal Day which all instructors could use.
3) A web page to show a MAP and where all the other events are happening.
4) Maybe affiliate offers or codes on the same page to give to people who participate in Global Drupal Day.
So that means we can't have Drupal Global Training Day
Well I have got an issue. It's the term to participate in "Drupal Global Training Day". One of the condition is as follows:
Terms of Participation:
You must be a training company to participate.
I understand why DA have this condition. But in New Delhi(India) there is no company which has registered with DA for "Drupal Global Training Day" and I am quite sure no one will.
There is one training scheduled in Hydrabad, but that's far away for most of the North India Drupal community. North India specially New Delhi and places adjoining it, has huge Drupal community.
I, in collaboration with other Drupalers, was thinking about organizing this event. But after reading this condition I found out that we are not eligible. We were sure that we could find trainers who will be happy to train for free.
So now we can't participate in this event and promote it on Drupal.org, we are thinking about organizing a Drupal Camp because some people are considering to attend it in Hydrabad(India).
But I am sure there are many who will miss it only because it's not happening in Delhi.
So we want to organize one such event(Drupal Camp) in Delhi. But I don't have much clue on what should I do? Can anybody out there point me in right direction so that we, here in Delhi/NCR start to organize this kind of event regularly? How should we go about promoting it? Can somebody who has organized event regularly help us in our quest.
Thanks
Jasdev S. Moun
(+91) 98 11 056333
www.jasdev-moun.com