Los Angeles Meetup - March 31, 2009
L.A. Drupal - Los Angeles' Professional Drupal Network & User Group
NEW VENUE, NEW TIME!
When? Tuesday, March 31st, 7:30PM-9:30PM (new start time)
Where? 902 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90401 (Venue Sponsor: CauseCast.org)
Map: http://tinyurl.com/LAdrupal-meetup-venue
Whats an LA Drupal meetup like? Fun & Interesting!
- LA Drupal meetups are free and open to anyone interested in Drupal from beginner to guru, but you have to bring a fun attitude and br willing to share or learn.
- We have areas for networking, general topics, and more advanced learning and sharing. It's like three meetings in one night - with a big breakout session at the end.
- We like to highlight and encourage folks with cool local projects to present at upcoming meetings. In the past year we've had presenters from Warner Brothers Records; hosting over a hundred artist sites on Drupal, standup2cancer.org - over a million hits in one day during the airing of the show, and local shops such as www.ThisByThem.com, www.openChimp.com, www.chillco.com, www.exaltations.net, www.IJHANA.com, www.WorkHabit.com, www.AchieveInternet.com, and others. Topics have included How to build your first Drupal Module, Using Views 1 & Views 2, Panels module, Drush module, Theming, and Scaling Drupal & Cloud computing among others.
- Have a topic you'd like to see? Add it here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/9220
Agenda
Free Beer & Pizza provided by our host: www.causecast.org
Book Raffles sponsored by Apress and Packt Publishing
Main Presentation Area
Main presentation area holds up to 80 people and is geared towards general interest topics, especially geared towards people who are new to Drupal or the Topic(s) being presented. It is also a forum for sharing, asking questions,
- News: report from Drupalcon 2009 - if you attended then comment below to offer some commentary.
- Presentation: Drupal Security presented by Dave Keayes, an LA Drupal member. We will be helping Dave release a paper on the subject for all Drupal fans to download (currently over 20 pages)!
- Q & A followed by Job Announcements
- Lightning Talks - come prepared to talk for 5min about something you'd like to share with the group. Find a cool new module? A Best Practice? A site you'd like to show-off? Keep it succinct - you get stopped at five minutes if you're still rambling - but we'll be nice about it.
** IJHANA Lightning Talk: Sony Pictures Television International goes Drupal 6 for hundreds of sites and IJHANA took them there. Find out how.
Drupal Labs (intermediate > advanced skillset)
The idea behind Labs is to provide a forum to help developers and themers get to the next level or to provide a discussion room where elementary explanations on drupal don't need to be revisited. The Labs room fits 10-15 people max. in a workroom with a projector.
Labs Theme (subject to change)
Dissecting Drupal: API's, best practices, cool tricks, Drupal trickery
Project Tools: What applications are in your toolbox? Why do you use them? What steps do you take when you first take on a project. What do you use for version control? I'm using bazaar, and can share why I like it for web development. I like Netbeans & gedit.
Chill area
Do you just want to come chill, network, or meet with a friend? There is an area in the back with couches and space to hang. You can also hang outside in the front. But in both cases, please be considerate of the main presentation.
And...
In addition to our presentation(s) of the night we have open-mic opportunities for those who have general Drupal questions or need help. We will also be offering open-mic opportunities through the night to ask Drupal questions during our wonderful meeting segment, "Ask the LA Drupal Community." Need to just ask another human a Drupal question? Then this is that chance.
We may have a raffle for attendees, and as always, the end of the meeting is our networking session with the fun and knowledgeable LA Drupal crowd.
Those wishing to make announcements for Drupal jobs/work, please contact chrischarlton and we can provide time for you to speak to the audience.
Tags for the night:
Post photos on Flickr.com with the tag "ladrupal" and "drupal".
Ical feed
At the meetup - please help! :)
Mike Stewart, another Drupaller from NY and I are working on a project we are calling the "We Are Open Source Project" and we need your help!
The idea is a rather ambitious public service awareness (PSA) campaign to really foster open source as a mainstream ideology.
Before we can raise the funds and get the people on board, we need to be able to give a clear sense of what we are doing, and so:
I will be bringing my still camera, a video camera, and my light kit with me to the next LA Drupal meeting on 3/31. Our goal is to take pictures and collect preliminary interview footage so that we can put together a prototype PSA.
This will, ideally, help make the goal of this project clear and bring get more people and Open Source active companies involved!
If you are willing to participate and help us out, please come prepared to speak about your own ideals behind using Open Source. Why do you use it? Why do you love it? Why are you an evangelist?
Feel free to contact me with any questions or ideas!
Also, we just threw up a very basic website today - check it out and watch it grow:
www.weareopensource.org
Thanks!!!
Rain
Sounds very cool...
I talk about my love for open source with everyone I meet. I'll definitely enjoy putting in my 2cents.
Sounds good.
This sounds like a pretty interesting project. Are you familiar with the Non-Profit Technology Network? http://nten.org/ They have some similar goals as well.
great lead!
Thanks for the NTEN lead - they are definitely a great resource for and potential beneficiary of this project!
To all -- if you are willing to have your picture taken and/or interview on camera about why you love open source (in the most idealistic fashion), I'll be ready to record you tonight. Thank you in advance!
Absolutely fantastic meetup
I recently moved to LA from Toronto, Canada and I have been a very proud member of the Toronto Drupal Community. I had been informed beforehand that the LA Drupal community was quite large. With that in mind, I was extremely nervous about what the LA Drupal meetups would be like.
When I entered the doors on Tuesday night, I was completely floored by the number of people that came out to the meetup. I wasn't prepared by the size of the Drupal community out here and felt very happy to see the large number of Drupalers.
What really did it for me though, was sheer amount of positive energy put into the meetup by the organizers, and the amount of organization that seems to have gone into this meetup. With that said, I was equally impress by the energy and excitement from everyone else to match it. I really enjoyed myself and look forward to future meetups and participating with all of you!
Yes ! Great Meetup
This was our first LA meeting and I have to say that it was everything and more than we hoped it would be.
I completely agree that the positive enthusiasm was really inspiring.
Kudos to Chris, Mike and Christefano for organizing the event.
You guys clearly care about setting the tone and LA Drupal raises the bar big time.
Thanks to Kate for being so warm and inviting as the "rep" that night for CauseCast.org. and we thank you for providing such a great space as well as the food and drinks.
Rain and Mike, we think your project, "we are open source" is so valuable.....please keep us posted.
We look forward to participating and supporting the community.
Thanks Again,
Sally and Barry
Thanks for the feedback
Thanks so much for the positive feedback. We all put a lot of time and energy trying to organize interesting meetups - and I'm glad your first experience was good. We're glad you made the effort to come out and appreciate all the interactions that go on at the meetups.
As organizers, we're very open to participation and suggestions. Keep in mind we have a wiki for topic suggestions here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/9220. Also, let us know if you'd like to see other changes.
From my perspective this month, Drupal Labs really took off! It was a little looser than planned - but the room was packed - and we had two-to-four different conversations going on at any given time. After participating in the conversations, I like the idea of labs even more - a room aimed at advanced drupal topics and lots of interaction. I think having some time for peer design/project review in future labs would be cool too.
Agreed on great meeting
I was also a first-timer and enjoyed the meeting (and not just because of the free beer.)
I'll definitely chime in on the wiki for topic suggestions.
BTW, just launched my first Drupal site last night: http://WellToldTales.com
Upgraded a simple Wordpress blog/podcast to a full-fledged community site. Open to suggestions on improvements/additions.
Cheers,
Kevin
Photos from the LA Drupal March meeting
Hot off the SD card! Photos from the LA Drupal March 2009 meeting. http://www.flickr.com/groups/ladrupal/
March meeting security presentation poll
New poll asking about the Drupal security presentation by Dave on the 31st of March. http://groups.drupal.org/node/21044