June NYC Drupal Group Meetup! 6/17

Posted by ezra-g on May 29, 2009 at 6:37pm

Start:

2009-06-17 18:30 - 21:00 America/New_York

Organizers:

litwol

ezra-g

Event type:

User group meeting

June NYC Drupal Group Meetup!

Wed. June 17th, 2009, 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM - 7 World Trade Center, 29th Floor, Mansueto Ventures Directions

Schedule:

We're open to suggestions about what people would like to discuss, have presented, or otherwise cover. Leave a comment here saying what you'd like to cover at this meetup!

Introductions:

We'll start by going around the room and letting folks introduce themselves, saying:

Say their experience with Drupal (if any)
What they'd like to get from the meetup.

Depending on the schedule, we'll likely break into smaller informal discussion groups around common interests.

Don't be shy -- Everyone is welcome and invited to join us! Please sign up in advance -- Building security requires us to close the list at 3:00p the day before the meetup.

update: Event moved to the 17th so it happens after D4D.

Comments

Date

Posted by kwang0274 on May 29, 2009 at 7:03pm

Is the meeting on June 10 or June 13?

I apologize for the

Posted by litwol on May 29, 2009 at 7:30pm

I apologize for the inconvenience, but the event have been moved to the 17th to happen after D4D.

------------------
Sometimes interesting things appears on http://litwol.com

Ah! Stravinsky's 127th Birthday!

Posted by forestmars on May 29, 2009 at 7:57pm

Looking forward to it!

Of course this naturally raises the question, What do Stravinsky and Drupal have in common?

-Forest Mars

answer

Posted by forestmars on June 8, 2009 at 3:24pm

They are both known for maddeningly complicated themes, of course.

(Although Drupal's have never caused a full on riot, to the best of my knowledge...)

Good point. I don't have

Posted by ezra-g on May 30, 2009 at 4:36am

Good point. I don't have access to delete them but I put in a request to the g.d.o admins to delete those comments.

just edit it

Posted by forestmars on May 31, 2009 at 7:14pm

You can just edit it and change the date.

(Although I see it's already been deleted...)

yay.. will be there.. went

Posted by patoshi on May 30, 2009 at 5:03am

yay.. will be there.. went to the may one.... found it very very informative... too bad i didnt come to the bar afterwards.. it was kinda late and cold... would be great if you guys talked about module development.. i cant seem to grasp how hooks work.

Any NYC Stickers?

Posted by casaswing on May 30, 2009 at 5:52am

Any way I can get a NYC sticker? Appreciate anyones help.

YEs we still got some. very

Posted by litwol on May 30, 2009 at 10:36pm

YEs we still got some. very few left but i'll try not to forget to bring it to the next meetup.

------------------
Sometimes interesting things appears on http://litwol.com

Thank you

Posted by casaswing on May 31, 2009 at 2:38pm

Thanks litwol. I'll come up to you next meetup and ask you for one. (or two if available?)

Just a reminder

Posted by casaswing on June 16, 2009 at 9:45pm

Hi litwol. Just wanted to send a reminder about the stickers. I'll ask you about them tomorrow. Thanks.

Please count me in!

Posted by webmamma5000-gdo on May 30, 2009 at 11:18am

sounds fun

Looking forward to it!

Posted by jpowell-gdo on May 30, 2009 at 2:12pm

Looking forward to it!

Count me in too, thanks.

Posted by AshokanKid on May 31, 2009 at 4:38pm

I was at the Brooklyn DrupalCamp and then met up with a crew over at the bar in Bklyn Hts. All was great fun and interesting as well. Kudos to the organizers of that event.

Looking forward to seeing some of you again. I'm particularly interested in Theming, basically getting some of my "other sites" to look (as) good in Drupal. And some fun too~ ?

AshokanKid
Lower Hudson Vally, New York

I find that I know people

Posted by capellic on June 1, 2009 at 10:27am

I find that I know people more by their username than their real name. When doing intros, it might be good to ask people to also state their username.

I agree

Posted by Grammarian on June 1, 2009 at 2:40pm

It would be good to be able to match the real people with the online people!

Jean Gazis
www.jeangazis.com
www.webhostny.com

I second that notion :)

Posted by likewhoa on June 8, 2009 at 7:04am

I second that notion :) Just don't expect me to match my avatar with my face :P

bending technology to fit businesses.

Visiting New York

Posted by frazras on June 8, 2009 at 11:32am

Great,
I am visiting New York from Jamaica (the country) and I was really hoping that there would be a meetup while I was in town. We just had our second meetup in Jamaica and I would love to see how older groups operate.
I will try my very best to make it.

Dang

Posted by MacRonin on June 9, 2009 at 2:55pm

I think I have a conflict for the 17th, but hopefully it will end early enough so I can do both.

Suggestions for topics - Facebook Connect, backups, etc.

Posted by allanhoffman on June 14, 2009 at 2:22am

I'm looking forward to this, and I have a few suggestions for discussion:

1) Facebook Connect with the Drupal for Facebook module

At Web100 (http://www.web100.com), we've implemented Facebook Connect with Dave Cohen's Drupal for Facebook Module (http://drupal.org/project/fb). Using Facebook Connect presents a number of issues/challenges, and we decided to go the somewhat interesting/unconventional route of providing Facebook Connect as the only way for readers/visitors to log in to Web100 (for commenting and adding user-generated content, which we're adding very gradually); in other words, when a user logs in with Facebook Connect, he/she doesn't ever see a standard Drupal login page. There are lots of pros and cons to doing this.

I'd be willing to present/discuss this, if there's interest, with the caveat that I'm not a developer and likely wouldn't be able to answer many of the more technical questions (the actual work to implement this at Web100.com was done by Dave Cohen and Trellon).

FYI: Right now, there's not much you can actually do at Web100.com after logging in, though you can test out a new feature with a custom module that allows you to post a website review (for anything, like your blog or company) with a "Mad Libs"-like interface:
http://www.web100.com/node/add/user-review

2) Backups

What are the easiest/best ways to backup a Drupal site? And how do you actually test to make sure your backups work? Looking for advice on this...

3) Local Development Environment

I'd be looking for any tips on setting up and maintaining a local development environment to test out modules, etc.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to this.

Allan

1) This is very interesting.

Posted by skyredwang on June 15, 2009 at 7:17pm

1) This is very interesting. Even though Facebook Connect is proprietary and semi-home-brewed OAuth system, the feasibility to integrate third party website with facebook can bring a lot of excitement. Also, have you considered its direct competitor "sign-in with Twitter?

Facebook Connect

Posted by allanhoffman on June 15, 2009 at 7:46pm

I can't say I really considered the sign-in with Twitter option -- I started the process back in March or so, and I don't think the Twitter sign-in was really around then, or not getting much attention... (I could be wrong about when it was released/introduced.)

One of my goals was to keep things really, really simple. I think many users are probably mystified by all of the sign-in options provided at some websites. The Facebook Connect implementation seems to offer somethings (a) really, really simple, from a user's perspective, and (b) has a very large user base.

And Facebook Connect provides other pluses, too, which I haven't really implemented (though I'd like to) -- i.e., bringing a sort of readymade social network to a site.

Planning to be there for my first Drupal NYC meetup

Posted by agerson on June 14, 2009 at 3:45am

Planning to be there for my first Drupal NYC meetup

Excited

Posted by technicka on June 15, 2009 at 3:39am

I'm excited for my first Drupal meetup e.v.e.r

A real novice... maybe discuss resources for learning...

Posted by Bio 190D on June 15, 2009 at 11:24pm

This will be my first time at a meetup. I think I definitely fall under the "novice" category but I am really interested in becoming more proficient. Maybe we could discuss what the local available resources are for learning how to Drupal. I am interested in both formal and informal ways of learning.

drupal meetup

Posted by gxbaker on June 16, 2009 at 12:54am

I'm definitely a drupal newbie. I need some mentoring. I'm working my way thru a few books, so I hope to be able to develop websites in the future with drupal.
I'm looking forward to the meeting.
Jerry

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Posted by patoshi on June 16, 2009 at 1:34am

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ... setting this drupal multisite setup is killing me... i cant figure out how to get the subsites to read the code base in another directory.. would be great if someone went over that. im on a dedicated and have root access.

Visitor from Brazil

Posted by markun on June 16, 2009 at 1:50am

hey guys,

I'm from Brazil. Run a small drupal workshop and I'm going to NY to attend the OpenVideo Conference. Will try to drop by the meetup so we can chat a little and exchange experiences.

Thx,
Pedro Markun

Streaming Media In Drupal

Posted by rlanter on June 16, 2009 at 2:45pm

Hey, I would really like to see a discussion on implementing streaming video and audio using Drupal.

Thanks,

Rob Lanter

Embedded Media Field

Posted by allanhoffman on June 16, 2009 at 2:56pm

Yes, that sounds like a great topic. I'd be particularly interested in any thoughts on using the Embedded Media Field -- a way to provide media files from third-party providers. That seems like a great way to essentially have files hosted elsewhere but appear with a website.

Allan

I can talk emfield

Posted by winston on June 17, 2009 at 1:15am

I'm guessing there will be others who know more than I do about this topic, but it is something I've been much interested in of late.

There is a lot of movement in general in the "media" space (both embedded and otherwise) - see http://groups.drupal.org/media.

See you tomorrow.

Themeing

Posted by technicka on June 16, 2009 at 5:40pm

I think it would be great to have a discussion about basic themeing... any tips people can give or useful resources to checkout.

technicka come see me and i

Posted by johnvsc on June 17, 2009 at 12:26am

technicka
come see me and i can help you out :)

8)~
johnvsc@gmail.com
917.676.0677

Advanced and Beginners

Posted by johnvsc on June 16, 2009 at 6:28pm

One of the things that I would like to so more is take newbies outside the main conference room and have q/a sessions. When we did them in the past, the receptions seemed good... so for this meet up and those in the future, I'll take that on ... esp for designers / themers :)

That way, the main conference area can be for in depth discussions/ presentations. y'know?

maybe we could occupy the area where the tables are.

Also, we need to clean up afterward... and put everything back in it's place...

thanks to mansueto for hosting, as always!

8)~
johnvsc@gmail.com
917.676.0677

Simpletest help

Posted by taz88ny on June 16, 2009 at 7:11pm

I'm pretty new to Drupal and I need to write simpletests for new content types that contain CCK fields. A discussion on how to properly write these tests would be very helpful.

Luis

Discussion Topic: fallout from D4D re design vs dev

Posted by mcaudy on June 16, 2009 at 7:33pm

One possible topic of discussion is the fallout from some of the comments / discussions made at the recent Design 4 Drupal Camp (D4D) about the desire / demand by designers for cleaner HTML code output from the Views and Panels modules.

Earl Myles (MerlinofChaos) wrote an angry/anguished response to some of the negative comments made about this at D4D. As essentially the sole developer of the Views and Panels modules, he understandably felt personally attacked by some of the strident comments made at D4D. See his post here: Views, Panels, economy of front end code, and classes and namespace.

Moshe Weitzman wrote an exellent summary of three of the main topics presented at D4D: Highlights from Design 4 Drupal..
There also is considerable discussion both pro and con in the comments following Moshe's article, about Earl's post.

This could be an interesting / important topic for discussion at Wednesday's meetup. It touches on major new developments for Drupal theming. It also illustrates important points about the need for civil and informed discussion within an open source community, such as Drupal.

Merlin creates clarity ... not Chaos

Posted by johnvsc on June 16, 2009 at 8:32pm

I personally felt offended after reading that post.

merlinofchaos does so much for our community and what he has done with Views (& Panels, and late night problem solving and .....) is brilliant.

The problem going forward is central to the next generation of Drupal solutions: Can we (devs & themers ) create a structure that leaves markup to the themers and functionality to the developers? We are at an exciting crossroads and while there are bound to be conflicts ... we must foster our community and reinforce the fact that we are all building this together. There is this grey area that we can both shake hands. Should we accept this ... or should we move apart.

Ina large sense, what Skinr does in the former... is in the embracing of "Hey, designer... if you wanna play in our playground, you gotta do some real work." (and I do mean REAL work... really coding / programming is really hard, even moreso coming from the design side!)

In the Dev world, as well as in the design world, criticism can be destructive or constructive. In college i had a professor literally burn one of my drawing as a critique, in front of the class. (Since then, I have been pretty immune to criticism) but the only lesson that I learned what he was a fucking asshole. In graduate school, the profs that I had were the ones that I read about in Art History in undergrad: they communicated things very clearly ... I had more "A-Ha" moments than I ever thought I could.

Unfortunately, the individual who posted that really doesn't know about our community (as pointed out by Earl himself) due to the nature of his/her ignorance.

I look at this period as the difficult separation of conjoined twins: each wanting to be his/her own self ... but one's who's life is shared with some one else. And right now, the dev's have the designers heart and vital organs...

We need to treat them with the respect (and honor) that they deserve... and support them like they, really, support and enable us.

8)~
johnvsc@gmail.com
917.676.0677

Well, one of his modules is called Chaos Tools Suite...

Posted by winston on June 17, 2009 at 12:16am

So I guess he does create Chaos ;)

Seriously, totally agree John. Decided I'd post my thoughts directly at angrydonuts.com - Awesome Beer and Software.

See ya tomorrow!

Re-cap of Sunday's Action List

Posted by johnvsc on June 17, 2009 at 12:34am

LOL, you crack me up!

I would like to get together and re-cap our action list ... take maybe 15- 20 mins and figure out who promised what and keep the ball rolling!

I think that this corresponds to another post, ugh but i am on my home terminal and can't see it in in the IRC history :(

johnvsc@gmail.com
917.676.0677

Totally! Action Action Action!

Posted by winston on June 17, 2009 at 1:24am

I've made a lot of notes - even got a little bit of love on this issue - http://drupal.org/node/491454.

Not sure if I'll have time for a graphical markup of the theme by module idea, but I have a lot of notes that may help move this to the next step.

See ya tomorrow.

That's seasonal beer,

Posted by skyredwang on June 17, 2009 at 1:58am

That's seasonal beer, according to my site http://greatbrewers.com/brand/spaten. It's available in WI now, but you can spy on the beer finder. http://greatbrewers.com/beer-finder.

Of course!!

Posted by winston on June 17, 2009 at 3:04am

How could I forget that we have the best beer website man in the biz right here in NYC!

Yeah, I knew it was seasonal. Even in season I can't find it, but now I can ;)

First time I had that was in a bar in the Northwest Bronx frequented by firemen (233rd st area) with my grandfather (who was not a fireman). Anyway, there are some special memories on that one.

See ya tomorrow. Thanks for posting the links.

Given Oleg's (litwol's)

Posted by mcaudy on June 16, 2009 at 9:46pm

Given Oleg's (litwol's) approval for this topic, I will plan to present 10-15 minutes on the issues laid out in my original comment above on this meetup page. I also would suggest giving time to Chris Bryant and Jacine Rodriguez - who will be visiting - for them to present some info on Skinr, which was one of the three main new theming topics presented at D4D, and summarized in Moshe's post, linked to above.

I also am including a link to a post that I made on Merlin's (Earl Myles') site, where I personally thanked Earl for his work, and I described what I think are some of the issues that are contributing to the present problem and post-D4D tension: Post D4D: Thanks So Much For Your Work On Views And Panels.

Yes, please. I would like

Posted by capellic on June 17, 2009 at 12:58pm

Yes, please. I would like to see/hear all of this.

Enjoyed last night's

Posted by capellic on June 18, 2009 at 12:40pm

Enjoyed last night's meet-up. It was a great idea to split the room between vets and newbies. I too have been concerned that we've been making them feel even more intimidating when we launch into discussions about how Drupal can manage IRC rooms. Very cool, but also terrifying! ;-)

I also got a lot out of the discussion that extended beyond tech and about the working dynamics of the Drupal community (and the resulting friction). Other non-tech topics that could stand to be discussed at meetups would be updates on D7 and other initiatives without having to give a demo. A round table on "my favorite module" might be another good idea.

Great meeting everyone

Posted by callaire on June 18, 2009 at 2:13pm

It was great meeting everyone last night and putting some faces and names together. Hopefully, we can do some business together soon.

Chris Allaire
Talener Group

Thanks!

Posted by jpowell-gdo on June 18, 2009 at 12:58pm

Great meeting, everyone. Thanks!

Thanks johnvsc

Posted by casaswing on June 18, 2009 at 2:05pm

I just wanted to say thanks to johnvsc for taking the time out to answer questions for the newbies. As someone that has some experience and is looking to grow some more with Drupal, it was greatly appreciated and I am looking forward to see where this progresses.

Did anyone take good notes?

Posted by arcane on June 18, 2009 at 2:24pm

Alas, I missed last nights meeting. I really wanted to hear about facebook connect, especially about:

pros and cons with integrating with existing profiles.
Also does facebook connect synchronize profile information between facebook and drupal
Does it support activity posted in drupal surfacing in your activity feed in facebook.

Did anyone take good notes? Hopefully they can be posted here.

Facebook Connect

Posted by allanhoffman on June 18, 2009 at 5:30pm

There was a lot on the table last night, and so we didn't get to discuss FB Connect, but to answer your questions (or try)...

I can't necessarily comment on integrating with existing profiles, as at Web100.com we used FB Connect to create our first logins for users (i.e., users who aren't editors, admins, etc.).
Hm, on the question of synchronizing, I'm not quite sure what you mean, but Drupal for Facebook does make it possible for a user to "link" an existing account with his/her Facebook account.
And it definitely supports activity posted in Drupal appearing in your feed. To try this out, you could visit http://www.web100.com/node/add/user-review and post a review of your website. Or you could comment on any of the Spotlight articles in the blue bar at Web100.com. All of those bring up a pop-up allowing you to share at Facebook.

Skinr block classes

Posted by capellic on June 18, 2009 at 7:31pm

For those enthralled with the capability that Skinr gives you to apply classes to a block for easy theming but can't see switching to Skinr for an existing site, consider using the Block Class module. No, it's not as easy as clicking checkboxes, but it will insert classes so you can theme.

http://drupal.org/project/block_class

June NYC Drupal Group Meetup! 6/17

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