Posted by patrickavella on June 12, 2012 at 7:24pm
I'm not sure how we got off track, but I'd still very much like to have Drupal meet ups!
If people are interested (and I know some of you are) please post!
I've put a good deal of thought into the meet ups in terms of how to make them better, more interesting, and more viable. Since we're a small group it may make sense to schedule meet ups further apart to avoid running out of topics. I think it's also worth exploring alternative formats: Topics and lightning rounds like the last few meetings, Show and Tell, or even just meeting up at a local pub or coffee shop.
Let me know. I'll be Drupaling in the mean time!
Comments
Is it Meet Ups or Meets Up?
Patrick,
Thanks for getting this started again. Yes, I am interested in resuming the meetings.
Maury
Meetups
Patrick,
thank you for this. I'm certainly still very much interested in meeting up. Let's keep the ball rolling on this.
Meetups, Group Direction
Definitely count me in for future meetups! In the meantime, I plan on reaching out to others on campus and beyond to see if we can't draw a larger crowd. I can also see about finding space a space at RPI.
I wonder if it would help to revisit what we're all looking for out of this group (either in this thread or another)? Certain formats and topics are better geared toward different things, so that may help in generating the momentum we need.
We're up to four people,
We're up to four people, awesome. Once we have a date and place laid out I'll do a little bit of posting through local websites to see if anyone else might be interested that's not signed up to the Albany group.
In terms of goals, I just think it makes us all stronger developers. Of course, evangalizing Drupal and cementing it as a popular choice for development in the area has the nice side effect of making more jobs available for all of us.
There are many people in the area who are new to Drupal and daunted by the learning curve, and "content creators" that get tasked with maintaining Drupal sites but don't really know what's possible and within their capabilities, it's my hope that having a regular group can help these people make better use of Drupal as well.
In terms of format:
I still like the idea of presentations and lightning rounds because you get a high level overview of modules/distros you may or may not have even heard of. The problem with the format is we run out of topics quickly unless people make requests for certain things.
What is everyone else's opinion?
I'm okay with having the meet ups where ever it makes most sense.
I'm not sure if this is
I'm not sure if this is something other people would be interested in, but I'd like to hear about problems people have run into, and how they got around them.
On another note, I don't see why we can't have some informal meetups in coffee shops. It's also potentially a good way to recruit some of the Ualbany crew, provided we meet near the campus. I would suggest Uncommon Grounds, located on Western Avenue. I would have to contact the people on campus who I know are using (or trying to use) Drupal, and it's possible no one will be interested in regular meetings, but it's a thought.
Plus, Uncommon Grounds has some pretty good sandwiches.
Those sound like great
Those sound like great lightning round topics, actually, since they're only meant to be ~5min: "This is the problem that bit me, this is how I got it to behave." And I'm sure those five minutes could save a lot of time for everyone else in the room!
I'd also recommend Brown's in Troy, if people want to meet informally. Great food, on the river, and those who enjoy the occasional beer won't be disappointed.
How about we try a bit of
How about we try a bit of both? I'm a fan of the idea of informal and formal meetups. There's a lot less pressure schedule-wise to attend an informal event, and new members may be less intimidated using that as an opportunity to get acquainted with everyone while we talk shop. That said, I thought the meetup that I attended went really well, so there's something to be said for each format.
New to the group
I would enjoy meeting some Drupalistas in the Albany area. I am just starting to use Drupal. Normal working hours are best - it is difficult for me to attend after hours events.
I'm down for a coffee shop
I'm down for a coffee shop meet up, and the coffee shop near UAlbany makes a great cup of joe.
Let's set a date and get a rough head count of people who will be coming. The coffee shop is a little small, so anything more than like 5 or 6 people might be a little too much? There's also a panera bread up washington ave. extension that might be a little bigger.
Edit: My vote goes for Saturday Lunch time, June 30th (two weeks from now)
I can't make June 30th. But
I can't make June 30th. But hey, if enough people can come, I'm good to miss this one.
Kulonlz, pwavery, cyptm,
Kulonlz, pwavery, cyptm, mbouchard What days/times/formats work for you?
David, you're up near RPI, that's probably really far for you for a coffee thing?
I'm really up for any type of meeting as long as people would like to come talk about Drupal :)
albany_meetup_forum_alter(&$forum, &$forum_state)
Hey,
Thanks for asking.
The best times for me are after 5pm on a weeknight. Coffee or beer on a Saturday is probably not workable for me although I'd love to do it. I live about 75 miles from Albany in the woods of Otsego County. I'm happy to travel though, especially, for Drupal. So, I'll show up when I can.
Topics or ideas for discussion at a drupal-clatch:
Development environments: What tools are people using to develop with drupal? Editors, IDE's, debuggers, frameworks, prototyping (e.g., Balsamiq Mockups), design tools, etc. I am especially weak on theming and don't know what tools I should be using. I've seen some beautiful drupal websites and I don't know how they're done. BTW, I am now using Eclipse with the XDebugger. I could give lightning or perhaps longer talk on this if there is interest (this may be old news for most of you).
Drupal API and glue code: How are people modifying drupal to bend it to their will? Menus? Forms? Database? Users? Recently, I've used form API, user API, and views API, but am a beginner, really. Anyone written a module and contributed to d.o? Has anyone submitted a patch? What's the process?
Other Development topics: Getting the most out of devel. [[http://drupal.org/project/features|Features] module? Getting the most out of git (yeah, I though of it). How are people testing and deploying?
Drushgetting the most out of drush.
Contrib modules: I am always interested in learning about new modules. Has anyone used Entity Reference? Contextual Administration (this one has been very handy for me)?
Distributions: What distros of Drupal are people using? Successes? Failures?
Documentation/Training/News: How are people getting trained? What training sites are do you like? Staying up-to-date? What reference works are you using outside of d.o or api.d.o? (If you haven't seen The Weekly Drop you should check it out). Who are the drupal consulting companies in the Tri-city area?
Problem solving idea 1:
Everyone could bring a drupal issue or problem they've been having and we could work on solving it together.
Problem solving idea 2.
We could look for unanswered questions on d.o or drupal.stackoverflow.com and answer them as a team
DrupalCamp-Albany:
This would be a longer term goal but it's something to shoot for and would perhaps give our nascent group some focus.
Hope to see you all soon,
Maury
I'm also free during the
I'm also free during the week. This weekend I'm going to Syracuse, and next weekend is also probably booked.
What about a Thursday or
What about a Thursday or Friday Evening meetup at a coffeeshop?
I completely agree about a long term goal of a drupalcamp-albany. I'm actually somewhat surprised the drupal community is as small as it is here. It will take a campaign of hearts and minds pull other developers out of the wood work.
In Re: to dev environments:
I just use Kate (KDE programmers text editor) and the command line. I use Linux(ubuntu) as an OS exclusively and I've been that way for over a decade. I can't imagine a better development environment.
When I went to "Do it with Drupal", lullabot's newbie drupal conference, they ALL used macbooks, that includes some big names in drupal like Ryan from ecommerce guys and karen of cck. From what I understand Acquia is mac crazy too but I've never been there to confirm. I'm not sure what editors they're using, since their on macs I'm going to go on a limb and say either xcode or eclipse. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm using a Mac and just
I'm using a Mac and just started doing everything in Coda, and I love it. They just came out with Coda 2, but the Drupal plug-in needs to be upgraded.
Dev Envs, Meeting Availability
The topic of development environment seems relevant for all and thorny for some, so I'd hate for it to get lost in here - I'll go ahead and create a new thread for it in a moment. :>
I'll be out of town and unreachable all next week (this Friday through the following Sunday), but Thursdays could work in the future - I usually travel Friday-Sun, though other than that I have no problems traveling for the coffee/pub thing, and on the weekends I don't travel I'd be otherwise available. I can also make most meetups during the workday if I know about them far enough in advance.
EDIT: Should add that Tuesdays and Wednesdays are ideal for me after-hours.
This Thursday?
This Thursday?
Meetups
David thanks for creating the development thread.
As far as the meet-ups I'm usually available week days after 6:30pm and any time on weekends.
The only exception is this weekend beginning Friday as I will be out of town.
Otherwise I can attend any meetups anywhere starting 6:30pm (weekdays) and essentially any time weekdays.
Thanks.
Well, Syracuse plans were
Well, Syracuse plans were cancelled. Anyone up for something this weekend? On Friday I have a physical therapy appointment at 3:00, so the earliest I can meet would likely be 5:00. Every other day is completely free.
So, mini get together? Anyone?
I'll be honest, I need to bug someone about an issue regarding the NodeAccess module.
Let's do it. Mini meetup,
Let's do it. Mini meetup, Saturday? Coffee shop? Can others make it?
Then we can continue to plan a better meet up that hopefully more people can attend.
Anyone else? I can answer
Anyone else?
I can answer questions about theming, and other front-end related things? Good gallery plugins? Star Trek trivia?
Meetups
Weekdays (no Mondays) after 6 work for me. Summer is a bit crazy due to travel and various events so I might not be able to make it to all meetups. I am up for both "formal" and "informal" and any other variations.
I am leaving for NYC tonight so this weekend doesn't work for me (6/29).
Location
I can book the room we've been using at Union college for meetups that need the tech.
Inviting People
Once we have a date I will reach out to a few people I know that use Drupal or are interested in learning.
Topics
I am very interested to hear how everyone is dealing with the Dev > Staging > Live migration of code and data.
A "Show and Tell" might be interesting as well - having an idea of other people are working on will be helpful in finding new topics.
Views 3 and views related modules
Topazzz, I'm glad you are
Topazzz, I'm glad you are back! If you're not using them, features are pretty amazing for things like updating views, settings, and with some elbow grease "almost" any sort of content (using UUID). Your remotes sites can then choose to sync with any part of the update. Then for content porting I've been a fan of uploading spreadsheets lately.
What I really think though is that the most simple option is best. If you have a small user base, or your users will be okay with a little bit of downtime, just push a datadase dump and fresh code up. You technically can do it without going into maintenance mode, but people will get unpredictable errors during the 3 seconds mysql is importing the dump.
Example, after testing your local copy and putting remote into maintenance mode + pulling content:
mysqldump -uuser -p mysitedb > mysitedb.sqlmysql -hremotehost.com -uuser -p < mysitedb.sql
git push
I have not found a faster or less error prone method yet :)
This is a sticking point with Drupal for me, the site functionality is coupled too tightly with the database. There just seems to be no pretty way to do it.
I had surprisingly good luck
I had surprisingly good luck with the Backup and Migrate module. Though this was before I trusted myself to touch a database without phpMyAdmin.
So what, if anything is happening tomorrow?
I didn't think it was still
I didn't think it was still on, sorry. It's challenging to coordinate these things apparently :)
I was just talking to the boss, and it sounds like we can host Drupal Meetups here at the Mehigan Bellone & Associates office.
We are located just a few blocks from Union in the schenectady stockade. We have a full private parking lot (it's our building). We are remodeling but we could potentially fit 10+ in our current conference room with projector, and we can have things like coffee and snacks (pretty important at that time of night). Once the remodeling is done we'll have a second conference room along with some plush chairs/couches/extra room for seating.
If no one is opposed (or even better, if anyone thinks this is a good idea), I'd like to propose we have a meetup here. We can pass the wireless keyboard and mouse around the table, share solutions, and help eachother tackle things they need help with. As a bonus I can probably persuade a coworker or four to attend.
Sounds good
Sounds good to me. Thanks for arranging it.
But I waited in that coffee
But I waited in that coffee shop all day!
Obviously I'm joking. :-)
I'm not sure how other people feel but this sounds fantastic to me.