Posted by dennetmint-gdo on August 21, 2009 at 4:19pm
Just wanted to introduce myself, like the page asked me to. I'm Denise Cheng, and I just arrived from Portland, Ore. a couple of weeks ago. I attended the Drupal group there and found them to be an incredible resource (as well as really awesome people!). I'm currently working on a citizen journalism project for Grand Rapids called The Rapidian, and we're building our site with the use of Drupal. I'm planning to make it to any future Drupal meet-ups and look forward to meeting everyone!
Comments
Hello Dennetmint
Glad to meet you and see some movement in this group! I've been looking to find locals who are using drupal and noticed that The Rapidian was being developed on it last week. I am very interested in learning more about Drupal an want to use it to develop our newspaper site. But I am just learning about what drupal has to offer. We are actually looking for a local consultant or developer to help facilitate the move and I also would like to attend a local drupal meeting.
Mary Gerling
MiBiz
Welcome to GR
Thanks for posting, Denise. Since I joined the group, there haven't been any meetings. But it would be great to have one. I'm an amateur with Drupal, so could use all the support I can get.
Hi from Holland
Wow, I haven't seen any action on this list for a long time. Thanks for getting the ball rolling by writing a post. I work for Zeeland Public Schools and live in Holland. I have been in the midst of moving our school and district web pages over to Drupal and looking for other ways to use it to support what we do in education. I'm in no way a Drupal pro--just continuing to love what can be done with it.
I could probably get a location for us to do a meet-up in the Holland/Zeeland area if anyone were interested.
RE: Hi from Holland
I was going to say I work for the Community Media Center, and we own Wealthy Theatre. We're very open to hosting a Drupal group that is centrally located (and to be a bit selfish, I don't have a car :)). We've sort of been slow on the offer only because we're not sure how meetups could be structured so everyone gets something out of it. I am by no means a Drupal expert and am only hardly an amateur. But we have several people who work here that dabble in Drupal on their own time.
Maybe the first thing we should do is figure out what we want to happen at the first Drupal meet up. It seems like some people are trying to get support for their topics, some people can give a presentation on the tricks and features of their favorite modules, &c. What do you guys think?
Drupal Meet Up
I am open to the location. It would be about the same distance for me to travel either way. Of course I am a newbie so I don't have much to offer but would love to see the presentations and get some feedback on what modules could best serve my type of website. I'd definitely be interested in attending a meet up.
Mary Gerling
MiBiz
I'm all about having some
I'm all about having some dupal meetings! I think we could make it productive, maybe even set up a drupal site for us and vote on what gets covered, then just allow people to go to town for a while (if they have a laptop) and just troubleshoot with each other. we could even do video tutorials or something as a group and if something is unclear just explain the process to everyone.
I do development, however its mostly UI stuff but I have a friend that is a monster at PHP and I'm sure he would be happy to come as well. he doesn't know drupal but would learn well since hes good at joomla and PHP already.
www.adjustreality.com
ecommerce / graphic design
Hello everyone~
Hello~
This groups hasn't had activity in a while. I'm glad there are more people in the area who are interested in Drupal. Joomla folks in the West MI area are started to get more active and we can't have Joomla beat Drupal :P
We used to meet once a month at the Four Friends Coffee House downtown. I'd love to get involved again. The Wealthy Theatre works great for me as well.
What day/time would everyone like to meet at?
/John
I can check with the Wealthy
I can check with the Wealthy Theatre folks about using the Microcinema. What if we did something like the first Thursday or whatever of every month? It would be nice to set up a pattern as something can count on rather than having random dates shot out every once and again. I also think doing a Drupal site to vote for topics is a great idea. Does anyone have some time to commit to it?
personally if its thursday
personally if its thursday afternoon like 8ish (this might be too late for some people) I could do it, but my thursdays are pretty packed at the moment. I would perfer weekends. this is a possibility? I might be able to squeeze thursdays once in a while in though. mondays after 3-4ish are good days for me too.
www.adjustreality.com
ecommerce / graphic design
Weekends are out for me
I can't do weekends, and 8 would be a bit late for me. I would prefer weekdays, but an earlier time. The Monday time 3-4ish, that would work fine.
Mary Gerling
MiBiz
3-4ish pretty hard for most
3-4ish pretty hard for most people, wouldn't it? I don't mind personally, but I'd suspect most people wouldn't be able to make it b/c of jobs. If weekend doesn't work for some people, weekdays after 5:00PM would probably work best. I know some people prefer weekends more though.
yeah anytime between 3-6:30
yeah anytime between 3-6:30 works for me Mondays. jobs/school kind of get in the way unfortunately
www.adjustreality.com
ecommerce / graphic design
RE: Poll
What do you know? This group already has the option to create polls.
I propose that after the first week following a Drupal meet up, we toss around ideas in a comment thread for the next meet up. Following that, somebody will put all the options into a poll and we'll have another two weeks to vote. After voting closes, the two or three selected speakers will have a week to prepare their presentation. Do we want this to last about an hour, an hour and a half? The Drupal groups I've been to have traditionally gone for that amount of time and then headed over to the local bar to mingle, network and troubleshoot on an individual basis.
sounds great. maybe good
sounds great. maybe good idea for first round of voting is "the basics" so no one gets left behind. maybe wamp (and mamp for mac'ers) set up so you can do local development or installing themes, modules or something like that? then we can roll with it from there. not sure what level everyone is at but local (meaning on your own machine instead of server) development is usually always a big thumbs up.
www.adjustreality.com
ecommerce / graphic design
Hello
I have a bit of experience with drupal but am pretty much a hack at actual coding (I'm just getting into learning the actual PHP behind drupal). I would love to have some drupal get-togethers. John, you might remember me, I'm Ryan's friend who was at barcamp. It would be great if some people in this group would also be interested in going to the GRgivecamp and we could have a whole drupal crew out there building sites.
Ross-Hunter.com
yeah! I'm so down for that.
yeah! I'm so down for that. I would love to do UI and layout work (coding isn't my strong point but I can do XHTML/CSS structuring), I think I could have potentially a lot to offer. you can count me in, if you want me. how would I go about volunteering?
www.adjustreality.com
ecommerce / graphic design
I remember you~
Hi there~
But your name slips my mind. Sorry :P
In any case, I'm hoping to start a drupalcast on web development with Drupal which would include advanced topics such as using GIT to manage your source code, advanced theming techniques and other "fun" topics. I'm hoping to use GRGiveCamp as an example for the screencasts.
If you guys haven't checked it out yet, GRGiveCamp (http://grgivecamp.org) is coming up on the weekend of Nov 13-15. The pitch is "100 developers, 20 non-profits, 1 weekend". We'd love for local Drupal developers to get involved in helping build websites and for non-profits over a weekend. Perhaps we can use some of our future meetings to gear up for GRGiveCamp. Let me know if anyone is interested in those topics.
I'm starting to really looking forward to our meetup. Now we just need to decide on when/where :)
/John
Theming!
Hey John, my name is Ross, and I'm awful with names so it doesn't bother me. I can honestly say you're probably the only person who's name I do remember from that whole event.
For what it's worth, in regards to your drupalcast, my current interest is in learning more advanced theming techniques. I think a lot of people are interested in themes, since one of the criticisms of drupal is the lack of prettiness when compared to Joomla! and other more end user friendly CMSs.
So let's try and have at least an informal get-together sometime soon, even if it's just meeting at a coffee shop or bar. I do have an office close to downtown where we could fit about 6-10 people as well.
Ross-Hunter.com
yeah! count me in.
yeah! count me in. that site is really neato, but they need to be cleaner with that code and get some validation rocking :(
www.adjustreality.com
ecommerce / graphic design
Times and dates
I also think weekday evenings are going to be better than weekends. If people commute into Grand Rapids for work, they could head over to the group straight after instead of commuting back in on the weekend or at a later time. I'll check with Wealthy Theatre today to see what days they have available for a meeting that starts and ends sometime between 5:30p-8p.
Poll
I put up a poll for use of Wealthy Theatre. Please vote so we can figure out what day is best for the Drupal meetup!