Drupal Dojo CoffeeTalk

As per merlinofchaos suggestion in in Drupal Dojo Lesson #6!

It's clear there needs to be a node access presentation. I'm willing to take part in one, though I'm not sure I'm quite organized enough (or have the time to BE organized enough) to truly run one, I can certainly handle a section describing how node access works in Drupal 5, and what writing a node access module is going to be like.

Along with the reasons you cite, I think it will give us a great way of seeing where we are, assessing the positive aspects of what we have been able to achieve and share together, hear some success stories of actual real world application of what we have covered (I know I have a few) and what difficulties we have, as well, and what we most need and where we want to go.

I think it would help the group a lot.

Also, it will help to coordinate the need to talk, I know a lot of important conversations have taken place on various topics, but it's hard to guess when everyone will be hanging out with some "quality time".

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar

I have another major reason why I think this discussion is very important.

I have just posted the Wiki Class Notes Lesson #6 -- Theming. http://groups.drupal.org/node/2764 . It was a monumental task, taking some ten hours or so to work through my notes and the two-hour video, as well as running all the configuration and code and debugging along with the class to make sure that the attached pastebin.txt can really be pasted in and run by newbies with no hassle.

Don't get me wrong, I do it because I love it, and above all because it is bringing me up to speed fast. And not only me, but also several programmers on each of two teams I am working with as architect/mentor/lead are benefiting hugely also. As will the Buenos Aires Drupal Users Group (next meeting this coming Thursday, on organization and with a presentation on theming from this class). So there's no altruism here, just pure benefit and yes, the joy of contributing to the community.

And in this case, at least, I am sure that the text is useful. I know it would have been useful for me a year ago.

My problem is the autistic-like silence in the group on this effort (I may be isolated on an individual basis, but on a collaboration level we are spectacularly functional on the multimedia front, but on little else), and what to do with it so it best serves the community. Now, even though several Dojos seem to have involved themselves heavily in the documentation project, from what I can see from the mailing lists, still no-one has done anything to suggest how the class notes wikis, or parts of them, as well as a lot of other excellent material here, can find their way into any of the Drupal handbooks. (People have made declarative suggestions, but no-one has done anything AFAIK. I would love to be wrong on this.)

I myself have not joined the documentation team, since although I feel I do documentation very well, I prefer to work on the development side with the little free time I have. So I need to run with a pack here, I need to work in a functioning group that is collaborating. So my question is, and I think this can only come out of discussions among all of us in the group, what is going to happen to all of this material? When you just know that poor souls are peeling their eyeballs searching for stuff like this on drupal.org (maybe not even aware of groups.drupal.org's existence) (not only the class notes, of course, but stuff like the screencasts, the forays into eclipse php development tools as an IDE for us to use, and countless other user posts: how is all of this going to make it into the Handbooks?

I mean, here in the Drupal Dojo classes and posts, we do a heck of a lot more than just bounce around catchwords and mention websites and drop names amidst cackles of buddy-like "cool" laughter. I know through my own pain and starvation for knowledge and cookbook like info (which, apart from within the Drupal Dojo community and other serious efforts, seems to come at a premium price few can afford to pay) that what we are doing here is damn important, and is in line with the other serious efforts, like merlinofchaos' Themer Pack group, the Javascript group, the Newspaper group and many, many others.

But to get the word out in a sharing community way, and that is through the Drupal Handbooks, we must foster more collaboration among us, things have to be discussed and decisions have to be taken.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's great that people who have sacrificed themselves for years on end publish books and get paid for it and send a portion of that back to Drupal. That's wonderful (even if for some inexplicable reason no-one can get their eyes on even an old PDF ... that's not wonderful). Heck, I may even write a book myself, make it bi-lingual (English and Spanish) or something. But I can assure all my fellow drupalers, that I will follow the practice of people like Alistair Cockburn (whose "Writing Effective Use Cases" was published countless times in PDF form in beta before coming out, and thousands of copies were still sold and continue to be), and practically all community based authors put the beta versions up on their websites so the brothers and sisters can get the benefit first... and they will be able to benefit from the corrections. I believe in the way of the Bazaar, not the Cathedral: a thousand pairs of eyes are better than two or three self-appointed "knowers". That's supposed to be what we are about.

And if your publisher won't let you, get another publisher.

So the Handbooks should be the best open source way of sharing info there is. That's where the stuff has to be published first, in a no-nonsense, but user-friendly way.

The whole open source model is supposed to be based on "the more people know the better".

So I hope all dojos can participate in this discussion, rather than chancing it on whoever happens to be around IRC at a given point in time. We need to see how this stuff gets put into the Handbooks in an orderly fashion.

I also want to take this opportunity to send a huge "Thank you" to Josh for this initiative, and to all my brothers and sisters in the group. It has really been fun, and a thrilling experience. Let's keep growing and reaching out.

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar