Posted by McJax on October 9, 2009 at 12:47pm
The Waterline Pub meetup on 8 October was good for getting to know each other and the plan is to try and continue with the informal meetups while working towards finding appropriate subjects and spaces for technical/presentation sessions.
Next planned chat-over-a-pint is Thursday 22 October at the Guildford Arms, 1 West Register Street, Edinburgh EH2 2AA
Jackie
Comments
Was great to meet everyone
Was great to meet everyone yesterday!
Like the sound of the Guildford arms -- 'ten traditional hand pull real ale pumps' :D
Would like to discuss ...
It was good to meet people yesterday and look forward to the next one!
The mix of people was good - a dozen-ish people with a wide spectrum of expertise and experience etc - a good place to move forward from.
As a Drupal newbie - but rapidly coming up to speed, I hope - something I'd really like to get some pointers on is setting up pages that have common types of data presented within the body of the page.
The specific example I have in mind is writing up walks, but it generalises.
Eg, Introductory free-format text with a map followed by a standard section giving grade, directions to get there, etc, followed by more free-format text and photos and maybe more embedded bits.
I feel the way to go is CCK but in practice haven't been able to get beyond having the fields display at the start or end of the page, which isn't what I want. (I'm using Insert node to insert a GMap node showing the route, which works but I don't know if that's the best idea for doing it).
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas and especially if anyone is interested in doing something similar, it's something I'd like to discuss at the next get together if pos.
Also, if anyone's got any non-critical snippets of real-world Drupal work I can do (not on the design front - that isn't me!) then I'd be interested - willing to do some for free to learn and shoe-horn in a bit of reputation that might help lead to making a bit of income. (I've a strong IT background but new to Drupal and out of the professional market for too many years.)
If you've any ideas, please let me know at the get together!
Cheers,
Nick
"... setting up pages that
I think CCK and Views is what you want to get your head around. Perhaps, Panels as well to display content in ways you want if you don't want to mess around too much with all the .tpl files.
For work, there's no reason not to try:
http://drupal.org/paid-services
http://groups.drupal.org/jobs
I wasn't really meaning to
I wasn't really meaning to start a technical discussion here, but thanks.
I've played with Panels, CCK and Views but they haven't taken root in my brain properly yet and making them play together is still boggling. The idea of Contexts in Panels 3 looks like a key thing for me.
I'll play some more.
I'm away for about a week now - son's half term and we're flying south in the morning, so will be silent on the group etc.
What time is the meetup?
What time is the meetup? i quite like to meet up around 8pm instead. Does that suit eveyone?
From what i have gathered from last meetup was that there are quite a lot of people who are currently freelancing or trying to move into this area of work. So i've been thinking quite a bit about drupalscotland.org and ways it can benefit everyone locally from networking (making contacts), sharing knowledge, events to creating a local market place. So wondered if we can spend a bit of the time for the next meetup to discuss these ideas in detail among other things people would like to chat about too.
G.D.O. is useful for announcing meetups but the local site (drupalscotland.org) can be used for other things as mentioned above.
It would be good to get some feedback on this.
7 or 8 fine with me
At the moment most any time is fine with me.
Thoughts ...
For anyone working but not living in Edinburgh and not wanting or able to work into the evening, 8.00 could mean having to kill a couple of hours.
For anyone working further afield - Glasgow etc - earlier than 7 may not be practicable.
7.00 seems to strike a good balance - not too much time to kill at one end of the spectrum and not having to be too late at the other.
But personally I'm easy in my current situation so am happy with whatever.
GIven this is an informal
GIven this is an informal thing, I think it's fine to say 7 and people can arrive later if they're travelling in.
Don't mean to hijack...
I don't live in Scotland :( I love in North Carolina, USA :) I joined the group hoping to hear of any Drupal Design/Develop jobs over in Scotland. I'd like to come visit/live there for 3 months to a year. So, I'll stay off your boards but if you know of any short term or contract Drupal jobs let me know please!
p.s. I am strongly of Scottish decent (Mills, Love, Cox, Caldwell, Short are my family names)
booking
Will you Jackie book the place?
Booking ?
Well .... I did wonder if being able to move and chat to people might be more effective than perhaps being allocated a long table ?? I will call and ask if they can reserve a space for us anyway.
It will be busy and it may be noisy but as this is for informal getting to know each other and what we're interested in rather than for a presentation, I hope it will be ok.
Jackie
Informal Meet
Missed the last meet up because I was on holiday but intend to travel over from Fife for this meet up.
Look forward to meeting everyone.
John
Reserved !
The lovely people at the Guildford Arms are sectioning off an area for us called the 'Snug', holds about 15 people with room to circulate or sit. It is by the stairs going up to the restaurant.
He says that food is normally only served upstairs in the restaurant so if you are planning to eat there, not ideal ! Sorry about that ... I didn't know that was the case (its not what its says on the website ... they need a good CMS to keep their content up to date ...)!
J
salesforce
If anyone coming to the meeting has experience of integrating with salesforce CRM can they let me know - may have an opportunity.
J
I did a tiny bit with
I did a tiny bit with Salesforce -- just enough to make me realize I don't want to work with it again! ;)
Btw: http://groups.drupal.org/event-management-systems
Darn
Not going to make this one unfortunately.
I'm sure someone will post a summary of events at some point.
Thanks,
Keith
Unfortunately
I'm not going to make it as I have to attend a funeral.
I have an idea for a future session though;
How many of you have actually debugged and stepped through a typical Drupal access at runtime?
Sorry to hear about that, but
Sorry to hear about that, but your suggestion for a debugging session on alive site would be invaluable in my opinion.
Keith
Seconded, definitely a good
Seconded, definitely a good idea.
I wouldn't even know what kind of tools to use for something like that!
Happily-
I have everything set up on my Ubuntu partition, and I would be willing to help other people get similar functionality setup and also I think it would be very interesting to do a debug session.
@joachim I am totally sold on your views for ubercart!
ubercart!
I would love to hear some stuff about ubercart, I never used it, but would like to get into it a little bit.
Quick Summary
6 of us met for a couple of hours at the Guildford Arms - two new faces. The space was good, but not for sessions/presentations and they won't serve food in that area. If we meet there again, have your meal beforehand !
To start having information exchanges, we need a space. A couple of leads to follow up: company conference rooms and Screenspace (a 'writers' space in Dundee Street with facilities). Please do ask around about facilities to accommodate min 8 people, projection, internet etc.
Lots of interest in Ubercart so we're thinking that could be one of the first sessions.
Projection
Not necessarily an immediate requirement.
If we can get the space we need then I can bring along one of my spare projectors which a laptop can be hooked into.
Would love someone to do an Ubercart session asap, especially the supposidly tricky theming part.
Ta,
Keith
Bit disappointing there were only 6
It's a bit disappointing there were only 6 - half the previous number.
One of the missing ones was me - I got almost half way to Edinburgh then had a nice sit down for a while before my car and I were delivered back home by the AA.
I'll do my best to contribute to numbers at the next one not halving again!
Next Meeting
Haven't attended any meet ups yet but I am keen to do so. I would have been there but was close to a deadline on a project when I hit a snag. Hope to make the next one.
John
It'll happen
This is the way of things though, it'll generally happen like this... some will make it some will not and on this occassion I was unable to do so.
As long as a critical mass is built up with regular events, with a core number of people attending then the group will grow and in turn sessions will be better attended. As Jackie is saying we ideally need a place to actually hold sessions, the pub gathering is great for what it is but not sufficient for something a little more serious.
My two penneth worth.
KH
Agreed; people should feel
Agreed; people should feel free to come and go -- drop in when they're free and skip it when they're not.
I'm very keen to keep the regular pub meetings so that we have a social thing where we can just chat, and also as an easy way in for newbies to join in.
Parallel to that some more serious sessions would be great too.