End the month with some fun and Drupal at the San Gabriel Valley Drupal Meetup at Pasadena City College on Thursday, April 25, 2013 from 6-8pm!
The meetup this month will include both Users Helping Users, which is a chance for members of the community to help and be helped by others with whatever questions and problems they're having with Drupal; and Lightning Talks, which are brief, 5-minute long presentations on any topic related to Drupal.
Please note that while Users Helping Users is not designed to be a replacement for bona fide consulting from a Drupal professional that there are plenty of Drupal experts and professionals who attend our meetups and sometimes they need help, too!
Do you have a presentation or job announcement that you'd like to share with the group? Is there a topic about something you'd like to see a presentation on? Leave a comment at http://groups.drupal.org/node/295838#comments to let the organizers and attendees know what you're interested in.
Thank You to Our Sponsors!
Thanks to our sponsors, we'll be meeting at Pasadena City College on the 4th Thursday of each months for the next 5 months!
SSD Software Solutions is a full service interactive development and design company. We specialize in back-end development, building custom applications, design, software development, content management systems, maintenance, and e-commerce tools for any web, mobile, or tablet platform. Based in Los Angeles, California, since 2005, SSD has built a sterling reputation for the quality of our work and attentiveness to our client's needs.
Our meetup this month is being organized with assistance from Droplabs (@Droplabs), a collaborative classroom and coworking space in Downtown Los Angeles. We're quickly gaining a reputation for being the only coworking space around with a with a low-cost business model: come work here and use our tables, chairs, WiFi and conference room with a low, daily or monthly membership fee and only pay more for the extras, such as 24/7 access, equipment rental and a locker for your belongings.
Our projection equipment and raffle prizes are being provided by Exaltation of Larks, a Drupal strategy, consulting, development and training company with a team of Drupal experts in Los Angeles. We create fun websites, mobile apps, virtual worlds and e-commerce sites. Follow us at @LarksLA to learn more about our Drupal services and upcoming trainings.
For any changes to our agenda for the evening, stay tuned to this meetup announcement or click the Sign up button below (or both!) and be notified when the agenda has been updated and to receive the organizers' phone number.
Presentations and Lightning Talks
Do you have a presentation or job announcement that you'd like to share with the group? Is there a topic about something you'd like to see a presentation on? Leave a comment at http://groups.drupal.org/node/295838#comments to let the organizers and attendees know what you're interested in.
Users Helping Users
The meetup this month will include both Users Helping Users, which is a chance for members of the community to help and be helped by others with whatever questions and problems they're having with Drupal; and Lightning Talks, which are brief, 5-minute long presentations on any topic related to Drupal.
Please note that while Users Helping Users is not designed to be a replacement for bona fide consulting from a Drupal professional that there are plenty of Drupal experts and professionals who attend our meetups and sometimes they need help, too!
Agenda
Our meetups follow a basic format and start off with Drupal news and announcements, local job announcements, raffle prizes and full-length presentations. As always, we'll have community Q&A, during which time anyone in attendance can ask questions, divine answers from the crowd and give brief, 5-10 minute-long presentations known as lightning talks.
After the meetup, we'll finish off the night with more networking and a Drupal After Dark at 8pm. We may stay at Intelligentsia or over to Jake's or Lucky Baldwin's for something stronger. Even if you can't make it to the meetup, going to the Drupal After Dark is a great way to meet your fellow Drupal community friends and colleagues. Join us!
6pm
Introductions and Job Announcements
News and Upcoming Events
• New articles from http://drupal.org/planet
• Interesting events listed at http://groups.drupal.org/events
Community Questions and Answers
7pm
Raffle prizes!
Users Helping Users
Lightning Talks
8pm
Wrap-up, Clean-up and Close-up
Drupal After Dark
What to Bring
Just bring your laptop, your business cards or whatever else you need.
Food and drinks are not allowed at this venue, but we will be going to a bar or restaurant afterward for a Drupal After Dark.
Raffle prizes! Collect them all! Must be present to win!
Raffle prizes at this meetup have been provided by Exaltation of Larks. Our raffle prizes often include discount codes, magazines, DVDs, books and tickets to attend professional, paid Drupal trainings. Some raffle prizes may be available to remote attendees (at the discretion of the meetup organizers and raffle prize sponsors).
We are always grateful to our sponsors for their continued support. If you have any items you'd like to donate to the raffle, please contact any of the organizers at the meetup. Thank you!
Location and Directions
We'll be meeting in room C217 (C building, room 217).
Pasadena City College, room C217
1570 East Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91105
Public Transportation
PCC is accessible by bus, including five Metro Local lines, Metro Rapid, Foothill Transit, and some Pasadena ARTS buses. The school provides a shuttle to and from the Metro Gold Line station and the main campus:
http://www.pasadena.edu/police/shuttle.cfm
Carpooling
A group of attendees will likely be carpooling together from Droplabs, a coworking space in Downtown Los Angeles. Leave a comment below if you'd like to carpool or offer a ride.
Parking
Parking in the lot at PCC is just $2.
Comments
Hi gang, I forgot to mention
Hi gang, I forgot to mention in the meetup announcement that we're meeting this time in room C163 (building C, room 163). Sorry about that!
Parking is really easy and I've updated the meetup announcement with that info, too. The parking fee at PCC is $2.
Tonight's meetup at PCC has
Tonight's meetup at PCC has been moved upstairs to C217. It's upstairs next to the Campus Information desk. If you have any trouble finding us, call our hotline at 855-LADRUPAL for info.
Overview of last night's meetup
Thanks to everyone who made it out to the meetup last night! I counted 11 attendees, many of whom had not been to a Drupal meetup before.
I really enjoyed the structure of the meetup. We did lightning talks this time and kept news and announcements to an absolute minimum.
Venue
This was our first meetup at Pasadena City College (PCC) and it was a convenient location for all who came. The table in the conference room we had this time didn't have centralized power outlets so in the future we'll probably need to bring our own extension cords and extension strips.
Raffle prizes
All 3 raffle prize winners were completely new to Drupal meetups. We had independent verification of the results, and sure enough our unusually high streak of newcomers winning the raffle is holding.
Lightning talks
I demoed simplytest.me and showed how to install Drupal modules within the Drupal interface. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and could only demo 2 of my favorite utility modules: Semiclean and Coffee.
Allan asked about how Drupal integrates with other languages, platforms and tools, with a keen focus on restricting different types of data. We talked about Drupal's input filtering system and various collations available with MySQL.
Jeff talked about FileDepot and we put the project page and filebuilder desktop app up on the projection screen. This looks like it can be a great part of a Drupal-built Document Management System and Jeff has offered to give a live demo of FileDepot at a future meetup.
Ruihua asked about where to get started with Drupal and a bunch of us offered stories of our experiences on the "road to success" with Drupal. We talked about the various forms of learning (hands-on, auditory, visual) and came up with recommending Build a Module's "my first Drupal 7 site" video series, which incorporates all 3 learning types.
Behzod gave an awesome overview of some of the sites being built by SSD Software, including Conscious Capitalism, Lada Gaga FAME and Being Human. I'll definitely be adding these to the Greater Los Angeles Drupal business directory unless someone beats me to it.
Drupal After Dark
After the meetup, a bunch of us walked over to Lucky Baldwins (the one near PCC, not the one in Old Town Pasadena) and talked about everything from various forms of non-profit status and fun things to do in Pasadena, to the region's crazy meetup schedule and the differences between some upcoming Drupal workshops.
We just received some
We just received some wonderful feedback over on our Meetup.com page at http://www.meetup.com/Greater-Los-Angeles-Drupal/ by one of the meetup attendees:
As always, we love to hear from our members what their experiences are at the meetups. Please keep the feedback coming!
May SGV meeting location?
Where is the May 28, 2013 meeting (PCC building/room)?
On May 30th, the SGV Drupal
On May 30th, the SGV Drupal group is meeting at PCC in room C163. Tonight is the Drupal Commerce Meetup and it's at Droplabs.