Downtown Drupal Meetup at Sensis Agency and via WebEx on July 2, 2013

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christefano's picture
Start: 
2013-07-02 18:00 - 21:00 America/Los_Angeles
Event type: 
User group meeting

The 1st Tuesday of the month is coming up again and soon it will time for the next Downtown Drupal meetup! We're meeting at Sensis Agency in Downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 2, 2013 from 7-9pm (happy hour at 5pm). Those interested in attending this meetup remotely are welcome to join us via WebEx.

At this meetup, we're having our usual news and announcements, as well as raffle prizes, community Q&A, lightning talks (which are short, bite-sized presentations) and featured presentations. Is there a presentation topic that you're interested in? Post a comment to either request or offer a presentation, or contact any of the organizers listed above.

Drupal Happy Hour ^

Stay tuned to the comments below for information about where the Drupal Happy Hour prior to this meetup will be. Right now we now that it's very close to our meetup venue and it starts at 5pm.

Thank You to Our Sponsors! ^

Sensis Agency Our venue sponsor is Sensis Agency (@SensisAgency), a cross-cultural advertising agency with digital at its core. We got our start building websites and have expanded into a full service advertising agency, helping our clients take advantage of the fundamental changes taking place in the marketing world.

Exaltation of Larks - Expert Drupal strategy, consulting, development and training Our parking, video conferencing and raffle prize sponsor for this event is 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.

Droplabs Los Angeles Our organizing sponsor is Droplabs (@Droplabs), a Drupal-friendly coworking space, classroom and makerspace in Downtown Los Angeles. We're the leading low-cost coworking space in the Greater Los Angeles Area and have shared and private workspaces that are uniquely designed for entrepreneurs, freelancers and remote workers.

Drupal After Dark ^

Even if you can't make it to happy hour or the meetup, you're welcome to join us afterward for a Drupal After Dark. After we wrap up the meeting and clean up, a group of us will go to a nearby restaurant or pub. Stay tuned to the comments below for suggestions for a Drupal After Dark location.

Agenda ^

We'll start our meeting promptly at 7pm, so if you are at happy hour please be sure to request your check along with your food order.

Our meetups follow a basic format and starts off with Drupal news and announcements, local job announcements, raffle prizes and full-length presentations. As always, we'll also 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. We'll finish off the night with more networking and a Drupal After Dark at 9:00pm.

For any changes to our agenda for the evening, stay tuned to this meetup announcement or click the Sign up button below (or both!) to be notified when the agenda has been updated.

   5:00pm
   Drupal Happy Hour

   6:55pm
   Projector and Tables / Chairs Setup
   Start of WebEx Meeting

   7:00pm
   Introductions
   News & Upcoming Events, including:
     • DrupalCamp LA (July 13-14, 2013);
     • Drupal TV Code Sprint (July 14, 2013);
     • Drupal Design Camp LA (August, 2013);
     • Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp (March, 2014);
     • California Drupal Travelers Program
     • Interesting events listed at http://groups.drupal.org/events
   Raffle Prizes!

   7:30pm

   Lightning Talks
   Featured Presentations

   9:00pm
   Wrap-up, Clean-up and Close-up
   Drupal After Dark and More Networking

Join us on WebEx and Twitter! ^

WebEx

The featured presentations at this meetup will be broadcasted via WebEx, courtesy of Exaltation of Larks. WebEx works in your browser, whether you use Linux, Windows or Mac OS X.

To join the meeting, use the following URL or meeting ID:

   URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/detail?uuid=MCVM17V5D9UM5YF0C0N75SU9BQ-2J4J
   Short URL: http://ex.tl/ZQo
   Meeting ID: 193 483 719

To test that WebEx is working for you prior to this meetup, check out this "Join a Test Meeting" page:

   http://www.webex.com/test-meeting.html  

You can also receive the meeting URL and password by email by clicking the Sign up button below (a Drupal.org account is required).

Anyone who registers for the WebEx meeting will also be able to view the recording prior to it being uploaded to our video channel at http://www.vimeo.com/GLADrupal

Twitter

During the meetup, several of the event organizers will also be monitoring Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @GLADrupal.

Featured Presentations

At this meetup, we're having our usual news and announcements, raffle prizes, lightning talks (which are short, bite-sized presentations) and featured presentations.

Is there a presentation topic that you're interested in? Post a comment below to either request or offer a presentation, or contact one of the organizers listed above.

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 free seats to professional Drupal trainings. 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

   Sensis Agency
   811 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 2050
   Los Angeles, CA 90017

Carpooling

To carpool or catch the Droplabs shuttle from Union Station, post below in the comments.

Public Transportation

Our venue is 100 feet away from the 7th Street / Metro Red Line Center Station. For information about bus routes, see http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/bus_overview/images/802.pdf  

   7th Street / Metro Center Station
   660 South Figueroa St.
   Los Angeles, CA 90017
   213-922-6000
   http://www.metro.net

Parking

Anyone who carpools and parks at United Valet Parking, Inc. (757 South Flower St.) will receive complimentary $5 parking courtesy of our parking sponsor, Exaltation of Larks.

  • United Valet Parking, Inc. (757 South Flower St.; 213-622-0137)

This parking location is within a 3 minute walk of our venue and has a $5 evening rate if arriving after 4pm.

Street parking is $5 per hour from 8am-8pm Pacific. There are ample parking lots and garages in the immediate area. For additional parking locations, see http://en.parkopedia.com/parking/815_west_7th_street_los_angeles_ca_90017/

About Greater Los Angeles Drupal ^

With several weekly and monthly events, the Greater Los Angeles Area is one the most active areas for Drupal in the world.

Formerly named Downtown Los Angeles Drupal, we've been meeting regularly in and around Downtown Los Angeles, California, since early 2010, and now organize a large number of events in the area. Our signature events include the Drupal Job Fairs and the Downtown Drupal, Frontend Drupal and High Performance Drupal meetups.

Our members and organizers have produced hundreds of Drupal events, including job fairs, meetups and workshops, conferences, paid trainings, coworking days, study group sessions, movie outings, FREE tutoring sessions from Drupal professionals, and website barnraisings to benefit non-profits and members of our community.

Attending Drupal events in the Greater Los Angeles Area is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend as many meetings and special events as you'd like. Whether it's to find solutions to problems you've been having, sharing something you've learned or just meeting interesting like-minded people, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal events are an essential resource for Drupal professionals and hobbyists alike.

If you aren't already a member of Greater Los Angeles Drupal, it's easy to join our community. Our community calendar is on our "Events" tab on our home page at http://groups.drupal.org/node/219129  

We proudly participate in the California Drupal Travelers Program, which aims to connect businesses and community members who are visiting the area with our local community and events. Inquire within by contacting any of the Greater Los Angeles Drupal organizers, or by joining the global Drupal Hospitality Network.

Sign Up! ^

Sign up below to receive the meetup's date, time, location and WebEx instructions by email. An automatic email reminder will also be sent 1 day before the event.

Comments

Hi everyone, we're doing two

christefano's picture

Hi everyone, we're doing two things differently for this and future meetups:

First, we're beginning promptly at 7pm, so if you're going to the happy hour please be sure to request your check along with your food order.

The second thing is that WebEx no longer requires a password in order to join the WebEx meeting. I hope this makes joining the meeting easier for those who join the WebEx meeting after it starts.

See you all on Tuesday, and have a great weekend!

Happy Hour Option.

jmosmith's picture

Unless there is another plan (and I know of no other), for happy hour, I recommend going to:

Maria's Italian Kitchen:
http://www.mariasdowntownla.com/

Location downtown LA, first floor of the 811 Wilshire building. Access from the street on Flower, across from PRIMO Cafe, or through the back door inside 811 Wilshire, past the elevators.

They have inexpensive draft for happy hour, and appetizers, but you must be seated in the bar area for the special pricing.

See y'all tomorrow.
J.

Maria's sounds great. I'll

christefano's picture

Maria's sounds great. I'll see you there, James.

In case anyone wants to drop

christefano's picture

In case anyone wants to drop by Maria's for some casual coworking, I'm at Maria's a bit early catching up on some work.

Meetup agenda suggestions

christefano's picture

Does anyone have any suggested agenda items for tonight's meetup?

I have a quick one. Some time ago I got the domain Drupal.LA and would like to see if anyone might be interested in a series of code sprints ("barn raisings" if you will) with food at venues around the city.

This is a blue sky project at the moment, but features could include things like a member blog aggregator, community member spotlight section, and so on. Some posts by our members, like book reviews, could be syndicated on Planet Drupal.

Building a site like this could be a great learning opportunity, and it would also a cool website for people to put on their resumes.

You know me, Christefano &

Techivist's picture

You know me, Christefano & know that I'd be glad to help with this. What kind of timeline are you looking at for the barn raisings? I'm about to get pretty darn busy once mid-July hits (like super duper busy!) so knowing the timeline would help me carve some time out for this.

In terms of agenda items, I had suggested one in an email to you (Christefano) & James in a thread that James had started to the organizers but noone responded. Since this meetup is ending now, we can do it next month as a "Favorite talks at DCLA 2013." Thoughts?

Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu

Miguel, can you send that

christefano's picture

Miguel, can you send that email again? I can't seem to find the one you sent.

About the "favorite talks at DCLA 2013", I think that sounds great. I really like having recap-style meetups, so count me in!

The last couple ones we've had after DrupalCon London, BADCamp 2012 and DrupalCon Portland have been some of my favorite meetups ever.

Drupal.LA project proposal

christefano's picture

For the Drupal.LA barn raisings, I was thinking that at the beginning we could do one during a Drupal Coworking Friday. These free coworking days have all been at Droplabs so far, but it's very possible to have these workshops at various locations around town.

We could also get together in the hour prior to each meetup to discuss what's happened in the project up to that point, and even prepare a short presentation for that evening's meetup.

My hope is that if we can nail this process down, we could then open the doors for a site build process we can repeat for barn raisings for non-profits who need help with their websites. That's down the road, though, and right now I think a Drupal.LA site build would be a fun project for our members, give us plenty of fun presentation material for our meetups, and give everyone involved something new to add to their resumes.

Here's a basic outline for the Drupal.LA site build. It's just a suggestion at this point, and after we get some consensus on it and there are a handful of folks interested in participating I'd be happy to move this conversation out of the comments here and to a new discussion or wiki page.

   Sprint 1: Create initial scope of work for MVP (minimal viable product) and user stories
   Sprint 2: Set up server environment and Git repository
   Sprint 3: Module and theme selection, installation and configuration
   Sprint 4: Information architecture, menus and paths
   Sprint 5: Content, SEO and marketing strategy
   Sprint 6: User acceptance testing
   Sprint 7: Load testing and performance tuning
   Sprint 8: Deployment to Drupal.LA live site

I think sprints 3 and 4 as currently stated above will take the longest, so I'd bet we need to give those more time. To make much of this as easy as possible, I suggest using Pantheon for sprints 2 and 8. I've spoken with folks at Pantheon and they're happy to help us with our needs.

How does all this sound? We have several meetups each month and most of them are broadcast via WebEx to enable remote participation. I think it's possible to get a small group of us together and go through the above sprints in just 2-3 months.

Drupal L.A.

pkosenko's picture

This looks like something that I ought to get involved in. I have been building plenty of sites on my local machine, but haven't got my own developer site posted yet. In any case, I am also on the GLADCamp site build list and have been wondering when that will get active again.

This would give me a reason to come to the coworking days. I didn't go to the last one because I have managed to get through all of the Build-a-Module advanced training and didn't need that particular mentoring session (also busy with other things).

By the way, I have also gone through the GIT series and have GIT set up.

Thanks for the feedback! It

christefano's picture

Thanks for the feedback! It will be great to have you.

Droplabs' events and programs, including Drupal coworking days and mentored trainings, will soon be available at additional locations around the city. I'm looking forward to announcing when and where they will be.

Features?

nodiac's picture

In the interest of rising the tide and floating all boats in the area, here are some ideas for features that might be cool that don't exist on GDO or DO and they look like they could be fun to build and also be reused by other communities.

  • Blog aggregator that submits to planet
  • Podcast
  • Individual member spotlight
  • Business spotlight
  • Meetup videos
  • job board

This list is not exclusive or inclusive. Just a few ideas.

Has something like this already been built? Maybe we can check out other distributions like Open Outreach.

Kraken Digital Media & Technology
Founder
http://www.larks.la  
Droplabs
Robot Coordinator
http://droplabs.net  
Greater Los Angeles Drupal
Organizer, Dragonslayer
http://drupal.la &n

There's a stable release of

christefano's picture

There's a stable release of Open Outreach now! Thanks for that.

There's a lot going for it. I just spun up a copy and I like what I see. I think the next thing to do is to create a comparison chart to see what Open Outreach has compared to other distros.

I'd also like to hear from others to hear who is interested and then schedule a "Sprint 0" kickoff that's geographically located close to the majority of participants.

Open Outreach

fejn's picture

Thanks for the info on Open Outreach distro!! I've installed it successfully before, but never used it for a major project. Since I occasionally do projects for non-profits, I'll give it a spin & report back on my experience with it here.

Jeff

I just posted a wiki at

christefano's picture

I just posted a wiki at https://groups.drupal.org/node/306473 with your suggested feature list. Now back to playing around with Open Outreach…