SGV Drupal Meetup at the Hilton Pasadena on October 17, 2013: Announcing GLADCamp, Introducing BackDrop & How to Perform Site Audits

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christefano's picture
Start: 
2013-10-17 18:00 - 20:00 America/Los_Angeles
Organizers: 
Event type: 
User group meeting

We have a great meetup this month in the San Gabriel Valley. Join us from 6-8pm at the Hilton Pasadena on Thursday, October 17, 2013, for Drupal news and announcements, local job announcements, raffle prizes, community Q&A, lightning talks and full-length presentations.

Presentations at this event include How to Perform Site Audits; Introducing BackDrop, a Drupal fork; and Announcing GLADCamp, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp.

Are you new to Drupal or the SGV Drupal meetup? Here's a testimonial from a happy attendee:

This is a very well organized and informative session. We got a good mix of senior developers and new comers and some in between. It is a pretty good turn out with 11 people considering it is in Pasadena right around rush hours. People are just terrific, very friendly and ready to help others. Feels like I have moved forward by leaps and bounds. Thanks everyone!

Thank You to Our Sponsors!

Sponsors help make our events happen. To learn more about sponsorship of our group and our upcoming events, please contact Christefano on Drupal.org or Meetup.com.

Exaltation of Larks - Expert Drupal strategy, consulting, development and training Our venue and parking sponsor for this event is Exaltation of Larks, a Drupal design and engineering firm with a team of Drupal experts in Los Angeles. Visit us at www.larks.la and 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 workspaces and services that are uniquely designed for small businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers and remote workers.

Presentations & Lightning Talks

Do you have a presentation or job announcement that you'd like to share with the group? Is there a topic about anything you'd like to see a presentation on? Post a comment below to let all the organizers and attendees know what you're interested in. Lightning Talks — brief, 5-minute long presentations on any topic related to Drupal — are very welcome.

Announcing GLADCamp, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp

GLADCamp, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp, is a free, 3-day event coming up on March 7th, 8th & 9th, and is at Hilton Pasadena & Convention Center in Pasadena, California.

After many months of planning, this meetup is our coming out party and we're excited to announce and discuss what we're planning, including sessions, BoFs, trainings, industry-specific summits, a job fair, a barn raising to benefit a local non-profit, receptions, and more!

Introducing BackDrop, a Drupal Fork

BackDrop is a new fork of Drupal 8 that's "intended to preserve the legacy audience of developers who value ease of use and ease of learning over architectural flexibility." What does this mean for Drupal? What does it mean for you? Come find out.

How to Perform Site Audits

Have you recently acquired or taken delivery of a complex Drupal site? Is your Drupal site ready to launch? How do you know if it's stable and maintainable over the lifetime of the project? The way to find out is to perform a site audit — a review of the website code and hosting environment — and identify areas for improvement.

This featured presentation, by Christefano Reyes of Exaltation of Larks, focuses on best known practices for site audits of Drupal websites. He will cover the different types of audits, including general maintainability audits, security audits, usability audits, content and SEO audits, performance audits, and so on, as well as the checklists and tools used to perform them.

This is not a sales-oriented presentation and is dedicated instead to sharing and advancing our community's best known practices around performing site audits. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to contribute to our shared resources in the Site Audits group at http://groups.drupal.org/site-audits whenever possible.

Users Helping Users

The meetup this month will include 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.

Please note that while Users Helping Users is not designed to be a replacement for bona fide consulting from Drupal professionals 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.

   5pm: Meet & Greet for Early Arrivers
   Happy Hour at Grill 168

   5:30pm: Tour of the Hilton Pasadena & Convention Center
   Tour starts at at Grill 168 promptly at 5:30pm!

   6pm: Meetup begins in the Santa Monica Room
   Introductions & Job Announcements
   News & Upcoming Events, including:
     • Drupal.LA Project Proposal;
     • Bay Area Drupal Camp (October 24-27, 2013);
     • Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp (March 7-9, 2014);
     • Interesting events listed at http://groups.drupal.org/events
   Users Helping Users
   Community Questions & Answers

   7pm
   Raffle Prizes!
   Lightning Talks & Featured Presentations
     Announcing GLADCamp, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp
     Introducing BackDrop, a Drupal Fork;
     How to Perform Site Audits, by Christefano Reyes

   8pm
   Wrap-up, Clean-up & Close-up
   Drupal After Dark

Happy Hour

A group of us who arrive early will be meeting early for happy hour (and a quick tour of the hotel) at Grill 168, which is conveniently located in the Hilton Pasadena.

What to Bring

Just bring your laptop, your business cards or whatever else you need. Extra points go to anyone who can bring power cords and extension strips.

Food and drinks are allowed at this venue and are very welcome. Please consider bringing something to share. Post in the comments below to let everyone know what you're bringing!

Do you have a job announcement? Post your job announcement first and be sure to bring plenty of business cards and printouts of your job description to the meetup.

Are you looking for work? Update your profiles on Drupal.org and LinkedIn prior to the meetup and bring plenty of business cards and copies of your resume.

If you'd like us to print out copies of your job description or resume and have them ready at our "take a card, leave a card" table, please contact Christefano on Drupal.org or Meetup.com.

Drupal After Dark

After the meetup ends at 8pm, we'll finish off the night with more networking and a Drupal After Dark at a nearby restaurant or pub. 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!

Raffle prizes! Collect them all! Must be present to win!

Raffle prizes at this meetup have been provided by Filter Digital, Droplabs and 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 & Directions

The Hilton Pasadena is located at the corner of Los Robles Ave. and Cordova Blvd. in Pasadena, California.

Only local images are allowed.

   Hilton Pasadena
   Santa Monica Room
   168 South Los Robles Ave.
   Pasadena, CA 91101
  
   (626) 577-1000

From City Hall, advance to Colorado Blvd.
Travel east on Colorado Blvd. to Los Robles Ave.
Turn right onto Los Robles Ave.
Advance 3 blocks to the Hotel Pasadena, which is located on the left.

Parking

Free street parking is found behind the Hilton Pasadena on Oakland St., and metered parking (which is free starting at 6pm) is found on Los Robles Ave.

A parking structure that's run by the City of Pasadena is next to the Hilton Pasadena and offers self-parking (without re-entry) for $10 and valet parking (without re-entry) for $11.

This is our negotiated discount rate, so be sure to mention GLADCamp. Parking is normally $18 for self-parking (with re-entry) and $21 for valet parking (with re-entry).

There is no overnight street parking in Pasadena.

Public Transportation

The Hilton Pasadena is accessible by public transportation and is 4 blocks from the Del Mar station on the Metro Rail Gold Line. See http://www.metro.net for schedules and prices.

Carpooling

Attendees are encouraged to save both time and fuel by carpooling to this event. The best way to find out how and who to carpool with is to post an offer or request with your location and contact information in the comments below.

Those who carpool get $5 back for their parking! Check with anyone from Exaltation of Larks, our parking sponsor for this event. ($5 reimbursement is provided at the meetup and requires a valid parking slip.)

From the Airport

For driving directions from Los Angeles International (LAX), Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena (BUR), or Ontario International (ONT), see the Hilton Pasadena website.

Shuttle service is provided by SuperShuttle (800-258-3826; http://www.supershuttle.com) and private sedans are available from the Hilton Pasadena (626-577-1000) and ExecuCar (800-410-4444; http://www.execucar.com).

Sign Up!

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

AttachmentSize
2013-10-17 SGV Drupal - Performing Site Audits.pdf181 KB

Comments

Good Program

pcoleman's picture

Christefano put together a great program for this meetup. We get a chance to tour the location for GLADCamp next spring. This should be a great event for us in the SGV, it is on our home turf.

It is great that he will share with us his experience in site auditing.

One note the Third Thursday timing is something we will have for the next three months. This month conflicts with BADCamp. Next month the Thanksgiving Holiday and December all the holidays. January we can get back to the Fourth Thursday Schedule. I think this is better than the low turnout or cancelling the next three meetups.

Sign up today!

Thanks, Paul! The tour of the

christefano's picture

Thanks, Paul! The tour of the Hilton Pasadena may be a bit early — the GLADCamp conference isn't until Spring of next year — but I'm really looking forward to it.

By the way, I just found some additional materials for this meetup's Performing Site Audits presentation and I'm really excited to share them with our community. With Drupal 8 around the corner, I think the practices around performing site audits on older sites is more important than ever.

Quickstart

fejn's picture

I'd be interested in giving a lightning talk/presentation on Quickstart(https://drupal.org/project/quickstart) at the Oct 17 meeting. I recently got this system up on a Windows 8/Ubuntu system, and it helped me understand the things we've been doing in the Module Bootcamp (https://groups.drupal.org/node/306858) class better.

This sounds great, thanks

christefano's picture

This sounds great, thanks fejn. Do you know how much time you'd like for the presentation on Quickstart?

Here are some links that might be helpful:

   Quickstart 3.0 in October 2012
   https://groups.drupal.org/node/255083

   Scrums, Moved to Github, Dev list on Google Groups
   https://groups.drupal.org/node/257613

   Seeking maintainer
   https://groups.drupal.org/node/281948

I'm still using a Quickstart image from a year or two ago (if it ain't broke, don't fix it!) that I've turned into a "Quickstart Lite" environment, and I'm really interested what, if anything, to do now that Quickstart development has stopped and the project has been forked.

This will be a good lightning talk Jeff

pcoleman's picture

I have used Quickstart as well it is a good development environment. Perhaps after we can talk about different development environments.

Different development environments

fejn's picture

I'd be glad to hear about/discuss other development environments. Ending up wit Quickstart is more something that I found worked for me, rather than the end result of a scientific evaluation...

Drupal 9

fejn's picture

The reason for the Drupal 9.x on the Version Control list -- and it's Bad Judgement -- there's already a 9.x-3.0 version of it.

The authors of this module have ensured that you will not use Bad Judgement on any of your sites.

Jeff

Happy hour reminder

christefano's picture

Anyone interested in happy hour at Grill 168 should come as early as possible. I plan to be there around 5pm.

The tour of the Hilton Pasadena & Convention Center will start at Grill 168 promptly at 5:30pm. Be sure to pay your bill in time to join the tour.

Anyone skipping happy hour and going straight to the meetup can meet us in the Santa Monica Room at 6pm. Thanks!

Raffle prizes!

nodiac's picture

We have fun raffle prizes for tonight's meetup, including Droplabs memberships, Lynda.com 30-day passes, Watchdog magazines and more.

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
pcoleman's picture

Jeff did not have too much time to talk about Quick Start. We had a little discussion but too short a time. Can we ask Jeff to be prepared to present next meetup?

Absolutely. I agree that we

christefano's picture

Absolutely. I agree that we ran out of time far too quickly.

What do you say, Jeff? I'd love to see a demo.

Demo

fejn's picture

Sure -- what's the date for the next meetup? I'll try to post some of the more useful links I found about other dev. systems in this forum so people can check some of them out at their leisure.

November 21st, but…

christefano's picture

The next monthly SGV Drupal meetup is on November 21st, which is the third Thursday.

(We usually have this meetup on the fourth Thursday, but have moved it to third Thursdays for October, November and December.)

… but, we're having a more casual get-together on October 24th in Old Town Pasadena. Stay tuned for exact details.

Thanks for the dates...

fejn's picture

I'll be in touch.

"Performing Site Audits" Slides

christefano's picture

Here are the slides for the "Performing Site Audits" presentation at this meetup:

   https://groups.drupal.org/node/341068#attachments

I'm grateful for all the feedback I received, and I've updated the slides accordingly. Thanks, everyone!

Hi gang, we're having a

christefano's picture

Hi gang, we're having a followup meeting Thursday at 8pm week at BJ's Restaurant at the Paseo. An event announcement will go out soon so that this meetup will show up in our calendar.

This time it will be more casual and we'll be making more time for more community Q&A and any lightning talks anyone wants to give.

Good.

fejn's picture

See you Thu. at 6

It's at 8pm

christefano's picture

It's at 8pm this time and not at our usual 6pm. I hope you can still make it.

8pm

fejn's picture

May be a better time than 6pm....