Posted by johnvsc on January 27, 2010 at 1:08pm
Start:
2010-03-20 11:00 - 18:00 America/New_York Organizers:
Event type:
User group meeting
A "Play Day" is the Themers version of a "hack-a-thon". Come with a question or a project and, well, play. As always, dr00bies are welcome, but don't expect "sessions" or "presentations" ... expect to get your hands, um, dirty?
All are welcome!
This event is "sponsored" by the Local NYC Themers Guild
Same Place: Food For Thought In Bed-Stuy, BKLYN
Here is information about the place : http://www.yelp.com/biz/food-4-thought-cafe-brooklyn
Here is a gmap to the place: http://tinyurl.com/yj4u27r
If you are taking the subway:
- Get on the A express into Brooklyn and I do mean the express
- Get off at Utica Ave (Nostrand is the (express) station just before it, if you catch a local, it is Kingston-Throop (this is pronounced "Troop", btw)
- You will want to exit the station at the rear of the train, so that you will come out heading, straight in the right direction!
- Take the staircase to your right!
- Follow the directions on the map!
Call me if you get lost 917-676-0677
Comments
Will be there
Will be there. Was sick last time. Wont miss this one.
Thoughts for the upcoming Play Day
After our play day, i have had time to actually think about the day and what would benefit / attract / add value to people attending. So, let me offer up dome ideas here and get some feedback ... so that the next Play Day will be very valuable and productive.
So to address these issues, here is what I am proposing to do and support. I realize that often I bite off more than I can chew ... but at least I can do my best to commit to something:
To this point, I would be willing to do one of two things for the next Play Day for n00bies and intermediates:
Both Projects above support the community AND allow people to grow and become better. That is the thing I am excited about fostering ... and this is in my personal agenda ... I get fired about about seeing people do what they thought they couldn't do ... because I have been in that place myself most of my life.
I can create a design and divide it up, provision the site and get everything going. Also, help out with actually building the parts. Those coming, need to brush up on their skill set: say," great i am going to do primary links ... so before i get there, lemme research strategies on how to theme / constuct primary links... "
get it?
feed back, please?
YES!
John,
Your thoughtful comments are excellent, IMHO. Your comment about the "Themeing" or "Presentation" Layer vs "Admin" duties is extremely important. I manage development teams (for Drupal projects), and one thing that consistently makes me really angry is that I see developers having an "attitude" about themeing. Basically many seem to believe that this is the "baby work" for "designers" - that it's beneath them to perform these tasks, as developers. I want to spit nails when I hear this kind of talk. As a person who does both, I can unequivocally say that themeing is more demanding in many ways, and often a bigger test of problem solving skills.
It's because of all the irregularities that have to be dealt with - the ever-moving target of browser (in)compatibilities, most prominently, ever-evolving css and javascript/jquery/xml standards, not to mention the intricacies of whatever "base theme" or framework is provided. Plus, as with development, there are some "right ways" and "wrong ways" to do things, and I find that developers can get away with being a lot more sloppy than a themer can - which doesn't make either one any easier if you're a perfectionist :-). But you can still "deliver" as a developer on a project that, if the same degree of sloppiness was exhibited by the themer, would never fly.
My point is simply this: themeing is demanding, and doing it well is even more so (yet infinitely more satisfying). If we can teach the early-to-mid-level themers best practices and help them develop good work habits, that is 80% of the battle - the same as for developers. The best thing about Drupal, IMHO, is the responsibility of structural rigor that is implied (and lack of which is instantly exposed when an experienced developer/themer reviews custom module or themeing code); therefore one of the best things we can offer is a faithful orientation to this principle.
I think one next step is that we need a place to do the organizing for the various pieces of the themes - like an issue tracker. I can volunteer my clockingit.com account - http://lotussolus.clockingit.com to set up the tasks, load up the design, and have people grab tasks for themselves. We can also use it for comments and feedback. It's a pretty good system, and we can have as many people as we want. One drawback, however, is that there is no repository built in, like unfuddle.com or similar has. I have an unfuddle account, and honestly that would be better I think, because another skill often lacking is knowledge of how to use svn, cvs, git. Unfuddle supports svn and git, I know. The problem is that my unfuddle account only allows 2 users. Thoughts on this?
In short, I applaud your plan for the structure you want to provide for learners - I think your ideas are solid, and I can't want to come Play!
Kelly Bell
(kbell)
--Kelly Bell
Gotham City Drupal
twitter: @kbell | @gothamdrupal
http://drupal.org/user/293443
Re the themersguild sandbox & more
One of the things that John is willing to do is set up a very state of the art learning environment - so that in addition to a sandbox there will be a site that will enable people working on projects to maintain some record of what they are doing.
I'm not familiar with clockit - but I can imagine that it may be like basecamp or other excellent group-project-coordination tools.
Let 's look at the sandbox part first - in principle we will have a multi-site sandbox - and for those people who are learning by working in small groups - that sandbox will probably have some form of version control - subversion or something similar - and most likely any other modules or software that is useful for drupal design/theming (so the firebug for drupal module).
The "diary" part probably should include a lot of user-focused featuers: an emebedded IRC channel with some access to the channel history would be helpful, as would some methods that allows anyone working on a project to have access to the development milestones of other projects - something that enables someone to look at a site that has an interesting feature and then drill down and learn how/why that feature was built the way it was. A tall order to develop something that would work for people who are very new-to-drupal and coding, but certainly a valuable tool if done well - here we're talking about something that is much about the good workhabits and best-practices that you mention.
Kelly, very pleasing to read your Post and John's above it.
Developing a learning environment that reinforces tendencies to work that way is exceptionally valuable - this is particularly true for people who are coming to drupal who don't have that much coding or large-studio design experience - the work is just so, so much more efficient when one works in a first-class group-focused development environment with people who are aware of and committed to efficient work practices. A lot of new-to-drupal people will not be coming from that background - so this sandbox project could be a first exposure to all of this.
One of the great pluses of a sandbox with a learning-shell for group work is that it enables groups to showcase their experience in ways that are potentially very valuable for people who plan to learn drupal well enough to use their skills for doing contract work or working in "corporate" drupal design/development/themeing environments. People who go through the process of learning in an environment that is group-focused and that instills a best-practices mindset are people that employers and people looking for contract workers want - and a carefully constructed learning environment would enable prospective employers to evaluate team effort and find people who have skills they want.
Best if this project could be somehow able to support itself in ways that would enable it to eventually acquire appropriate size licensed products - unfuddle and maybe more. If this project takes off then one way that it can quite likely generate some revenue is to charge prospective employers a fee for access to development histories. There's a lot more to this - it's non-trivial because it involves group work and there has to be privacy considerations - but this is worth considering.
Shame it's going to snow tomorrow.
See you
I'm a newbie. I want to learn this thing and get it going. I've been doing a bunch of reading and checking out videos and tutorials. I hope if I see some stuff the pieces will come together better. I look forward to getting my hands dirty.
Hopefully Bread Stuy will still be there
Liked this place, nearby to the themers location.
http://gothamist.com/2010/02/13/bread-stuy_almost_closes_is_bed-stu.php
Like john and quid's ideas, look forward to themers play date next month.
Themers Play Day in NJ
Hi, johnvsc and others.
I've begun organizing a Themers Play Day in NJ.
I've found a place and have picked a tentative date . Please check for further info: http://groups.drupal.org/node/51403.
Any and all assistance is welcome.
Less than a week away for the Play Day
Hey everyone,
man, have two months gone FAST!
Clear your calendar out for next weekend's Play Day.
I have been JAMMIN on a personal site, so I have not planned anything special. But, post your questions / areas you would like to work on and we will tackle them head on.
Also, BoF tables are always welcome. You will find that you will maximize your experience if you work with other on solving problems that are similar to yours !
Please note: Last Play Day was on a Sunday: THIS PLAYDAY IS ON A SATURDAY!!!
Re johnsvc's Project A
Johnsvc makes great suggestions in this post above. This has to do with Project A in that post, but if you haven't read John's excellent post carefully please do.
Great idea of maybe putting together a drupal-swag theme or some other drupal-community-useful site.
This post focuses on John's wise and strong suggestion that we would "...need a theme BEFORE the day...."
Maybe the best way to get this rolling is to provide the following:
1. A tool with which people can create photoshop layouts. Here's one that I've found that's fun to play with and that someone could use to create a design or designs that we could use. Don't want to get hung wasting time trying to make an attractive color scheme, then consider looking at this neat site that builds palettes derived from photos. Want a photo, then consider doing a search for creative commons licensed images in various archives. See a menu item or some other themeable entity that you think is neat, and worth discussing/incorporating into a theme you'd like to work on - then maybe use the firefox screengrab addon to save it for possible incorporation in your design. Not familiar with CSS? For a quick intro to css maybe start here. If you are coming with a laptop/netbook and use firefox, consider equipping firefox with firebug - a great way to quickly inspect css and much more.
2. A site where (a) individuals can upload finished designs and themeable design fragments - elements like nifty borders or tabs or whatever, and where (b) the group can vote, possibly by Thursday night on a project that John/the group will use as the example site for illustrating basic concepts during the earliest part of the playday on Saturday.
front page module
Very excited to see a Drupal meet-up in the bed-stuy hood! I Recently found the front page module which is great for setting up a landing page based on User roles.
I'm very competent in CSS and Adobe. Been using Drupal on several sites now and learning PHP as I go. I hope I can offer some assistance, and maybe learn a few things :D
I'm without a laptop this weekend
Had to send mine back to Apple for some TLC. That makes me available to help someone who has hardware. I'd also like to get some info on how theme registry works in D6. Looking forward to tomorrow. Best to all.
first time coming.... not
first time coming.... not really sure what to expect..... im guessing its just a meetup where everyone helps each other out on whatever interesting projects they have? i've been messing alot with the multi-site drupal setups and ubercart module lately, if someone needs an intro i can gladly help. nothing advanced tats for sure. right now im working on trying configure storm project management module with an embedded mindmeister map (mindmeister.com). anyone use this?
Couldn't make it
I was planning on leaving Central Jersey around 12:15 but got delayed till 1:15 and then I missed the train so the next was at 2:20ish and by the time I would have arrived it would have been 4ish and you guys would likely have been burned out by then.
Maybe next time! Would have loved to come!