I learned a lot and took a bunch of notes today. Here they are for your reference.
Please add to this post with your comments and any more resources.
We had a great comparison demonstration of various slideshow modules:
1. Views Slideshow (http://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow) was demoed by Jonathan, Ethan and David
Sites: nowcastsa.com, stlukeproductions.net, imbodenfbc.com, shopsa.com
-
Rotor (http://drupal.org/project/rotor)
was demoed by Harry and David
Sites: eltablajero.net
(note Rotor makes its own content type) -
Views Carousel (http://drupal.org/project/viewscarousel)
was demoed by Danny - it requires JCarousel
site: http://katieclem.com
All work better with:
ImageCache, for automatic image resizing (which requires) Image API
Thickbox provides nice features to slideshows (here is a comparison of lightbox modules: http://drupal.org/node/266126)
Danny demoed Panels (http://drupal.org/project/panels) with his site, tvrepairtips.org
(Here is a way cool Drupal demo newspaper site with Panels and Nodequeue http://panels.demo.logrus.com/)
Other modules discussed by Ethan:
Quick Tabs (http://drupal.org/project/quicktabs) he used this module to do super simple navigation on his company's site, http://cydeck.com/
PNGFix (http://drupal.org/project/pngfix) makes IE 6 and 7 read PNGs transparently
Schema (http://drupal.org/project/schema) maps external databases and works with TableWizard (http://drupal.org/project/tw)
HomeBox, (http://drupal.org/project/homebox) a simple version of panels (and sponsored by Radio France!)
David mentioned Display Suite (http://drupal.org/project/ds), which he said is similar to Panels and a possible replacement for Blocks.
There are two good podcasts on it at:
MustardSeedMedia.com http://mustardseedmedia.com/ (all free -- very good stuff)
C-A and Bill demoed ScribeFire, a Firefox add-on that lets people create blog (or story) posts in Firefox. You can add images, video, spellcheck and then just upload the whole shebang to the site with a one-button click.
Books:
Ethan recommended Getting Real, which is available in a free download from 37signals.com, and from the same folks
C-A recommended Rocket Surgery Made Easy (on UE testing) by Krug, who wrote "Don't make me think"
We really missed some folks and hope to see them next time!
Here is a list of who was there:
Jonathan Dale, @darthclue; David Needham, @davidneedham; Lettie Ozuna, @mostserene; Charlotte-Anne Lucas, @charlotteanne; Bill Waldrop, @wilywillie; Harry Thomas, @hmt3; Miguel, @m2rdesign; Daniel Sanchez, @dannosanchez; Brandon, (e-mail) bwebb@ups.com; Ethan Jones, @ethangj