On an impulse I just proposed a Drupal Dojo 2.0 planning session for the Bay Area Drupal Camp in November.
For the past five months, I've been mostly idle in #drupal-dojo and absent from the group. It's not that I don't love you all, but rather that I've been busy with life and running a business, and haven't had much extra energy in my batteries at the end of the day. However, with Drupal 6 on the horizon, and the continuing crunch around talent and documentation (not to mention the fact that we're about to hit 1000 members in this group), I want to get "back in the game" so to speak.
Since BAD camp is a natural rally-point for me, I've proposed a session there. However, I'm well aware that not everyone can make it to Berkeley for that, so let's talk about it here too. What would you like to see from a Drupal Dojo 2.0?
Comments
My own wishlist
When I think about getting back in the mix, the things that appeal to me are:
1) Doing a couple new lessons
but...
2) Doing a lot more work to try and wrangle other people into giving lessons
specifically with the purpose of...
3) Making sure that Drupal 6 launches with a compelling set of developer, themer and power-user video documentation.
and that...
4) Popular contributed modules get a similar treatment.
Basically, I think just as much as Drupal 5 was a break out, with some help from the Dojo, Drupal 6 could be even bigger. It's going to be the most designer-friendly release yet, and more scalable than ever before. I think with a little work from the crew here, we can really make a huge splash w/this.
Finally, I'd like to figure out how Drupal shops (including my own) and individual Drupal pros can interface better with the Dojo. It's a tricky question, but the idea of separating business and training seems increasingly like a limitation that doesn't make sense. How can we bring the professional aspects into the Dojo without selling out? I'm not sure yet, but I want to figure out a way.
http://www.chapterthreellc.com | http://www.outlandishjosh.com
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
What I think...
(I'll be in Berkeley, but here's my stuff)
First and foremost, we need better planning of lessons. While GDO has been a good place so far, I think that we're growing out of it. For example, the ideal workflow for a lesson would be lesson idea -> volunteer to do lesson -> real lesson -> completed/archived lesson. While GDO is where the lesson ideas live, it takes some effort to make them in to real lessons. I think that can be solved by moving all of the dojo on to http://dojo.drupal.org/ or drupaldojo.com (I like the former).
I also think we may want to detach the Dojo from Drupal (I know some of you are thinking noooooo). Maybe we start with a jQuery lesson (on jQuery only, no Drupal), and see what the jQuery folks think.
And for Josh's point #3 - I think that should be as simple as adding a taxonomy vocab (target audience) to our hypothetical dojo.drupal.org.
Finally, I agree 101% with Josh's last point.
We've come to need more functionality than g.d.o provides.
I really don't think we've covered nearly enough dojo tutorials to begin hitting non-drupal training materials. Let's stick with the dojo format of creating training sessions about Drupal stuff. It's worked well enough so far. There's still a lot of things to cover as far as D6 is concerned, and I would personally like to see a 15-20 minute vid about every single popular contrib module as well.
As to the outgrowing of g.d.o, yes, we've done it. The g.d.o works great as a discussion forum, but I'm getting really tired of having to create two duplicate nodes every single week, and then having to keep track of them when making changes. The taxo terms are slightly different as well. The g.d.o isn't gong to roll out the signup.module, event, calendar, or what-have-you just for us anyhow.
I'd like to see a form setup on drupaldojo.com to receive lesson ideas. Those submitted nodes would become a running list of things we need to cover in a lesson. Anyone who's authorized could sign up as the teacher of that lesson, and once someone signs up, the node becomes a signup-enabled node.
All anon users can signup for the lesson, and Signup.module will send out an email automatically 30 minutes before the lesson begins.
I also have an idea for how to make a dojo.module that lets us run a vnc reflector and an audio broadcast setup just like the one webavant built, but housed inside the drupaldojo.com server. Once we do that, we can automate the flow of a lesson to the point that teachers can test their connections with no extra help, attendees can be notified of a lesson, the VNC reflector starts up automatically five minutes before the lesson, and begins broadcasting a video slate with the title of the lesson and a teaser caption drawn directly from the leson node that triggered the event.
I think this is a massive undertaking, yes, but consider this. If there's 6, 7, or even 8 Big Drupal houses that each wanted to kick $800 to $1000 toward training a BUNCH more drupalites, this module would let us do it.
Oh, and Addisun's right. We gotta start limiting these screencasts to 30 minutes. Shorter is definitely better when it comes to communicating ideas.
Senpai
Joel Farris | my 'certified to rock' score
Transparatech
http://transparatech.com
619.717.2805
Was just thinking
I'd like to see a form setup on drupaldojo.com to receive lesson ideas. Those submitted nodes would become a running list of things we need to cover in a lesson. Anyone who's authorized could sign up as the teacher of that lesson, and once someone signs up, the node becomes a signup-enabled node.I got up this mornin' and had an idea!
I'm gonna make a very configurable "push" module.
The way this would work is to push certain node types to other node types.
For example, I could "push" the "lesson idea" node to a "lesson" node. The teacher would automatically become me. A bunch of other fields would automatically be filled in. That is the magic of the push module. Thoughts?
Workflow and Actions
Instead of writing a new module, this could be achieved using Workflow and Actions, keeping everything within a single node type, Lesson. The workflow for a lesson could be: Lesson Idea > Lesson Discussion > Lesson Presentation > Lesson Archive.
--
Matt Koglin, Antinomia Solutions
Well
I disagree. How can we tell what state a lesson is in? And, we want to be able to have additional (and pre-populated) fields in lessons, that we don't have in ideas.
My $.02
Workflow fields will get you most of the way there
http://drupal.org/project/workflow_fields
RE: "How can we tell what state a lesson is in?" -- a view that selects nodes from a specific workflow state, so all proposed lessons can be displayed in one place, all archived lessons can be displayed together, etc.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
And on another note
About the $$$ part of it...
I think we should contact some Drupal houses about donating either $$$ or labor to the Dojo. And by labor I mean either teaching or making a teaching framework.
Additionally, we should start a ChipIn (after BADCamp), Drupal Dojo 2.0
Donated labor: yes!
I think getting shops to make "in-kind" donations of labor (or servers, as firebryght has done) is the way to go. The downside of getting money is that someone has to handle it, which will complicate their lives when it comes to dealing with taxes and such. I think the main things we need are more experts to give lessons, and maybe some expert help (and possibly hardware/services support) getting the dd site put together.
http://www.chapterthreellc.com | http://www.outlandishjosh.com
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
Online funding tools may help?
Somebody recently pointed me to this new fundraising platform/model:
http://cofundos.com/:
A tool like this may provide a clean, well organized way to bring $$ into the mix. Guess the first issue would be if we'd want to bring money into the equation at all. Personally, I think it would enable a lot more people to to teach; do some 'open workshopping' on module builds, themes, or even turning the dojo site into a kick ass learning portal/install profile; also give people time to produce a wider range of high quality learning materials, engage the community, and other valuable, yet time consuming tasks.
Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions
Gus Austin
Funding from the Drupal Association?
I mentioned in this Marketing and Communication budget discussion that there were a lot of parallel conversations and proposals - also that a bit of funding may enable more time to be spent on teaching, creating video tutorials and other learning materials, developing the dojo2.0. learning/workshop framework, and other ways we can create additional value for the community. If you check out webchick's comment below, the idea of Funding from the Drupal Association may not be too far fetched.
What would take to fund Dojo 2.0.? I guess we'd need to first need to clearly define where we're going with Dojo 2.0. and how/where some funding would help. Any thoughts on how to go about this?
Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions
Gus Austin
RE: Dojo Wish list - Module Development
Joel,
Let's talk on Monday about how we can better support the Dojo group. Maybe we can move forward on some of these action items and/or come up with a game plan prior to the BadCamp event.
Jeff Badger
Director of Sales & Marketing
Achieve Internet
800-618-8777
Jeff Badger