Greater Los Angeles Drupal Glossary

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This is a glossary of names and specialized words often used either at Drupal meetings in and around Los Angeles or in places online, such as http://groups.drupal.org/dtla, http://groups.drupal.org/la, http://groups.drupal.org/sgv and #drupal-la on IRC.

Please note that there are numerous Drupal user groups in Los Angeles County and that some terms in this glossary may used differently by different people. For an overview of the meetups and user groups in and around Los Angeles, see http://groups.drupal.org/node/246793

When editing and adding to this page, please keep the entries alphabetized and use correct HTML markup (e.g. be sure to include anchor tags for each entry).

Code sprint #

Code sprints are organized events where attendees meet online or in person (and sometimes both) and work toward a shared goal. Local area organizers have produced several code sprints in recent history, including sprints focused on resolving issues in the Drupal 7 issue queue and the Conference Organizing Distribution (COD) project.

Credit #

From "Producing Open Source Software" (Chapter 8. Managing Volunteers) by Karl Fogel:

Credit is the primary currency of the free software world. Whatever people may say about their motivations for participating in a project, I don't know any developers who would be happy doing all their work anonymously, or under someone else's name. There are tangible reasons for this: one's reputation in a project roughly governs how much influence one has, and participation in an open source project can also indirectly have monetary value, because some employers now look for it on resumés.

There are also intangible reasons, perhaps even more powerful: people simply want to be appreciated, and instinctively look for signs that their work was recognized by others. The promise of credit is therefore one of best motivators the project has. When small contributions are acknowledged, people come back to do more.

Droplabs #

Created in early 2011, Droplabs is a community-run coworking and hackerspace near Downtown Los Angeles. The idea of what eventually became Droplabs was introduced by Lee Vodra (nodiac) during the opening announcements at the DrupalCamp LA open source conference in 2010 and evolved during BoF (birds of a feather) discussions at the DrupalCamp LA 2010 and Drupal Design Camp LA 2011 conferences.

As an event venue, Droplabs hosts public and private events not related to Drupal (e.g. free coworking days, user group meetups, job fairs, launch parties, corporate trainings and hackerspace workshops), but its founders remain dedicated to promoting Drupal in and around Los Angeles.

Droplabs serves the local Drupal community by hosting many Drupal events each month, including the Downtown Los Angeles Drupal, Frontend Drupal and High Performance Drupal meetups, and other events like Drupal Coworking Friday, Introduction to Drupal workshops and weekly tutoring sessions and book study groups.

Founders of Droplabs

Droplabs was founded by 7 entrepreneurs and local Drupal community members representing themselves and half a dozen different companies and organizations. At the time of this writing, 4 of the original 7 founders remain active, manage the space and produce events:

Operations & Management Group (OMG)

In January, 2013, Droplabs members and founders moved to create an Operations & Management Group (OMG), a committee whose members' roles and responsibilities are to help with the daily operations of the space, such as providing guidance and oversight, suggesting new business strategies and implementing new business policies.

Droplabs' OMG members include:

From the very beginning (including the first public discussion in October, 2010, and the original site visit in January, 2011), Droplabs has been a community-oriented organization. Droplabs is community-run, uses consensus-based decision making, and has weekly planning meetings that are open to all members.

DrupalCamp #

DrupalCamps are conferences loosely based on the BarCamp format which is a free, participant-led conference that is usually one or two days long. DrupalCamps are often sponsored by companies which help cover expenses such as food and a venue where the camp takes place. Lots of coding, lots of learning and lots of socializing inevitably takes place.

DrupalCamps happen all the time and all around the world. The camps produced by local Drupal community members are Drupal Design Camp LA (DDCLA), Greater Los Angeles Area Drupal Camp (GLADCamp) and DrupalCamp LA, which was one of the largest DrupalCamp conferences in the world in 2008, 2009, 2010.

Drupal After Dark #

Drupal After Dark meetups are social occasions where alcohol is usually involved. Drupal After Dark is part of a growing movement that include the Drupal Happy Hour and Drinks and Drupal meetups around the world.

Drupal Café #

Drupal Café meetings are often casual get-togethers and are usually in the daytime at coffee and tea shops. These events are often spontaneous and without much planning, but some meetings have a specific agenda or focus. Many Drupal Café meetings have a theme of casual coworking.

GDO (and GDO/GLAD, GDO/LA, etc.) #

GDO is an acronym for groups.drupal.org, one of the many websites where Drupal user groups have a presence. GDO/GLAD is the abbreviation for groups.drupal.org/la, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal's group site on GDO.

Git #

Git is a version control system that has all the right buzzwords: free, open source, distributed, high performance, cryptographic authentication and so on.

The local Drupal community web teams use Git to help manage the Drupal.LA website and related projects. Local organizers have also produced Git with Drupal 7, a Git training combined with a Drupal 7 code sprint, on June 12, 2010.

Pro tip: Git is not an acronym and should be written as "Git" or "git" but never "GIT".

IRC #

IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, predates AIM and ICQ and is the granddaddy of "chat rooms" and instant messaging. With more than 30 chat rooms (called channels in IRC parlance) that are dedicated to various Drupal topics, the Drupal community uses IRC for live chat, online collaboration and back channels during meetings and conferences.

The channel for the LA Drupal group is #drupal-la at freenode.net. (The previous link opens in a web browser. The following link opens in your default IRC chat client: irc://freenode.net/#drupal-la.) While specific to the LA Drupal user group, this channel is widely used by Drupal members throughout the Greater Los Angeles Area.

LA Drupal Association #

In 2010, local Los Angeles-area organizers formed an unincorporated association named "LA Drupal Association" that is officially recognized as a legal entity by the State of California. This means that Los Angeles-area Drupal user groups now have the ability to receive donations and sponsorships large and small to help members produce the events, trainings and conferences that local Drupal user groups are known for, as well as cover ongoing infrastructure and promotion costs.

The legal entity known as "LA Drupal Association" was created simply and exclusively for the purposes of fiscal responsibility. In its current incarnation, the LA Drupal Association has organizers John Romine, Chris Charlton and Christefano Reyes listed as the "officers" and Tommy Keswick listed as "treasurer".

The only other use for this organization that's been discussed amongst the local Los Angeles-area Drupal organizers is the possibility of offering group healthcare for Drupal user group members. This is still in the exploration phase. There may be other uses for this entity in the future, but local Drupal user group members have not yet discussed them.

Events that the LA Drupal Association has been the fiscal agent for include Drupal Design Camp LA in 2011 & 2012, DrupalCamp LA 2011 and the Conference Organizing Distribution (COD) code sprint in October, 2011. In February 2012, guidelines were proposed on the ladrupal-organizing mailing list for allocation of LA Drupal Association funds.

On February 17, 2013, Rain Breaw announced her plan to resign as treasurer and called for a new treasurer. In April, 2013, Rain Breaw announced that Tommy Keswick is the new LA Drupal Association treasurer.

Manager #

LA Drupal has in the past had a handful of organizers who have called themselves "managers" and have been largely seen as leaders of the group by its members. The term "manager" has lost much of its meaning after several "managers" stepped down in May, 2011, yet continued to volunteer and organize group events more or less the same as they did when they were "managers".

Managers vs. Organizers vs. Admins vs. Moderators #

Groups on the Drupal Groups site at http://groups.drupal.org have "group organizers" that control the page layouts (using OG Panels) of the group sites as well as the group's member list (using OG, or Organic groups) and group tags (using OG Vocabulary).

Since the first and only LA Drupal Governance meetup in July, 2011, this "group organizer" role has been referred to by some group members as a "group moderator" role and is the subject of an issue in the groups.drupal.org issue queue at http://drupal.org/node/1235206 to make the "group organizers" list more configurable.

Meetup #

Drupal meetups are regularly scheduled meetings that often have a specific agenda or focus. Meetups can be hosted anywhere, such as at a sponsored location, a member's home or office (or at the offices of the member's employer), at a café or restaurant, etc. and locations may have seating for anywhere around 10 to 60 (or more) attendees.

There are many meetup formats and local area Drupal meetups usually incorporate presentations, open Q&A, job announcements and lightning talks. There are numerous meetups in the Los Angeles area each and every month that are listed in the community-maintained wiki at http://groups.drupal.org/node/246793

"LA Drupal" name controversy #

In an effort to reduce work for themselves, the majority of LA Drupal managers at the time decided by majority vote in February, 2011, to control and consolidate the "LA Drupal" name and the "LA Drupal meetups" by reducing the number of "LA Drupal meetups" to just one a month.

To avoid the possible perception of confusion, other meetup organizers in and around Los Angeles and Los Angeles County were forbidden from using the wording "LA Drupal" in their name or branding, and they were welcome to organize "Drupal meetups" anywhere they'd like, the only "LA Drupal meetups" were only the meetups on the Westside.

This mandate was not particularly popular (if the voting on comments is used as a reference) and has not been observed by meetup organizers in the group other than those who made the decision. It was also not legally enforceable, as there is no "LA Drupal" trademark and meetup organizers are automatically granted a license to use the "Drupal" trademark in their meetups per section A4 of the Drupal trademark policy.

Several groups have subsequently split off from "LA Drupal" and created their own user groups. This includes the Greater Los Angeles Drupal and San Gabriel Valley Drupal user groups, which have events, organizing teams, leadership styles and governance models separate from the "LA Drupal" user group.

Organizers #

The Los Angeles area has several active user groups and has many organizers and volunteers. A list of local area organizers who produce regular events was created in June, 2011 and includes (no particular order) Steve Rifkin, Miguel Hernandez, Oliver Seldman, Scott Knight, Matt Chapman, Ishmael Sanchez, Benno Sebastian, Stewart Pringle, Kevin Kaland, Chris Charlton, Paul Chernick, Pete Benjamin, Matt Campbell, Chris Grant, William Estrada and Christefano Reyes. This is not intended to be a complete list and may be out of date.

Podcast # (and DrupalCast #)

A podcast is series of video or audio recordings, often delivered via RSS. Several Drupal podcasts are produced in the Drupal community, including the ones by DrupalEasy, Mustardseed Media, Lullabot, Be Circle and Himerus.

The LA Drupal podcast, called the LA DrupalCast, is on hiatus. Previous episodes can be found on blip.tv and in iTunes.

Users Helping Users #

Users Helping Users, a phrase borrowed from the SF Bay Drupal User Group, 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. Users Helping Users can be incorporated as part of a meetup or be the theme for the entire meetup.

Please note that while Users Helping Users is not designed to be a replacement for bona fide consulting from a Drupal professional that there are plenty of Drupal experts and professionals who attend our meetups and sometimes they need help, too!

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christefano's picture

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