There has been talk for a long time between DC community members about starting back up a Drupal educational meeting in addition to our social outings in the area. This effort is the start of that movement into reality.
The purpose of this group is to provide educational sessions on the Drupal CMS by community members to help increase the size and quality of the Drupal knowledgeable market.
It is intended to enhance, not replace or compete with, the current Drupal offerings in the DC metro area by focusing on training for ALL levels of Drupal experience.
Since this is community driven, this is not for those that want a more fast paced or professional training environment.
To capture more of an audience not familiar with Drupal, I have setup a Meetup.com group to help gather and organize people. Sessions will be dually posted there and here on g.d.o to ensure the widest possible audience. I also setup a domain for that site, dcDrupalTraining.com.
If you are interested in Drupal training by the community, please sign-up at http://dcdrupaltraining.com
Also if you are interested in being a co-organizer, speaker/trainer, sponsor, or would like to help out in any way, let me know. The more people we have helping the better chance we have of this succeeding in the future.
Comments
interested, but ...
I'm not really of a mind to sign up through Facebook because of the privacy hooha -- I don't know what will show up on my profile page, or from FB on this new site.
I am interested in the OG session, and the CSS-related ones - would probably attend the one on content management to get ideas that will help me organize content better.
I'm also interested in less formal sharing sessions - for trouble-shooting purposes.
Thanks to the organizers - hope to see you soon!
You do not have to sign up
You do not have to sign up with facebook. That is only an option. You can simply create a meetup.com account if you do not already have one.
Thanks for the input.
I missed that - sorry!
will sign up on the site.
Love the idea
I have signed up and it seems from the page that there is clearly and interest and people are putting ideas up for sessions. The sooner we get a session going the better!
Location ideas
I talked with Alan at the meetup on Monday. I know he is working on finding a place. In the meantime, if you have any locations ideas, please submit them. Near the metro is best. We need a wall to project onto and places to sit. Wifi would be almost a necessity.
Ideas?
How many people total would
How many people total would we be talking about? I may be able to host one about 25 ft from Dupont circle although I would have to get necessary permissions and clear this with my employer. No promises but I can always check.
propose a limit
You tell us. If you can offer a space, you set the conditions. We post that it can hold X people. Tell us how many times you can host. Maybe for these types of events we do free signups? First come, first serve is only fair. This is not a social/professional hour like our Monday meetup.
I just confirmed that we can
I just confirmed that we can do this here at Oceana @ Dupont Circle, we just need to work out date/time! Our conference room will host 30 people (not a hard cap but it might get a bit tight if we have a lot more then that) and has an A/V projector + wifi across the office. Let me know how you want to proceed to get this thing kicked off! (Very excited)
there seems to be an interest
there seems to be an interest in the OG/Notifs session I proposed. I can start us off if you want. July is crazy with the monday meetup and the other training sessions. want to shoot for the third week in july?
July 19th work for you? How
July 19th work for you? How long would this session be? I just need to know for room reservation purposes.
I think we should follow the
I think we should follow the drupalcamp model and go no longer than an hour. we can have questions after that and a little socializing. maybe plan 2 hours? what do you think?
oops, forgot to say the 19th
oops, forgot to say the 19th works for me for our first training meetup. we just need to decide on a format - one session or multiple sessions. One room or multiple rooms.
since we don't know for sure how this will play out, maybe we can do one month with one room/session and one month with multi-rooms/sessions. See how it works. Maybe mix it up alternating. We might not have enough presenters to have multiple sessions each month.
thoughts?
I am ok with either format.
I am ok with either format. I'd say if we have the people for multiple presentations lets go for it (we have 4 break out rooms at Oceana) but if we are short on presentations or someone has a session that they think would be good as a solo that also sounds good. I am new the the Drupal community and won't be presenting nor have I been to and Drupal events so I have no opinions either way. What time are we thinking for presentations? Our building closes at 7:00pm so we would have to start no later then that so I can let everyone in (building and office).
Drupal SEO
I can present Drupal SEO, only if there is interest for such a session.
Well I certainly am
Well I certainly am interested and I believe a few co-workers would come to that also. Can we go ahead and create an event set tentative for July 19th. We can post presenters up as we receive them and if there is really a lack of interest we can cancel a session? We could have 3, possibly 4 if the interest is there at our location (although the 4th would have to be smaller in numbers). I looked for the ability to create a meet-up on the site and I don't believe I have the rights to do so. Edit:Just checked, Alan is the only one who can at this point.
re: Drupal SEO
Draft content for my session
a) Overview of Drupal SEO
b) Drupal SEO hacks (modifying existing Drupal SEO modules to accomplish certain tasks, not present in the current modules)
I will make this as simple as possible, so no programming knowledge will be required.
Advanced users will be able to access additional resources on a link, i will share.
did u post this in the meetup
did u post this in the meetup list of training ideas? people can express their interest with a click of a checkbox - very cool ;-)
re: did u post this in the meetup
i have posted it
Actually just to add to the
Actually just to add to the 7:00pm comment, we could start it later but we will have to meet-up outside and go in as a group, just seems easier to start before hand.
Oak Grove Tech in Alexandria on Braddock Rd Blue Line
We are more than happy to host. Our conference room can only host a max of 20 people but we have at least 3 other spaces that could hold maybe up to 40 people? In my experience at the NYC Drupal Meetups hosted near the World Trade Center we would all start off in a single room and then do little break-out sessions in smaller (around 5) groups to have smaller faster tech chats/ learning sessions: that way we could start off doing a chat on "Drupal Views 2" and then one break-out could be on "Views 2 basics" while another might be "Advanced Views 2 with Attachments and Theming"... stuff like that. We have a number of rooms to hold a larger session as well as smaller break-out sessions with white boards (at least one of the rooms is wired for a laptop).
I just spoke to my boss and she was willing to even contribute to the first "feed the geeks" with like 5-6 pizzas at the first meetup (assuming other people and their employers would be willing to or might want to make that happen in the future).
We could only host this once a month since it would take two of us from the office to host (with the security on our building, that means one in the lobby and one in the office). Oak Grove is new at the whole Drupal thing but that is why they are happy to host!
We are located at the Braddock Road exit in Alexandria on the Blue line. You literally walk across the street from the metro and we are the second building into the cluster (1330 Braddock Road).
Just let me know. We have a few employees at this end willing to make the hosting happen here.
Way cool! thanks enginpost.
Way cool! thanks enginpost. Alan, what do you think? I know it isn't DC but it's on a Metro stop and very close to DC. Those of us in VA probably don't care that it is Alexandria ;-).
The momentum is hot. I am all for jumping in.
What might the format be?
I hope this doesn't sound too pushy but I was wondering about the format?
Were we thinking that each time it would be one planned presentation or maybe one core presentation and the opportunity for a few concurrent break-out sessions?
I don't want to sound like a turd here, but in the past I've found myself caught in really interesting sessions with really horrible presenters and I can say it is really nice when the whole evening doesn't hinge on the success of one person giving an all-facing-front non-interactive presentation. It is also nice when the break-outs happen to accommodate different skill levels (so a noob doesn't start drowning or a veteran doesn't start snoring). The cool thing about the community seems to be that this stuff works itself out if the meetings are flexible enough to let it happen.
I am pretty excited about this!
On the topic of format, how long/late do we think the night would go?
I yield to Alan who started
I yield to Alan who started this thing. If there is a place where we can host several a sessions AND we actually have several people to do several sessions, I can go either way.
c
FYI, I am really looking
FYI, I am really looking forward to the basic theming and basic module dev and it seems others are too, if we could get those going for this Monday, July 19th session it would be great! Just my 2 cents ;)
Alan, Are we set for the
Alan, Are we set for the 19th? Only you can do the meetup.com schedule. Which facility, DC or Alexandria? We can post location is TBD if you want. Let's get the date on people's calendars. The suggested open at 7:00 is good. Then we start presenting at 7:30 like we do with the Stetson meetup and they run 45-60 mins at the most. The facility will dictate 1 versus more speakers. It looks like the input filters is top of the list right now. If we go by popularity, that is the one we should start with (as of this morning). It was your idea, does that mean you will present?
People are making summer plans so if we want a turn out, I assume we need to get the word out on the DC and NOVA groups.
I scheduled at tentative meeting for July 19th
I scheduled at tentative meeting for July 19th.
@Location
I have received a few location options. Before choosing, I would like to list what we need out of a location to compare locations to.
Below is a list of my thoughts to get us started:
I do not expect locations offered to have all of these. I am listing the ideal circumstances for a location and will be deciding factors for locations that are closely matched. Any others to add to the list?
@Format
Since this is community ran, the format can be whatever we decide. My 2cents:
I would love to have a presentation/training room that will follow the format similar to Drupalcon sessions except they will not be allowed to be gloss over sessions but instead deeper learning in nature. For those that do not know some of the basics on the training being given for that session, we will be posting links to past DrupalCon videos and other reference materials to get guests started. This will allow us to be more productive and hopefully, guests will have plenty of questions.
I would also like to have a "multi-purpose study hall" for lack of a better term. Some here have called it a break out room but I would not like it used for group presentations in any way, unless by chance everyone in the room is doing the exact same thing. Instead I would much rather have it as a room that people can go and get face to face help from other people on real world problems, BoF together in a corner, or have code sprints and be able to do those things all at the same time.
Well I can offer a location
Well I can offer a location at 1350 Connecticut Ave NW about 20 feet away from the Dupont circle metro station. We have 3 conference rooms (4 if I can get someone from work to stick around and help, although it will only fit ~9, it may be a good "study-hall" room) . The main conference room where we host a projector and screen can fit ~30 although we could move tables around and fit more if people are willing to help me return it all back to where it was. The main conference room breaks then into 2 smaller conference rooms and then there is a 3rd one next to it with a big screen tv. All these rooms have vga hookups (I want to double check this but some of them are in use) and wired internet and we have wireless access through out the office. I make no claims for speed as I don't use it but we do have several people around the office who use it and don't have complaints.
As for security, we basically have 2 layers 3 if we use the forth room. Our building closes at 7 pm. At that time the outside doors are locked so if we start before then security can just let them up to our office. After that it becomes a little more tricky since our office locks at 5:30 I would have to bring everyone up as a group so I could let them in the building and our office, this isn't an issue for me but I'm letting you know in advance so you can make an informed decision. If we do use the 4th conference room it's about 100 ft across the office but it's in a separate part (locked) so I would have to let people in. Again it's not a problem for me. I am checking with some co-workers on my team to see if they would be interested and if they are this would take care of all the issues as we all have keys.
still available but just excited it wll happen either way
I was out of town for work there for a bit. Didn't mean to drop out of the conversation!
I don't think my office has "rooms" that can host quite that large a group. We might have the space to host quite a few folks in a room (maybe 10+ per room and maybe 3 or more different rooms that could host that) but nothing quite conference sized.
I have to say that I like the idea of truly techie meetups but I think this one has outgrown what I imagined it to be already. This reminds more more of the drupal camp style weekends where we would take a huge whiteboard and setup an agenda and break off into classrooms at a university. That is cool, but I was personally hoping for more of a lean-mean quick-geek-chat format where someone says "I could talk about advanced theming" and 12 people sit around a laptop at a table and talk through their projects and experiences, answering each others questions in a slightly more interactive and intimate format where real networking can happen: less presentation and more down-in-the-trenches tackling issues someone is actually struggling with at a given moment.
I totally get the idea of more structured technical training however. I didn't realize that was where this was headed. I might not have spoken up so quickly being that our space could easily accommodate, say, 4-5 small tech chats concurrently (in the imagined format above) but not really a conference/classroom setting so well.
Either way it is cool and I am glad it is happening. I can't wait to attend but I think our space would be best suited for a different kind of techie meetup. Keep us in mind if that sort of thing evolves into a reality!
I would prefer being in the trenches.....
I'm with Enginpost, while I would like a meetup to bit a bit on his terms of a semi-small group, the larger groups are still fine. The down and gritty this is what I'm dealing with now type trenches I think is a quick way to pickup what you need for yourself and to give back in a larger setting. Just my two cents. I'm still in either way.
OG?
Any chance to do Organic Groups first? We're delving in and could use help on it.
Thanks for considering ...