LA meetup - January, 2008 - Lock & Load

Tuesday works for me. 7 PM works for me. Downtown does not. Something a bit further west would be good

If you're talking about Tuesday, Jan 29th that works great for me.

I prefer the westside too, but I'll do downtown.

The 29th sounds good to me.

@ Rich Media Institute, 525 Venezia Avenue, Venice 90291. This is fine with me. I will plan to be there. Earlier would be a problem as I need to drive (1/2 hour westbound) and prefer to eat before evening meetings. Fortunately, there are many restaurants in the area.

As our meeting falls on the eve of the Drupal 6 Launch meeting and days before the launch, we have an opportunity to kick off 2008 by making a valuable contribution to this effort.

Our very successful Drupalcamp has set the tone for what we can do (obviously helps to have some rock stars). Starting with the immediate tasks on hand, we can really shine in '08.

Amazon has listed several action items (related info can be found in the Marketing Group) and I've already established a dialogue regarding specifics of what we can do.

Does this sound like a good 'call to action' for tomorrow?

Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions

Threw together some potential action plans and talking points for tonights meetup:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg9292rd_87v3z6wnc7

Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions

First, thank you to everyone who came. We'd also like to thank our location sponsor Rich Media Institute, which everyone who attended seemed to like for our future meetings.

• First meeting of '08
• Keeping connected and informed with your LA Drupal User Group
• Come meet the Lullabots - Tuesday, February 5th (6:30-10pm)
• Los Angeles Event: SCALE - you can still volunteer for the Drupal booth!
• Drupal Dojo
• Upcoming Meetings & Agendas
• Drupalcon 2008 Boston

First meeting of '08

I think everyone was happy to see a group meeting again and it was our first for 2008, so welcome to our new arrivals and to all familiar faces. People traveled from the O.C. and Apple Valley to reach our new meeting location in the city of Venice and no body left disappointed.

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Keeping connected and informed with your LA Drupal User Group

Do you want to make sure you're never missing out what your fellow LA Drupal members are chatting about or up to? Then make sure you know where to find everyone, which is not far if you're online.

• Chat online in our IRC room #drupal-la, information over at our resources page.
• Read LA Drupal member blogs at http://ladrupal.org/blog
• See our news and important posts at http://groups.drupal.org/los-angeles

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Come meet the Lullabots - Tuesday, February 5th (6:30-10pm)

Team Lullabot is going to be in town next week for a round of theming workshops. We've got a room booked for the full week and would love to host a local meetup. They'll be at the The Portofino Hotel & Yacht Club: 260 Portofino Way in Redondo Beach on Tuesday, February 5th from 6:30 - 10pm.

There'll be a cash bar and cookies. Hope to see you there!

http://groups.drupal.org/node/8503

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Los Angeles Event: SCALE - you can still volunteer for the Drupal booth!

SCALE (Southern California Linux Expo) is around the corner and LA Drupal is pridefully managing the official Drupal booth. We're there to impress, advocate, and show community love. It's a Linux expo so there will be a lot of propeller heads and newbies so we need everyone to be open to talking with anyone at the expo about Drupal, our local LA Drupal group, and show them to our booth. We're told there'd be 1 ethernet cable and wireless internet access throughout the expo area.

The plan is:
- We have a booth! 8'x10', and two chairs (but we can request more). The table should be a 6'.
- Projector playing loop demos of Drupal material - sites, themes, images, event & community photos (Drupalcon/camp), and training videos. RMI seems to be lending us the projector, we need to verify we have a screen that can hang from the poles of the booth.
- Printed material proposed containing Drupal mantra and marketing jargon. It should plug our local user group (name, URL, next meeting info).
- A banner was proposed but is up in the air for budget and printing contacts still being determined.
- A flat screen monitor was offered to be stationed at the booth, anyone else have another? We'd like to use these for machines setup at the booth that would play our loop/demo/media.
- Looking for giveaways and freebies to have at the table. It was recommended to have small candy (I'd love to get blue M&M's), any buttons Civic Action folks can provide, and anything we can get our hands on (stickers, pins, etc.). I (ccharlton) hit up Apress and Packt Pub to see if either would donate a book that we can raffle off to people who visit our booth and leave their contact info.
- Do we need to bug Firebreak, Work Habit, Warner Bros. Records, Achieve::Internet, or similar for sponsor help?
- Every booth volunteer is asked to bring a laptop to possibly be used at the booth or for their own demo purposes. I'd like to see us define a DVD/CD of links, videos, photos, and documents that we can run on the booth computers and no body will have to wonder what they should have up on any screen during the expo. If we lock down the list of things we want to say and show then everyone will have a much easier time when they're stationed at the booth. This booth is a big deal for our group and the Drupal name so we'd like to see at least every LA Drupal member attend the expo and visit the booth if you're not volunteering.
- There will be a set of times that volunteers will be responsible for so the more volunteers the better for everyone.

If you would like to volunteer, please post a comment at http://groups.drupal.org/node/7757 or contact Mike Stewart

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Drupal Dojo

The Drupal Dojo needs our help. Well, Drupal can use anyone's help, but we're talking about keeping the Dojo rolling throughout 2008 with extra support from LA Drupal. We're in a unique position to show the world we're a really good set of Drupal heads. There is no immediate plan, just a call to action that people heard at the meeting last night.

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Upcoming Meetings & Agendas

The group has spoken, we're organizing our meeting agendas ahead of time and will be applying the following goals in each monthly meeting:
- More tutorials and presentations. We're shooting to offer a basic (newbie) presentation that doesn't have to last long and will be good for the new comers. This can be done by veterans and new speakers - perfect for practicing before DrupalCamp! We would also like to see a non-newbie presentation by any member who is willing to step up.
- Non-L.A. Drupal speakers - yup, hot shots that aren't in the L.A. area will be courted to present at our in-person group meetings.
- Marketing & Selling Drupal - this will be an ongoing topic for sure and will serve everyone better when talking to clients about choosing Drupal.
- Help Drupal Docs - we're always going to talk about how we can expand, revise, or add to the official Drupal documentation (handbooks), it'll only be for the best.
- Promote Drupal training - this goes for pumping the Dojo, good tutorials, videos, Drupal TV, anything we can keep collecting in our resources wiki that all of us can enjoy when not at a group meeting.
- Barn Raising, Code Sprints, and Mentor Nights - people are interested in talking about various ways people can get together to do a project together, I think this needs to be discussed more to see what's feasible for everyone and what would be fun.
- Make sure the new comers are not scared off - plan for every meeting to have at least one new face, we'll want to make them feel welcomed. We can do this by (1) introducing ourselves, (2) provide newbie content, (3) be open to questions, (4) don't be shy when enjoying presentations (ask questions, show people it's okay to ask "easy" questions).
- Talk about features and changes to the LADrupal.org website - it's a place for us to show our stuff, individually and as a community.

http://groups.drupal.org/los-angeles
http://ladrupal.org

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Event: Drupalcon 2008 Boston

Drupal's official convention comes to the U.S. and is being held in Boston. If you're planning to go, please let the group know since some folks would like to see who is up for sharing a room and such.
Post in our group page and if you need Drupalcon info it's over at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org

Also, if you're speaking and are an LA Drupal member, mention so!!! We'd like to know who will be representing us out in Boston.