Discussion: Drupal Boot Camp Champaign-Urbana Agenda

Hi everybody!

Did we have a general date in mind for this? I think I can be available pretty much any time between now and the end of April.

Has there been any discussion of topics or an agenda yet? If not, a good first step might be for each of us to come up with a list of what we'd consider "must cover" topics and then compare notes and divide up responsibility.

I think a wiki would be good for developing an agenda. I made 2 but can't edit them. Can someone else try to edit one?

Id like to start with the umich course outline for a start just to make sure all the basics are covered. http://si505.cms.si.umich.edu/node/3

Then add and subtract form it and see who wants to cover what, which modules we want to look at etc.

I think version 5 is a good place to start for training.

I'd be up for doing this during the school year if I can. It will depend on my schedule with our huge MM dept project. In any case, the only weekday that would work with my schedule would be a Friday, and I'd probably prefer a morning so I could make a voice lesson in the afternoon.

My vote would be for April 4, just so we have a little more time to get ready, and people have a bit more advance notice if they want to attend.

Did the wiki thing ever work out?

April is better for me also. I'm adding below a post I got from OJCtech in Urbana. If they can make Friday, April 4th I think its the best date. Since they have a good deal of experience with drupal and doing training, I'd like them to be able to make it.

...Funny luck -- a few of us at OJC had also talked about holding a 1-day Drupal training event locally. We'd love to help presenting on parts of this and play some role planning.

A few of the areas we could present about:
- CCK and views and taxonymy_theme
- workflow and revision_moderation and actions
- how to theme (especially using the Zen base theme to make sub-themes)
- or other modules (FCKeditor, survey, etc) if appropriate

[Brandon from OJCTech]

I'm looking at the agenda and thinking I could probably do a good job covering much of what's mentioned under the Advanced Editing Topics and Modules heading, particularly in the area of URL management and SEO (much though I might claim to despise it!). But I'm not sure what's meant by a "panel shout out"--presumably not related to the Panels module, as I first thought...

If it's basically open for someone to take over, I'd be happy to flesh out some more details about what I would picture that section covering.

-- Steven N. Severinghaus <sns@severinghaus.org>

I'll start working on a location and send the word to the UIUC webmasters list that april 4th is the date. I'll shoot for a computer lab with a big projector and space for laptops. Since its during the semester we may end up in 2 different locations and may need to just require laptops from participants.

I'm testing the multisite manager module so will see how it goes for setting up some sandbox sites for the class.

And our sys admins can take care of any guest network accounts we need for off campus participants and presenters. I'll add a table in the wiki for rsvps with a column to keep track of who needs guest accounts.

John

UIC has offered to setup a webcast of the morning. I'm up for trying this, but sometimes the software can get in the way of the presentation. What do the other presenters think? The details from the original email follow:

John

Hi John.

I have registered and I look forward to meeting with you folks. Thank you for setting this up. I am bringing a couple of people from ACCC with me (at UIC's ACCC is the equivalent of CITES at UIUC)

By the way, in case you are interested, I have set up a Web conference event on our on our server (I don't like the word "Webinar"), in case you are interested in letting people attend the April 4th meeting over the network. It won't be the same as being in Champaign, but it can still be very useful for those who cannot be there. I have also told the server to automatically record the event, so we have an on-demand archive, but I could turn that off if you want, or make other changes as you wish.

At UIC, we run a Saba Centra Symposium Web conferencing server, which is like WebEx, Elluminate, Adobe Connect and the like. I set up a Centra event for the bootcamp with capacity for up to 100 people -- the Centra event password is: [removed, ask john]

I have created a CentraOne account for you and pre-enrolled you to this Centra event as a presenter (account and password are: [removed, ask john]) so that you and other presenters can use this account during the presentations. We can create more presenter accounts, if you wish. Please try it out at http:///erooms.uic.edu.

Presenters and participants only need a PC or Mac running IE, Firefox, Opera or Safari 3. Participants need working speakers or headphones, and presenters need a working mic; presenters primarily use Centra's Application Sharing, switching from browser windows to PowerPoint, etc.
while speaking into the microphone.

While Centra also lets participants use mics to ask questions, etc. it is best and things run a lot smoother when we tell participants to type their questions in Centra's Text Chat; the presenter (or someone else) could monitor the comments, questions, etc. typed in the Text Chat and pause the demo/presentations from time to time to read the questions/comments aloud and answer questions.

Participants can test their PCs and Macs ahead of time and join the actual event using the "drupal" event password at http://erooms.uic.edu/main/User/GuestAttend.jhtml?s_guid=000001627c16000...

I hope you find this option useful.
Let us know if you have any questions.
--- Ed Garay, UIC

It might be good for the presenters to meet face-to-face and hammer out the details of how exactly this is going to work. Basic things like: Are we going to be using PowerPoint? Will we be handing out any materials (I think we should)? What software apart from a browser (i.e. maybe DreamWeaver or some other IDE) will the presentation environment need/have? Or should we all just bring laptops with what we'll need?

Would people be available early next week? A good time for me would be Monday afternoon, maybe 2:00. I can host here in Bevier Hall on campus, or we could meet someplace after hours if people have work conflicts.

I got someone else to cover my BU visit day on April 4th, so I'm in, and I've also volunteered to cover the Drupal introduction section in the agenda wiki.

I'm psyched that I get to come down to this; let's try and solicit input, too, from visitors - I'd like to use this event to try and figure out exactly what we should put into the May BU Drupal bootcamp.

(Also, since I teach on Mondays and am in Peoria, I could not make a Monday presenters' meeting.)

See you next week!

Sven and I were discussing this...What do you all think of adding an inspiration session to the agenda -- we can showcase a few amazing sites that have been built with drupal and talk about some of the other ways that drupal can be used beyond building typical web experiences (like Sven's work at using drupal for a moderation platform for receiving text messages and displaying them on screen in a live event presentation and our work in powering flash with drupal, etc). This could be a panel of us talking about the coolest things we've seen being done with drupal.

Which reminds me -- how do we wrap up our site-building afternoon with some sort of closing statements before we all head off to socialize? I think something like this along with some closing remarks and pointing people to where they can get involved and find more resources would be a good way to end the day.

B.McMurray

All,

How are you setting up your presentations for the morning learning sessions? Are you going to present slides and screenshots and just talk about the concepts or are you going to jump into a demo site and show things live?

I am leaning toward talking with screenshots since we'll be doing so much hands-on in the afternoon, but I can present either way. I'd like to match the style of everyone else though so we don't through our attendees for a loop with clashing presentation styles.

Thanks,

B.McMurray