Another Drupal meetup in Old Town Pasadena. The meetup will be held on Monday, March 7, 2011 from 7-9pm. Everyone is invited. Please bring laptops and chargers if you would like to follow along. There will be time for discussion and job announcements.
Please RSVP by signing up below so we know how many to accommodate. Depending on the turn out we may need people to bring chairs. If you can't attend this month's meetup but would like to come to one in the future, we will be hosting meetups on the first Monday of each month.
Address: 1 S Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 202, Pasadena, CA 91105
Parking: There is free parking after 8pm if you can find a spot on the street. There is also a parking garage across the street. First hour and a half is free and $2/hour after that.
As the other meetups say- "Attending Drupal meetups is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend as many meetings as you can..."
Join us afterward for a Drupal After Dark.
Comments
Just joined LA Drupal today
Hi, I just joined Drupal LA, and more importantly, Drupal Groups, for the first time today. Highly looking forward to meeting others and contributing to the group.
Name- Carolyn
Ethnicity- Korean American
Location- South of Los Angeles (city of Cerritos)
Education- went to UCLA
Welcome, and thanks for
Welcome, and thanks for introducing yourself, Carolyn!
How are you using Drupal? Let us know here or at any of the meetups how we can help with any questions or problems you have.
Thanks, Christefano!! I first
Thanks, Christefano!!
I first dappled in Drupal several years ago, but rather superficially.
Now I would absolutely love to harness Drupal's capabilities and train myself inside out to be able to build dynamic, gorgeous websites for organisations- in particular, public interest organisations- and to be precise, non-profit groups that face discrimination. I'm being intentionally vague here because I'm shy to divulge some of the specificities, hehehehe...
I feel terribly shy to show up to the Drupal group. It will practically be my first online meetup with any group lol. But you all seem an amiable bunch.
wrong date
Just so you know, the date that you list in the copy says, "March 7, 2010". I'm hoping that's not correct :)
fixed!
The date is March 7, 2011. Thanks for pointing that out.
I'll be at DrupalCon Chicago and won't be at this meetup, but I'd love to hear how everything goes.
questions about the pasadena meetup
Hello,
I have a number of questions :) So is this meetup still on? Who's going to be there? And what might be the topics of discussion?
[I would probably feel dreadfully out of place if it were super-developer/programmer level subjects- as I'm more of a graphic and web designer)
Also- I clicked the map and tried to look at where the exact location was, but couldn't tell the exact venue? Is it a building? What are the establishments surrounding the location so I know I'm at the correct place? You'll have to excuse my horrendous sense of direction and navigation.
Hi Carolyn- Yep, the meetup
Hi Carolyn- Yep, the meetup is still a go. The location is an office above the Cheesecake Factory. If there isn't someone down by the door, the passcode to get into the building is #8546.
@everyone- Is there anyone that would like to give a presentation? Does anyone have any topics that they would like to learn more about?
A Digital Entrepreneur and Technical Consultant.
Founder, CEO of FoggyTrail
Whew~ thanks for the
Whew~ thanks for the clarification, Sknight!
I'm going to bring my macbook and an enthused mind. I've been in that Cheesecake Factory before, incidentally.
I have quite a number of topics I would like to learn more about, but am doing research on my own too, so as not to bog down the flow of instruction, otherwise.
But I will get back to this with some topics I am most curious about.
Don't worry, it's hard to bog down the flow of instruction
Hi Carolyn,
The meet ups are all about networking with other drupalers to learn more. Generally someone will present a topic and take questions at the end.
Scott (SKnight) runs the Pasedena meetup. Since your towards the east and south, you may want to check into the Downtown meetup as well at Oversee.net (515 Flower Street). Generally more people attend the downtown meetup, and they have a half hour for questions and answers before the session gets started. The next Downtown meetup is March 15th, and Christefano just opened the signups.
I won't meet you tonight because I'm in Chicago at Drupalcon, however, I do hope to see you downtown next week.
Paul
Paul Chernick
CEO
Chernick Consulting
(310) 569-2517
Un-Signed But May Make It
I un-signed up, but if the progress of the day allows, I may make the journey. Must continue imbibing Drupal.
Hello, the reason why I
Hello, the reason why I became so enamoured with Drupal in the first place was its ability to create gorgeous, sleek, complex (yet simple) interfaces such as :
I dream to be able to drupalize websites into the examples above, starting from run-down, insipid sites like:
http://math.caltech.edu
At first, I was looking into Wordpress as a platform, but then quickly realized Wordpress seems to be most optimal for a sophisticated BLOG.
Most importantly, I was very moved by the tight-knit Drupal community, with its penchant to form such strong bonds and friendly groups, all wanting to contribute, give, and learn- just like a university setting- a setting in which I flourish.
My background is more highly artistic and visual than not. I'm a web and graphic designer with zero PHP skills, and alas- a Drupal noobie :(
But I purchased a subscription to Lynda.com, and plan to learn their introductory PHP course, as well as their Drupal offerings (already went through many Drupal videos).
That's where I'm coming from, at tonight meeting I hope to meet others and see how I can gain footing and momentum in learning the appropriate resources to be able to construct sites like those (I've got aesthetics covered, but not the Drupal woodwork)
Suggesting another possibility
Hi Caroline,
You may not need to learn PHP. With your background you could be a designer and themer. You do want to learn about the Views module as well as the Panels Module (requires the Ctools module). You can always find a programmer/geek like me to provide any coding you need. You may also want to look into the JCarousel module and jquery. As a person with a strong visual/artistic background you may want to leave the programming to people like Ashok Modi or Steven Rifkin.
I'm personally weak on the graphics design side, but programming comes easy to me (I was/am a software engineer and consider computer code poetry). I am/would be looking for a designer/themer to do the grapics portion of any website I work on.
You should meet Mikeylikesit (OpenChimp.com or Michael Thorne) he's very strong on the visual side of things. You may also want to meet Oliver Seldman, both of these people are drupal themers and very good at what they do (actually they are awesome).
Try to get to the Downtown meetup on March 15th, and the Main LA Drupal Meetup on March 22. You will meet experts in all phases of Drupal at both of those events.
Paul
Paul Chernick
CEO
Chernick Consulting
(310) 569-2517
Pasadena Drupal Meetup
This month's Pasadena Drupal meetup was well represented by newcomers. We had six people show up, 4 of them interested in learning more about Drupal. Unfortunately all our senior members were unable to make it.
Next month I am expecting that we will have a lot of interest again. If you are able to drop by and help us out getting started please contact Scott.
Thanks!
Matt
Great to hear!
It's great news that so many new folks, to Drupal, showed up to the Pasadena meetup last night! I'll send you, Scott & Christefano some ideas I've had for "newbie-friendly" presentations/content.
Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu
Newbie Friendly Content
Just a thought, but maybe we should create a one to two hour Welcome to Drupal or Introduction to Drupal, or Introduction to LADrupal presentation that we can give 4 to 6 times a year.
Paul Chernick
CEO
Chernick Consulting
(310) 569-2517
Newbie Friendly Content
That would be great. I know at least one LUG that would be a receptive audience to present at in addition to our main meeting in addition to the satellite meetings.
I have noticed that from a quarter to a half of the members at any given meetup are intimidated by the presentation. They see that everyone else is smiling and nodding so they don't ask questions. It might be interesting at the larger meetups to have general introductions and announcements, then either have two talks, one aimed at newcomers, or split into parallel talks, one advanced.
Drupal managers, is there room on our site for a 'getting started' page that may be a duplicate of what is already out there on the Internet? Someplace we could point a newcomer at that includes install instructions and how to get going adding content?
Matt
Here's some links
Not an LA Drupal manager, Matt, but here's a couple links:
http://drupal.org/getting-started
http://drupal.org/documentation (which used to be the old "handbook" for folks that remember that)
http://drupal.org/documentation/customization/tutorials/beginners-cookbook
My "pie in the sky" idea a while back was to suggest an LA Drupal Repository for situations like you encountered on Monday, Matt. Speakers cancel, presenters get sick or have emergencies. Having something handy to keep folks busy & interested for such cases could be beneficial. It sounds like more work for the Drupal managers, though. While having all the content the community creates in one area is helpful, that's a LOT of movement of assets. So I was thinking more along the lines of just tagging videos/presentations that have been made in the past "newbie" or "newbie friendly." This way, if a meetup has an inordinate amount of folks new to Drupal, the organizers can switch mid-stream to provide the most value for new attendees (the organizers could even use what's tagged as reference points for what the community likes & what might be of interest in future talks). If new attendees have a good experience & can take something away for having attended, they're way more likely to not only come back to that meetup but even seek out other meetups that might be farther for them to travel to. But with all the "there's only one official LA Drupal meetup & no (official logistical/managerial) support for all the local meetups that have sprung up in the last year" talk recently, I hadn't bothered suggesting it to the LA Drupal managers.
I'll just save an email & post what I was going to mail you, Scott & Christefano on. I think you could have a full newbie-friendly meetup by doing some quick intros to some of of Drupal's most important bits (Taxonomy comes to mind, for example) & then have them all create accounts (free) on Drupal Gardens & have them learn by using. And not just simply using Drupal but using a very advanced SaaS platform that shows off all of Drupal's strengths with zero setup headaches like hosting options or PHP.INI settings. Basically, I think Drupal Gardens is a great way to show off Drupal & put it in users' hands with zero code wrangling. Maybe they come from design backgrounds, DG's Theme Builder would allow them to integrate their CSS. The great thing about Drupal Gardens, to me, is that whenever you're done with the site & ready to port it to your own domain, DG allows you to make a zip file of your site & database. No strings attached! Of course, this sounds more like a class which might not be ideal but I guess I was imagining organizers & senior members & DG experts walking around answering questions while the users learned & created at their own pace. These are the kinds of things we need to showcase to folks new to Drupal- that it's not some insurmountable wall of "OMG I gotta learn all of this?"
Think back to when you were all in school. The "cool teacher" made learning fun, was approachable, had an "open door" policy & engaged students in interactive ways. The "cool teachers" back then & the "cool teachers" nowadays still do the same things. The only difference is that the tools have changed. The sharing of ideas transcends genres so there's no reason why we can't borrow effective strategies from the field of Education.
Just my 2 pennies worth. ;)
Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu
Links for those that attended
I referenced a few things last nite:
www.drupalgardens.com - Great way to get started in Drupal or use SaaS (software as a service) for rapid web development
www.ddcla.org - 1st Annual Drupal Design Camp LA (DDCLA) held early last month
www.ladrupal.blip.tv - LA Drupal's Blip.tv channel
http://ladrupal.blip.tv/file/4775886/ - Ishmael Sanchez' talk at DDCLA titled "Your Design Sucks as a Drupal Theme!"
http://ladrupal.blip.tv/file/4775886/ - Laura Scott's talk at DDCLA titled "Grok Drupal 7 Theming"
www.ladrupal.org - LA Drupal community site with lots of good references, articles & book reviews
www.groups.drupal.org - Interested in specific aspects of Drupal? There's a group for that. Create an account on "GDO" so you can join the conversation.
----groups.drupal.org/la - LA Drupal group chock full of announcements, questions & meetups
----groups.drupal.org/genealogy - This was specifically for Jay who was interested in using Drupal as a genealogical platform. Great thing is that there's a discussion happening there about creating a Drupal Distribution for Genealogy.
Hope I didn't forget anything.
Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu
Pasadena tonight (June 6)?
I see the mention of meetings in Pasadena on the first Monday of each month, but no specific meeting notice here. Is there one in Pasadena this evening? If so, count me in.
Hi, sorry I never got around
Hi, sorry I never got around to making an official post. Unfortunately we won't be having a Pasadena meetup this month. I will be out of town until Wednesday and we still haven't been able to find a different venue. Palebunny is holding a meetup at Cafe Alibi in place of this months meetup. Sounds like it will be a lot of fun.
Hopefully we can find new place to host the meetup in the near future so we can maintain these monthly meetups. I will guarantee a meetup next month!
A Digital Entrepreneur and Technical Consultant.
Founder, CEO of FoggyTrail
Yes Pasadena meetup
Hi there, yes, there will be a pasadena meetup tonight. See you there, rg4w!
I do not know for sure
I do not know for sure, but Scott Knight (sknight17) the lead organizer of the Pasadena meet-up said at the main meet-up last week that he was going out of town this week, and there might not be a meet-up. Since there has not been a post for the event I am assuming there is no meet-up. I will not be able to make it in any case.
I just came cross this post by palebunny this might be a good place for people to meet tonight, but you should confirm that others where going before you show up.