Posted by alanburke on April 3, 2011 at 6:18pm
So what did you think?
Was Drupalcamp Galway a roaring success or a flop?
Let us know in the comments.
Feedback for Drupalcamp Galway
So what did you think?
Was Drupalcamp Galway a roaring success or a flop?
Let us know in the comments.
Comments
Event Organisers notes
So the job to organise this event landed on my lap.
I was lucky that DERI stepped up with a FREE venue plus Wifi, thanks to Lin and Lorea; Conor put the website together and Sile looked afer the schedule. We didn't have any expenses, so we didn't need any sponsorship.
What well well.
A Great venue is 75% of the battle so we were well served there.
Wifi uptime 100% - it's easy to forget how good it is until it breaks.
Enthusiastic and knowledgeable presenters.
Social Scene - I don't think I've ever had a bad time of Druplcamp anyway!
What didn't go quite so well.
PR - We didn't do a great job about spreading the word.
Speakers - We needed a wider variety of speakers, especialy to make up for last minute changes.
Swag - We didn't have nice swag to give away.
Catering - It would be nice to have a fully catered event.
How we can improve
At the post event discussion a general consenus emerged that while we will continute to have events every 6 months.
One will have and "Outward" emphasis.
One will have and "Internal" emphasis.
(I can't think of better names at the moment).
Outward
This will be the big main event.
We try to do a big PR push to the non Drupal committed people.
We will have more sessions focussed on helping newer users out.
We will possily have more 'business-related' discussions.
We'll try to get sponsorship for catering, swag, venue etc
We'll try to get people from overseas to attend.
There will still be plenty for advanced users.
[Drupalcamp Derry will fill this role]
Inward
This might be more focssed on intermediate and advanced users.
Less of a PR push.
A more stripped back event - no effort on catering, swag, sponsorship etc
New users would still be welcome of course.
We may use a different title to Drupalcamp
That's my 2 cents.
very happy with the camp
I might say I feel happy with this camp.
As it was mentioned during the last part, we have had a much more familiar environment in DERI compared to Dublin camp. This has made easier to talk and interact with each other.
@Alan, when you mention: PR - We didn't do a great job about spreading the word.
May be it would be interesting to send information to other drupal groups so they know what's going on. Sort of general mailing list for all the groups. It might be the case where drupalers are travelling and are around the camo location those days. Moreover, people from other groups might suggest people for invite talks too..
Comparing DublinCamp talks with GalwayCamp talks, These talks were more "hands on" thing. I had the chance to play around with Drupal while people where explaining things.
The topics on "panels", "views", and CSS/SASS/COMPASS... have been interesting because it is something that you should know in the very beginning before starting your own site.
Furthermore, this knowledge was expanded with Gary's talk on the garden's website.
As I am not an advanced developer i can't complain much.
My overall satisfaction is very happy :)
Thanks!!
notes from my presentation - Ubercart
not sure if this is the right place, but here are my notes from my basic Ubercart presentation
Install Drupal 6
Turn on core modules:
Path
Search
Upload & enable modules:
Admin menu
Token
Token
CCK
Content
ImageAPI -ImageAPI, ImageAPI GD2
ImageCache
ImageField
Filefield
Thickbox
Ubercart-
Ubercart Core modules -all
Ubercart Optional modules- Catalog Payment Reports Shipping Quotes Taxes
Ubercart Extra - Google analytics Stock (if you keep stock levels)
Ubercart Fulfilment -Flatrate
Ubercart Payment -payment method pack, paypal
Configuration
Content type - Product - remove “promoted to front page” & comment
Country settings - add ireland & uk, remove usa & canada
Create simple help page
Store settings - name, email, address, address of help page, format tab: currency & date format
Checkout settings - anonymous checkout, checkout messages, address fields (post code)
Shipping quote settings - quote method flat rate. Conditions: weight, amount etc.
Products/Manage Classes - set up new classes for different VAT rates
Tax rates - set up high and low rates. Tick product class. No conditions
Catalog - Node counts on, block title etc. Product grid tab (if wanted)
Taxonomy - add some categories to catalog
Create a product of type VAT high rate. Add weight if shipping will be by weight
Test checkout with VAT but don’t complete as you need a payment method
Payment methods - tick paypal website standard and any others, set up paypal stuff (submit whole order as single item)
Checkout
I have to say congratulations
I have to say congratulations to all involved even with speaker cancelations it was still an excellent and well received event – there was a nice sprinkling of talks for the beginner to the more advanced… it took a lot of work to organise 2 strands over 2 days so well done team :)
It's always great to see how others are using drupal and how I can improve my own work flow… god knows I need it sometimes…
I didn’t get to the final sessions as I had to head off early so I didn’t get to hear the discussions or what came out of them so I may be duplicating...
If I was going to be critical I would say that for noobs drupal terminology has a steep learning curve and sometimes this was glossed over… to an experienced drupaller the terminology is second nature but for someone trying to get to grips with for example views its not something you can pick up over a weekend – there were use cases on nodes but extending these to users and taxonomies would help build confidence… showing use cases and a top download approach to why you create a view - views can be a chinese puzzle of clicks which doesnt help noobs to understand the concepts
One final note, I didn’t see much on preprocessing functions which would have given users an alternative to control content in pages and blocks – it would have balanced the panels and context approach… Im not a fan of this approach, If someone can think of a use case where panels and context top preprocessing I might reconsider :) though this is the designer/coder division and it does depend on what side of the fence you are coming from... like everything in drupal there are a number of ways of doing one task most times not to best practices - no hacking please but with the hook mechanism flexibility is at your finger tips. It would have been nice to have heard this a little more over the weekend - usually what was presented was the only way of doing a specific task - but it didnt take into account that the feature is not part of core - future issues on upgrading :)
Tks to everyone again, it was a great weekend in Galway and I will be back at the next event when it comes around again
M
what about a friday?
first off, great stuff - thanks to everyone involved in organising galway DC - another triumph.
on the discussion about future camps - I like the idea of 2 camps per year with more effort on PR etc on the "big one".
perhaps it has been discussed before but what about having the first day of the big event on a friday? It might be more attractive to 9to5 staff who aren't mad keen to give up their saturday and sunday without having a sense of how good the camps are. If we are going to have a concerted effort to lobby govt, and other major sectors north and south, it would be great to have weekday to encourage people to come along to meet the community and hear more about drupal.
Congratulations on everyone
Congratulations on everyone involved in DC Galway - I throughly enjoyed it!
My suggest for the next camp would be to list the required knowledge and possibly links to tutorials/hand book for each session. So is you were to talk about 960 grid/ninesixty theme you might list knowledge of HTML, CSS, Theming etc.
I'd also like to see any presentation slides/notes uploaded on the day. I know this can be difficult if it's a talk at short notice but hopefully we can get people on board sooner with more prep time.
I think Friday is a good idea and could be best put to use selling Drupal to business and noobs, which will hopefully free up Sunday for more developer discussion which I really enjoyed at this camp.
Well done on flexibility !!
The continually changing schedule is an art in itself and this whole camp flowed very smoothly and kept its timetable, very impressive.
I really enjoyed meeting some of you again and some for the first time. I really find these events very useful and learnt about other ways of doing what I was doing the way I knew how. I hope that the peer review process will help that process. As site developers we tend to get a bit lost in our own methods and to get another view on our challenges would be very useful.
Thanks to DERI, a great venue for this kind of camp, hope we return again soon.
I'l have video for posting soon, did the editing on Lin's yesterday and rendered it over night, I'll upload it this morning.
Really enjoyed the weekend -
Really enjoyed the weekend - the only downpoint was that the conversation on Drupal Ireland had to be cut short as I thought it raised a lot of really important and interesting points.
I'd agree with Stephen about exploring the possibility of using a Friday for one of the days - it might make the event look less like a bit of craic for hobbyists and more professional. Definitely something to keep in mind for the autumn.
Well done everyone involved, it was a great success considering all the problems youse faced.
Feargal
Cheers all for another great
Cheers all for another great Drupalcamp.
In agreement about the points above.
In terms of using a Friday I think it would be great. With a bit of forward planning you could even structure the PR around it and directly target businesses, web design companies, students etc in the area local to the camp.
Another thing that might be useful, with regards to the camp websites, is to capture some extra info regarding proficiencies in the registration process. Something simple like:
Have you an experience with the following (tick all that apply):
[] PHP [] MySQL [] HTML [] CSS [] Javascript [] Drupal [] Another CMS
Then when people register to attend sessions, workshops etc, the speaker would be able to see the level of experience the people attending have and cater their session towards them with regards to using appropriate terminology etc.
I know that sort of overlaps a little with what Steve was saying about listing the required knowledge on the session page, but I think that if you have them fill that in you can do other things like adding in sessions (if you don't have a full timetable yet). I do think that Steve's point is a lot more important though, as you could then work the schedule around the sessions. No point in having a theming session with a prerequisite of knowledge of Views before the Intro to Views session etc.
DC - buíochas
Thanks, Alan and all. You could write a local version of http://nodeone.se/blogg/organizing-a-drupalcamp-%E2%80%93-a-short-how-to
I was sorry to have to run off to get a bus on Sunday as the discussion about Drupal Ireland was underway.
Chris is on to something in suggesting a way of highlighting skills/interests that may be relevant to a presentation.
Worth remembering too is the point that was made about suggesting that people arrive with a version of Drupal and modules ready to go. A note published before each session, "You will get most from this session if you are familiar with [] and have [] ready."
It seems to me that these are the constituencies for Drupal in Ireland:
1: people who are curious (but uninformed) about Drupal
2: those who are familiar with it and work with it code-wise (likely to be developers)
3: other who are familiar with the broad strokes but are code-illiterate (maybe 'clients')
(If DrupalCamp were an airshow these are 1: the people who want to watch planes; 2: the people who understand, build and maintain them; 3: the people who buy and fly them. In that vein, DERI was a great venue with lots of provision for power, signals and visuals)
Showcase examples will help groups 1 and 3 and Friday may encourage those who confine work to weekdays or who haven't (yet) got a Drupal vocation (eh?)
To recruit to group 2, getting a poster about DCs into the colleges would raise the profile - in addition to what Gary mentions above.
Thanks again all
Well, us Northerners were
Well, us Northerners were discussing the Drupal/modules situation in a bit more detail and there is a plan... I am going to think it over and try to come up with a working solution, but the gist of the plan is this.
Build a virtual machine with all bells and whistles required for a clean Drupal install.
2 multisite installs, one for D6 and one D7.
Common modules installed in both, Drush available for any extras.
When you need to run a camp, create a snapshot of the server and create as many multisite installs as you need, then just give out credentials to people on the day and get them to work on your virtual box with the joy of being able to revert the snapshot when you are done :)
We'll maybe test the theory at DC Derry...
Scor and I did the multisite
Scor and I did the multisite setup thing for a training at SemTech... it was the perfect way to get novices to understand the important parts first.
Another option on top of the
Another option on top of the VM build would be to run Aegir and have every presenter provide a .make file. Then we can deploy a site for every workshop user. At the end of the session we can do a backup & migrate then archive their site and offer it to download.
The other advantage of this is that people who know drush can download the .make file and have it up and running on their own laptop.
Of course I could be over-complicating things ;)
Would xampp be a possible
Would xampp be a possible solution or an addition to the toolbox for camps? They would be smaller to deal with over vm's and to get working all people have to do is extract the instructor/tutors provided xampp that had drupal pre-configured and would be able to use it afterwards.
Only thing to remember is to start the mysql and apache services once you extracted
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
I was talking to Feargal
I was talking to Feargal about his Views session, he was pointing out (and we've found this in the past) that if you offer something to install on people's machines, it tends to cause problems.
Everyone's laptop is different and if someone came with a laptop with xampp or wamp etc already installed, they would need to either disable or uninstall before installing our build.
With a VM sitting as a VirtualBox (for example) all you would need to do is to download VirtualBox onto a machine (whether that be the speaker's laptop or a machine sitting dedicated to running it for all speakers) and then copy the vbox file into the servers folder. Spin it up and hey presto, one virtual server sitting on one machine ready to be used by anyone with access to it.
Do prefer vm's myself and
Do prefer vm's myself and swear by snapshots, was just thinking of length of time it takes to copy vm's when they are carrying a few extra bits & bytes and the space needed for a guest vm when it came to trying at home.
It's also a liability
It's also a liability nightmare, if you install anything that screws up someones machine then A: You end up trying to fix it B: They could sue you for damages.
With the VM on a network server, at least they'll only be using their web browser to connect to their site on that VM.
love the airshow
love the airshow analogy!!
minor suggestion on the word "coding" in point number 2 above:
"coding" implies things like module development, but there are a lot of drupal site developers who don't do much (or any) actual php coding. They build sites, do configuration, create views, etc., they just do it with existing modules rather than rolling their own. i'd put myself in that (sub)group, i've written very little php in my 5 years of building drupal sites. themers might also live in this group. so i think the group is fine, but you might use a different word or phrase (site builders?)
The airshow analogy is great
The airshow analogy is great but as frost says it requires another class. The first two classes (which I will term spectators and the passengers) are fine, but the other group needs to be split into pilots and mechanics. The pilots fly the plane but don't really care how it works (as long as it does), the mechanics on the other hand need to know what they are looking at when the plane is in bits. (There is a definite blurring of these two groups as it's usually useful if the pilot knows how the plane works if it starts going wrong!)
Aside from analogies I didn't make the camp but intend to get to the next one by hook or by crook!
I totally agree about this
I totally agree about this and love the analogy. There are people who can do much more fantastic things in Drupal than I can because they know how to hook up the plumbing using the UI—they know all the fantastic modules that I haven't checked out yet and have all the good workflows in place. These are the people who can make the plane fly loops.
I am not a site-builder these days—it takes me a much longer time to create a site and it isn't as good as many site builders can do. To continue the plane analogy, I know how the engine works, how the wheels go up and down... that kind of stuff. And hopefully I can learn from the pilots how I can help make the engine and wheels work better so they can do even crazier stuff.
So I think it is great to have some more advanced sessions and focused discussions that help these two groups share their tacit knowledge.
I don't even know whether "group 2" (which is now two groups) requires all that much recruiting. I think that we just need to create a more focused atmosphere for these two groups to engage in in-depth discussion. That will draw some of the people who are advanced but might not be coming because there isn't much targeted at them, and there will also be trickle up from more casual site builders who start to get more involved.
..one more thing
I also found it interesting that we had people like bminish (think I'm right here) who are more Linux sys admin types rather than the typical Drupal/web focused attendees. I found the debate around Drupal performance interesting and value input from sys/mysql/network etc admins.
I know there is the drive to encourage business/noobie types to future camps, but also, anything that would encourage techy people from outside the normal Drupal sphere of influence would be much appreciated.