Wednesday's User Group Meeting (Drupal 7 Case Study + Vertical Niche Distributions + Building Social Networks)

Hey everyone,

Just a friendly reminder that this WEDNESDAY (April 13) is the date of our monthly Portland Drupal User Group Meeting.

Here's what we've got on the agenda:

1. "A Case Study in Drupal 7: Care Network by Elite Care" presented by Manuel Mejia

Want to leverage the power of Drupal to address your own specific niche industry or market? Learn how this can be accomplished by examining a real-world case study of the "Care Network"—a Drupal distribution that assists staff and family members in creating "Communities of Care" for elderly and disabled people. Built on Drupal 7, the Care Network helps provision services, monitor community residents, and facilitate social interaction.

In particular, Manuel will discuss unique features of the project including real-time location tracking of all individuals on campus, programable alerts using a wide array of sensors, web enabled recording of daily notes and services, and touch screen monitors used to input and display this information. He'll also touch upon the strengths of Drupal as an application platform and how anyone can extend Drupal 7 core and contributed modules to fit their unique project requirements and needs.

2. "Building a Social Network in Drupal" presented by Ben Kaplan

Have you ever wanted to build your own social network? Or maybe add some cool social networking features to your existing website? In this presentation, Ben will demo some of the latest features of the User Relationships (http://drupal.org/project/user_relationships) and Private Message (http://drupal.org/project/privatemsg) modules—two modules he's worked on that allow you to replicate many features of popular social networks.

And what if you also want to leverage the power of other third-party social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace? Ben will demo the newest features of the Janrain Engage (http://drupal.org/project/rpx) module, including the ability to authenticate with other social networks, map user data from these networks, share content simultaneously across networks, and integrate with popular Drupal modules like Rules and Views.

Finally, here are the meeting details:

Date: Wednesday, April 13
Time: 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. (after the meeting, we head to Lucky Lab for drinks and conversation!)
Location: OpenSourcery offices (1636 NW Lovejoy St. Portland, OR 97209)

It promises to be really interesting and useful meeting... you don't want to miss it!

See you there,
Ben