You are invited to the next DTLA (Downtown Los Angeles) Drupal meetup on May 17, 2011, We're meeting at the offices of at Oversee.net on May 17, 2011 in Downtown Los Angeles. There will be several presentations as well as open discussions, job announcements and time for networking.
Join us for a Drupal After Dark afterward at Weiland's Brewery Underground. Plus, Weiland's will validate your parking to reduce your parking to just $3, so come by any time after 4pm for food, a drink or just to get your parking validated.
| When: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 from 7:30-9:30pm |
| Where: Oversee.net in Downtown Los Angeles at 515 S. Flower St. (Suite 4400), Los Angeles, CA 90071 |
How to prepare for the meetup
Just bring your laptop, a power adapter and any other cables you usually use. Food, drinks and wireless Internet are being provided by our sponsor. Thanks, Oversee!
This event is free and no RSVP is required. To breeze through security, however, you can sign up by logging in and clicking the Sign up button below. All who sign up will also have instructions and last-minute details (if there are any) emailed to them before the meeting.
Be sure to update your profile with your full name so that a name badge will be ready for you at the front desk. To do this, log in and click My Account → Edit → Personal and fill in the "Real name" field. This is optional, but it makes things much easier for the event organizers and our venue sponsor. In any case, please be prepared to show a valid photo ID at the front desk.
We want your feedback!
During the meetup, we'll be gathered in the #drupal-la IRC channel and all are welcome to join us. The event organizers will also be checking Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @ladrupal or use the #ladrupal hashtag.
Agenda
If you'd like to give a presentation, announce a job position or ask any questions of the group, please come a few minutes early or leave a comment below. If presenting, be sure to bring your laptop (and power and display cables) and whatever else you need.
Job announcements and open Q&A
Everyone has a problem every now and then and the open Q&A session is a chance for attendees to divine answers from the collective wisdom of the group. This is also an opportunity for local businesses to make job announcements and ask for referrals and recommendations.
Ashok Modi (@BTMash), from the California Institute of the Arts, will be sharing some recent experiences he had with Display Suite, which provides a drag-and-drop interface and allows full control & customization over how your content is displayed.
Additional presentations will be announced soon. Either follow @ladrupal on Twitter or click the Sign up button below (or both!) to be notified when the agenda has been updated.
Raffle prizes! Collect them all! Must be present to win!
Raffle prizes this month include software licenses, books and Drupal training and are provided courtesy of:
- Exaltation of Larks (@LarksLA)
Exaltation of Larks is a long-time LA Drupal sponsor and offers Drupal development, training and consulting services in Los Angeles and beyond. Being raffled at this meetup is a seat to the upcoming Drupal in a Day training on June 20th. This full day of training from Exaltation of Larks and Chapter Three has limited space and is $400 a seat.
LA Drupal is a volunteer organization and we depend on the generosity of our sponsors and members in our community. Ways to help us include volunteering your time, sponsoring our events and making physical and financial donations. Please speak with an organizer at this meetup or see http://groups.drupal.org/la/sponsorship for more information.
We have time as well for lightning talks, which are 5-10 minute presentations from attendees who would like to share something with the group. If you'd like to give a lightning talk, be sure to come a few minutes early and bring your laptop (and power and display cables) and whatever else you need.
Your First Module
Joe Chellman (@ShooFly Design) will give an introductory look into writing your first module & how easy it really is. So if you've been looking into taking a dip into Drupal's code, Joe will walk you through the beginning steps.
FillPDF 411
Kevin Kaland (@WizOne Solutions) is the maintainer of the FillPDF module & will be on-hand to give us a peek & short demo of its inner-workings.
Apache Solr Custom Facets
Craig McEldowney (@Craig McEldowney) will be in the house sharing knowledge on ways to create custom searches in Drupal using Apache Solr.
As always, please feel welcome to leave a comment below and let others know what you'd like to present ahead of time.
Location
We're meeting at the offices of Oversee.net in Downtown Los Angeles at 515 S. Flower St. (Suite 4400), Los Angeles, CA 90071. Oversee.net owns a large portfolio of online properties, including Moniker, SnapNames, DomainSponsor, AboutAirportParking.com and LowFares.com, to name a few, and is using Drupal extensively for their emerging businesses division.
Oversee.net is hiring a Senior PHP/Drupal Developer to join them in Downtown Los Angeles. To learn more about Oversee.net and their open positions, come to the meetup or visit Oversee.net/careers.
Travel
Our venue is easily accessible by bus (see mta.net for bus lines) and by commuter rail (the Red Line connection is Pershing Square and the Blue Line connection is 7th and Wilshire).
Parking
Presenters and organizers will receive free parking. If you'd like to present for 20-30 minutes on a topic or help organize this meetup, please contact the organizers or post a comment below.
This meetup is in Downtown Los Angeles and there is almost no on-street parking in the area, but there is parking in the building (specifically, the "A" level of the John Hastings Tower at 515 S. Flower St.) and getting parking validated at Weiland's Brewery Underground reduces parking to just $3.
The parking entrance is a very quick right turn heading underground, immediately after 5th St.
About LA Drupal
LA Drupal is one of the world's largest regional Drupal user groups and is Southern California's largest hub for all things Drupal. In addition to being home to 4 regularly scheduled meetups a month and occasional trainings and social gatherings, LA Drupal is the producer of the annual DrupalCamp LA and Drupal Design Camp LA conferences.
Attending LA Drupal events is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend meetings and special events regularly. Whether it's about finding solutions to problems you've been having, sharing something you've learned or just meeting interesting like-minded people, the LA Drupal events are an essential resource for Drupal professionals and hobbyists alike.
If you aren't already part of LA Drupal, it's easy to become a member and find events in our community calendar at http://groups.drupal.org/la/events
Comments
Backup presenter
I'm happy to be a backup presenter if someone else doesn't volunteer to present :) Some of what I have in mind (basically things I've been working on recently):
1) Present a case study on launching CalArt's Photo Archive (http://photo.calarts.edu). Showcase site architecture, modules used, etc.
2) Using Search API (http://drupal.org/project/search_api).
3) Using Display Suite (http://drupal.org/project/ds).
4) Performance Tuning: How to diagnose where the cause of the issue could be and basic strategies on resolving them.
As always, your topics are so
As always, your topics are so interesting to me, Ashok. Thanks for offering to present. We're (& by "we", I mean Christefano hehe) shoring up a main presentation so he'll have more info on how that plays out, soon. They all sound great to me, though, especially the case study on the photo archive (been wanting to do this for my family, in Drupal) & performance tuning since rummaging through log files can be the suck sometimes. Personally, I've not used Search API much or DS (since it's pretty heavy & i'm still on shared hosting but plan on switching to VPS asap so plan on giving it a go) so those would be great for learning, personally.
I'd say consider yourself a backup presenter, for now. If Christefano shores up the other presenter, would you be down for being main presenter next month? It'd be great to hear what the community thinks & what they'd like to see presented, as well (from your sweet list!).
Muchisimas Gracias ("Thank you very much", in spanish), Ashok! :)
Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu
Sounds good
That sounds good to me; its nice to be on the listening end of the presentation :) And sure, so long as there is interest in any of the topics, I'm up for presenting next month.
De rien! ("You're welcome!" in french) ;)
Nice! I know some french but
Nice! I know some french but for some reason never learned "you're welcome." Gracias, hermano (thanks, brother!).
Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu
+1 for Display Suite!
+1 for Display Suite!
I'm in as well
I'm still up for doing the My First Module talk. I can do it as as lightning talk, or expand it into something a little longer.
I also could do a case study on a recent site that had some weird complications I didn't expect. Again, either length could work for this.
Sounds good, Joe. I was
Sounds good, Joe. I was actually gonna ping ya 'cuz a couple of your lightning talks that sounded interesting weren't able to be fit in before. The My First Module talk sounds awesome, is it more "the first module i installed" (more begginer'ish) or "the first module i built" (which might be more coder-friendly)? Either way, sounds like it'd make for an informative lightning talk.
Thanks for offering to present, Joe.
Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu
Writing code
It's about writing your first module. If it's a lightning talk, it's very basic, just explaining quickly what a module is, how it's actually pretty easy and good for themers to know how to do. I'd show a quick use of hook_form_alter and maybe a helper function. Expanded to a little longer, I'd include some more hooks that are useful to look at for some common customizations.
I could also do the case study if there's too much stuff that's only of interest to coders.
Even better than I thought,
Even better than I thought, Joe! It's coder-friendly AND begginer'ish-friendly and even themer-friendly. That's WINx3!
Again, thank you for offering, Joe. You're on!
Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu
Cool!
I'll make sure to show up this time. :)
Fill PDF Lightning Talk redux
Upon request, I'll be giving a lightning talk (5 min talk, 5 min Q&A - I can trim this down if needed) on Fill PDF. I did this at the Inland Empire meetup Thursday. It's a show-first, talk-second presentation, so I'll leave it at that for now :)
WizOne Solutions - https://wizone.solutions - Drupal module development, theme implementation, and more
FillPDF Service - https://fillpdf.io - Hosted solution for FillPDF
record it please
I watched the video from the Inland mtg but did not get the Fill PDF part. If someone could at least record the audio and post that would be great. Make sure to mention key links. thx
Sure, no problem
Sure, no problem.
All the presentations will be recorded.
Inland Empire was not
Inland Empire was not recorded this month, so you were probably watching the one from the month before that.
WizOne Solutions - https://wizone.solutions - Drupal module development, theme implementation, and more
FillPDF Service - https://fillpdf.io - Hosted solution for FillPDF
Just found out about this right now!
My first LA Drupal meetup in over a month, cool!!!!! If anyone is interested, I can share my experiences attending various New York Drupal meetups, including my experience at Drupalcamp New York 2011! And one of the meetups was held at the WORLD TRADE CENTER 7, no less!!!!!!!!!!
We'll be sending the signup
We'll be sending the signup list to Oversee today, so please sign up now if you're attending and want to breeze through security. Thanks!
SOLR lightning talk
Can do a quick talk RE solr custom facets.
Probably would be worth doing a longer talk about SOLR in general and what all you can do with it. Can look at that for next month, maybe?
Los Angeles, CA
This would be a great talk.
This would be a great talk. Solr is one of the topics many of us at the High Performance Drupal meetup wanted to hear more about.
If you're open to requests, I'd love to see a lightning talk tomorrow night and a longer followup presentation next month.
I'd love to see a quick talk
I'd love to see a quick talk re: solr facets as well :) I have been using the search api for a d7 project I'm working on (well...bouncing between apachesolr and search api + solr) and would love to see how this aspect is handled :)
Presentation?
I was wondering what the presentation agenda was for the evening.
Me too
I'm also curious. I do have my lightning talk for module newbies ready to roll.
Sorry, can't make it
Will have to do solr talk another time.
HAve a good meetup.
Los Angeles, CA
Last Night
Once again we had a successful meetup and although Techivist fell ill (I hope you are feeling better Miguel), the great community pulled it together with three awesome presentations. Thank you for BTMash, wizonesolutions, chellman and palebunny for stepping up!
On another note, I want to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Droplabs' Facebook page. If you are interested in co-working for Drupal, Drupal Pro Developer group study come visit us or become our fan on Facebook for ongoing updates. We want to hear what you are looking for in terms of a work space so feel free to give us your uncensored comments, suggestion, feature requests, etc.
Thank YOU!
Thanks go to you all for sitting through me blabbing on an on again ;) There was a question asked while I was presenting about the performance impact of using Display Suite and I had answered that because the whole node gets loaded for the rendering to occur that there would be some level of a performance impact depending on the fields, if you are using the db layer (or mongodb) for field storage, etc. However, what I did not realize is that there is a module for caching entities called Entity Cache while will cache the entity after load and will remain in the cache until the entity is updated/deleted. So this would make loading the entity much more performant. Perhaps not as fast as a query for fields in views, but quite fast nonetheless :)
Update from Joe regarding Display Suite for D6
Joe had sent me an email re: Display Suite for Drupal 6. He asked me if the Drupal 6 version of DS actually supported different layouts as everything in the issue queue seemed to imply otherwise (specifically from http://drupal.org/node/878314 and http://drupal.org/node/878298). I should have clarified as my understanding of the question was if you can override the layouts for given content types for view modes. For the choosing of different layouts and for having new layouts show up in the DS interface, that is something new to Drupal 7 (I thought it was in the 2.x branch of DS but have been mistaken). Sorry for bringing up hopes on the D6 version, guys :( And thank you, Joe, for bringing this to my attention.
The evening started with a
The evening started with a last-minute agenda, and the end result was better than if there had been a clear one!
WizOne Solutions - https://wizone.solutions - Drupal module development, theme implementation, and more
FillPDF Service - https://fillpdf.io - Hosted solution for FillPDF
Good Times
I had a great time - thanks to all the helpful and knowledgeable members who organize these events, give presentations and still have time to help out a newb like me =)
Gorgeous view and fantastic presentations
There was a gorgeous view of Downtown Los Angeles from this meetup, and enlightening presentations delivered by Ashok, Joe, and Kevin! I asked Ashok and Christefano if the screencasts were available for the presentations and I think it should be ready by now- I highly recommend the presentation on Display Suite. There were tons of Drupal veterans who were awed by its features. Lastly, I was thrilled to give my first mini 'talk'!