3 days Drupal session at Swecha summer camp

Hi Siva,

This is very good. Well done in taking up the cause and helping spread knowledge. I am sure the 3 day camp is going to be very successful.

I would like to suggest the following topics at summer camp, This is based out of my experience of working with various developers from Hyderabad over the years.

Name of the session: How to (get) help

Introduction to the session:
Over the years drupal.org has grown into a massive knowledge base, with hundreds of new posts every day on every possible topic, Everything that anyone wants to know and learn is available on Drupal.org in some form. From DIY step-by-step instructions to build basic sites, example modules to hi-end solutions architectural decisions, everything is documented and available.

The downside of all this info is that it can get a bit daunting when someone is looking for specific information and often leave a not so good feeling specially when someone is new to Drupal world. This session will help them taking advantage of all the knowledge available on Drupal and also give them the bases of How to get help / How to help.

Topics

How is drupal.org organized
Drupal.org, how is it organized into Drupal.org , groups.drupal.org, api.drupal.org . What kind of info do you find at each of these sites.

How to find relevant modules, themes and some external sites that can help in finding drupal modules ( Drupalmodules.com)

Getting started
Where do find drupal documentation and books, jump start learning curve using example modules, follow step-by-step guides

Contributing to drupal through issue queues. (This is my personal favourite)
Drupal project uses issue queue for everything from in-depth technical discussions to providing roadmap for future development. This is the space where module maintainers and drupal project leads are most active and is the best place to seek for help. There is a great presentation by Jennifer Hodgdon (jhodgdon), head of drupal documentation team here

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-Ravi

After a 3 day long workshop of D7, we are glad to welcome new drupalers on board. The session was a huge success which motivated many of them who had previously used JSP, Wordpress, etc. to consider D7 for their future projects.

Nearly 500 students attended the workshop who came from different regions of Andhra pradesh like Guntur, Rajahmundry, Vishakapatnam, etc. Most of the participants were in their 3rd year of B.Tech engg and some even from diverse branches like Electronics, Telecommunications, etc. Whole workshop was completely hands-on with participants spending more time on PC rather than sitting in a conference room which was spread over two college campuses, CBIT(http://www.cbit.ac.in/) & MGIT(http://www.mgit.ac.in/) in 10 computer labs. They were told to go through http://wiki.swecha.org/doku.php?id=cms1 , http://wiki.swecha.org/doku.php?id=cms2 and get help from volunteers, in case they were stuck up somewhere. Some FAQ were compiled here http://wiki.swecha.org/doku.php?id=cms_faq

We are glad to thank the following Drupal hyderabad members who volunteered for the Workshop:

Sandeep, Sashi, Ravi, Ramrudra, Viswanath, Kausik, Madhumati, Pravallika, Siva