Great discussions yesterday at the Meetup and dinner afterwards. I talked with a few people about the idea of holding a Drupal Jam Session every so often, like once or twice a month. The idea would be to host a "working meeting", where people come expecting to work on their own projects, but also have time for "lightening talks" where they share any particular challenges they are facing and seek input on how to tackle them.
The goal of these Jam Sessions is two-fold:
1. Get out and socialize with fellow Drupalers, thereby reinforcing the local Drupal community
2. Get work done and especially get help breaking through particular challenges (e.g., selecting modules, developing custom module, theming a site, performance tuning)
If you are interested in participating in future Drupal Jam Sessions, please comment here with your input on objectives, format, frequency/dates, location, etc.
Thanks,
Erik
Comments
Definitely Interested
I think this is a great idea. I was thinking as I left last night that I wish it was something I could do much more frequently. The other thought I had is that it would be really helpful to me if we did some smaller case studies, something like the Form API question or Menu comments that came up last night and people could do write ups on how they solved or would solve the problem. I think it would help many of us learn more about Drupal and its vast feature list, but could also aid in the development of new features.
Case Studies
Your case studies idea sounds like it might also be appropriate for Drupal Dojo.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Awesome idea
Point number two is my favorite. I could trade looks over people's shoulders now and then. Count me in.
Count me in as well
I'd definitely be interested. I'd like to see how other Drupalers do things, theming AND module-dev-wise. I work out of Billerica but live in Somerville, so I do things in the suburbs or in metro.
ETA: schedule-wise, I generally can't make anything on Tuesdays.
I'm interested too. My
I'm interested too. My schedule is usually flexible except when it is not. I live in Arlington but can get to anything within 495.
I am interested as well.
I am interested as well. Count me in.
Im trying to figure out the best process of transferring a couple sites to a new server and possibly Drupal 6.
+1
in addition, some sort of log/blog might be helpful, with attendees posting challenges encountered, overcome and collaborated on. it'd be nice to have an ongoing dialog about real world development uses and challenges.
Lets just use this group for
Lets just use this group for such a log. We can free tag our posts with 'tips' or somesuch. Then we can eventually create a block on the homepage for these posts.
That would be Awesome
In particular, I would love to see someone post the Forms theming question asked at the meetup, perhaps with a few more details about the problem. When I got home from the meeting, I tried to see if I could figure out what to do, for instance, would setting the #theme attribute work. But I realized I didn't know enough about what exactly they were trying to do or what they had tried in the past to know. And it seemed like there was a fair amount of buzz around the different menu displays presented at the meeting and would love to hear more about how they attacked the problem of menus.
Boston OG Free tags?
At the moment we cannot use free tags in the Boston OG vocabulary. They are locked down as being only geographic-specific. Can we change this, or should we just use site-wide tags?
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Seems to me that site-wide
Seems to me that site-wide tags are fine for this. Our block would filter on a particular sitewide tag like howto and our group.
I'm very interested in this as well.
Hey Guys,
Just joined Groups because of the Drupal jam session idea. Would be great to all work together and see if we can help each other out. I'm a bit of a Drupal newbie, but it's starting to click pretty well now. Only major problem? I'm on 6.x and there aren't so many useful modules. I'm looking at developing my own due to the shortage.
So what's the latest on this? I'd say twice a month would be fantastic! I'd be there.
hey, me too!
good lord, didn't even know this group existed for all of these years that i've been registered at drupal.org ...duh
moshe just turned me on to it and so i've joined and would certainly love to get involved in a local drupal jam of some kind...
Too much!
I'm all over this. I echo zilla! I've been a member of drupal.org since 2006 and just now learn there is a Boston Group? Wow!
And a regular Jam Session to boot would be awesome! When's the next session, I'll be there.
I live and work in Billerica but would be willing to travel for this.
what are you doing at 7pm next Monday, March 30?
This post has been around for a while. Has there been a Drupal Jam yet? Lee and I are back in Boston for a few weeks and it would be great to get this going. It's unlikely that we're driving to Providence for the next meetup.
In Los Angeles, we've had a few "Drupal Cafe" meetings that sound very similar to the proposed Drupal Jam. Unlike the regular Los Angeles meetups, Drupal Cafe meetings have been informal, social gatherings that focused on helping a particular individual. So far, we've updated a module to Drupal 6, discussed patch management and helped a fellow Drupalista get up to speed with Subversion.
The way we got Drupal Cafe started was pretty easy. At a meetup, someone said, "What are you doing on Thursday? Let's get together, have coffee and see OS X running on that netbook of yours -- I'll help you install Drupal on it." It snowballed and the ensuing meeting ended up having 10-11 people who organically grouped into pairs, working on things like troubleshooting CSS, comparing virtual machines and diagnosing that someone's laptop was slow because it only had 128MB of available RAM.
So... what are you doing at 7pm next Monday, March 30? It makes sense to me to get together even if only a few people can meet.
Thanks
Thanks for your insights, christefano, and concrete suggestions of how to proceed. I did have 1-2 small informal Drupal Jams with 1-2 other people, but didn't manage to follow-through on organizing something more public yet. I've been traveling 4-5 days/week this year, so participating physically just isn't in the cards at the moment, but I hope this catches on.
As for locations, I had planned to offer a meeting room either at my church, or a local public school building--both of which I can get special access for. Perhaps someone can offer a suggestion like that.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Monday, March 30th Meetup - 7PM
I recommend somewhere that has free wifi. I don't know what's available at that hour on a Monday nite. I live in Carlisle - see name below.
Best,
Kevin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carlisle Marketing Group - providing strategic and tactical marketing services for business-to-business relationships.
visit our website at carlislemarketing.com
Follow us on twitter: carlislegroup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carlisle Marketing Group - providing strategic and tactical marketing services for business-to-business relationships.
visit our website at carlislemarketing.com
Follow us on twitter: carlislegroup
Monday it is - 7PM
I'm in Billerica. Monday at 7PM works for me. Panera Bread http://www.panerabread.com offers free wifi. I've used the one at the Woburn Mall on the past and that location is never crowded in the evenings. Interestingly enough, I just used their search feature and selected "Meeting place" and of the 5 places they offered me in my area based on my earlier search for "Free Wifi", Woburn was the only one they offered for a meeting place. Maybe because it is large and normally has lite traffic in the evenings.
That's just a suggestion though, I'll entertain other ideas for sure.
See you Monday!
Cozzi
Drupal Cafe in Jamaica Plain (Wednesday, April 1, 2009 @ 7pm)
A few of us are having coffee and talking Drupal on Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at J.P. Licks in Jamaica Plain. You're invited!
http://groups.drupal.org/node/20619
There's definitely a lot of interest in this. I spoke with a few people off-line and Monday didn't pan out, unfortunately, and I give my apologies if changing it from Monday to Wednesday is inconvenient. It's hard to accommodate everyone and I think it's important to get things started and go from there.
Can't make April 1
Oh well, I have another event scheduled for the evening of April 1.
Make this an event (on the events listing)
I suggest the Panera jam / meet-up / gathering be made into an event so more people can see it, and so they can RSVP if so inclined. I'm interested in attending and this offers a good reason to escape the office on time.
-- Lane
I'm confused -- is Monday still on?
It's probably because I'm just dense, but I can't tell whether people are still planning to get together at Panera tonight (Monday, March 30 2009) or not. I see christefano's posting above that says some people said they can't make it but I don't know whether that means everyone or not.
I'll stop by the Panera at 7pm and if people are there, great, and if not, I'll continue home. Otherwise I'll see people in JP on Wednesday.
-- Lane
I wish I had seen this message last evening
I guess you went after all. I thought last night was totally off so I stopped looking for messages. I wish I could make the 1st but I can't. I'm not sure where you're coming from but I think Kevin is also from North of Boston. Maybe we should attempt to get a group going north of city?
No worries!
I had a very nice sandwich and got a little reading done.
I work in Egleston Square in Boston (intersection of Washington St and Columbus Ave), right on the Jamaica Plain / Roxbury line. I live in Rowley, so I normally drive home up Route 1, but 93 is almost as quick.
My only request is that when there is a group meetup arranged, list it as an event rather than buried in a 6 month old comment. :-)
North of Boston works for me
Chiming in...North of Boston is so much better for me. I live in Ipswich and happy to meet NOB. There's a Panera off of Route One I believe in Saugus if that works for next time. And, if there's interest in North Shore like Newburyport, Beverly, Salem, etc, we can be more creative with location. Anyone game?
Also, considering there's lots of us in Andover going a little west would be good too. I'll make poll.
Susan
www.macpheedesign.com
I saw something neat...
I'm not a developer that could hold a candle to anyone that will be attending, I'm a marketing guy with a Computer Engineering education. I understand how it's supposed to work, but I have no experience in the syntax of the languages. mhoefer suggested a format for the NH meeting. http://groups.drupal.org/node/20441.
I would like to see some examples and discuss ways to find solutions. I hope to take away a better perspective on drupal tools and how they work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carlisle Marketing Group - providing strategic and tactical marketing services for business-to-business relationships.
visit our website at carlislemarketing.com
Follow us on twitter: carlislegroup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carlisle Marketing Group - providing strategic and tactical marketing services for business-to-business relationships.
visit our website at carlislemarketing.com
Follow us on twitter: carlislegroup
Andover also works nicely
Saugus not too bad but Andover, Reading, North Read all work for me they are about 25 minutes away.