Drupal meetup at Media Temple :: Administering Drupal :: August 30, 2011

Mark your calendar and come join us for an evening of Drupal sharing, learning, and general open source goodness: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at the corporate headquarters of Media Temple in Culver City, CA.

• THEME: Administering Drupal and other Tools of the trade!
• PRESENTATION: Administering Drupal, by Kevin Wall
• Talks and topics: DrupalCampLA feedback and recap, Lightning Talks: Tools of the trade, Plus 9-minutes of LA Drupal speed-dating (aka geek networking LA Drupal style).
• Free food, drinks, and raffle prizes!!!

AGENDA: Get the most out of Administering Drupal, presentation by Kevin Wall

Learn how (and why) to create administrative views, show feature management that works on features such as slideshows, WYSIWYG text editors, and admin pages and menus. Kevin will take a pragmatic approach and demonstrate real world examples of how to setup and configure Drupal so it is easier to administer for you and your clients.

About our presenter: Kevin Wall – Chief Executive Officer at KWALL
Kevin’s extraordinary IT experience exceeds 20 years of programming, network infrastructures, and system development. Starting in the 1980’s, Kevin was building and maintaining multi-office network systems and equipment while creating custom applications and utilizing bulletin board systems for information in the pre-internet era. As Information Technology grew toward internet and high speed connectivity, Kevin worked for the Department of Defense streamlining and implementing new technology for the nuclear, occupational safety, and operations departments. Kevin also consults Fortune 500 companies where he has successfully streamlined automation of routing operations, reporting, and automated many facets of company internal information management.

Kevin has directed, owned, and managed many different businesses including design agencies, IT consulting firms as well as contributed to many start-ups throughout his career. Kevin holds degrees from the federal government and Arizona State University in design, technical trade management, and business.

About KWALL
KWALL was a recent sponsor of DCLA 2011 and provides expert Drupal services for clients who require their interactive property to appropriately reflect their business. They have offices in Scottsdale/Phoenix, AZ and Newport Beach, CA.

AGENDA: The remaining agenda is (mostly) less formal and much more interactive

• DrupalCampLA 2011 -- recap and community input. Please come share your ideas about what you liked or didn't like, what worked well, and what you'd like to see in the future.
• Lightning Talks: please come prepared to show five minutes of something cool you've learned this month. We'd really like to encourage people that haven't participated in the past to share! No talk is too small, and we promise to be kind. If you're looking for a talk, please consider one of the "Beginner Talks" below :)
• Time permitting: Beginner Talks: Intro to IRC. Are you on IRC? The Drupal community thrives on IRC... if you're not using it, you should! A quick demonstration of IRC.
• Time permitting: Beginner Talks: Intro to GIT. A quick demonstration of how easy GIT can be, and how its a time-saver. clone. hack. add. commit. pull. push. branch. reset.
• Time permitting: Beginner Talks: Intro to SSH. A quick demonstration of how easy SSH can be, how & why its better than FTP.
• Time permitting: Beginner Talks: Intro to RSYNC. A quick demonstration of RSYNC, what it is, and how & why its better than FTP.
• Time permitting: Beginner Talks: Intro to Drush. How (and why) to quickly and easily get going on Drush.
• Time permitting: Beginner Talks: Intro to Quickstart. Pro Drupal development already setup for you.
• Time permitting: Beginner Talks: Intro to Firebug. Tips and Tricks to make front-end development fly!
• Job Announcements: please contact one of the organizers at the meetup before the meeting starts. We'd like to introduce you and allocate time for your announcement. (important note: out of respect for our host, please do not solicit MT employees for jobs)
• Group networking and hanging out. Bring your business cards.

Miscellaneous Info

Venue

In addition to providing the largest local venue for our monthly meetups (and coolest architecture!), Media Temple also provides the LA Drupal community with free food, snacks, and beverages (water, soda, & beer). Plus, Media Temple has also been a sponsor of DrupalCamp LA 2010 and DrupalCamp LA 2011!!! Media Temple is a webhosting and virtualization service provider and has one of the largest virtualization deployments in North America, with more than 85,000 customers and more than 600,000 domains on both coasts of the United States. When looking for a host that supports community, please add them to your list to check out!

Parking

There is on-street parking as well as a parking lot on Hayden Ave.

Come Early

The meetup begins at 7pm but the doors open a little earlier at 6:30pm for eating, meeting, and Users Helping Users; which is a chance for members of the community to help and be helped by others with whatever questions and problems they're having with Drupal. Please note that while Users Helping Users is not designed to be a replacement for bonafide consulting from a Drupal professional that there are plenty of Drupal experts and professionals who attend our meetups and sometimes they need help, too!

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.

Presenters / Lightning Talks

If presenting, be sure to bring your laptop (and power and display cables) and whatever else you need.

Lightning talks, which are 5 minute presentations from attendees who would like to share something with the group. They tend to be less formal -- and no questions (during the talk). It'd be great if you have a lightning talk that fits with the evening's theme!

As always, please feel welcome to leave a comment below and let others know what you'd like to present ahead of time.