Growing Drupal: A Drupal Learning Track

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Overview:

  • Showcases, case studies, industry discussions, discussions about the business of consulting, and the business of open source.
  • Local community building and enabling.

Goals and Objectives

  • Promote a sustainable business ecosystem in the Drupal community
  • Educate businesses about the benefits and costs of using Drupal as a platform for their business
  • Market successful use of Drupal through case studies and showcases

Lesson and session ideas

The Drupal ecosystem

  • Building sustainable Drupal business that support the community
  • Small giants: building high quality Drupal businesses
  • All About Open Source: Not Free as in Beer (What Does That Mean?)
  • My Drupal: A Panel Discusses Drupal in the Open Marketplace
  • The Costs of Free Software: A Panel Discussion
  • Drupal marketshare: What can developers do to increase the reach?

Businesses learning to use Drupal

  • My Drupal: A Panel Discusses Drupal in the Open Marketplace
  • Small Pond, Giant Fish: How to effectively recruit in the Drupal community
  • Business Best Practices: Drupal Companies Share Tips and Tricks
  • Running Virtual Teams: A Panel Discussion
  • Monetizing an open source deployment: How is value created? Where is the value? When? Why an open source deployment is a ‘real option’ for the firm.
  • Enterprise deployments: How they differ from small sites? Issues? Working with the client team?
  • Structure/Documentation requirements
  • Fast, Cheap, Great: You Pick Two (Differentiating)

Hosting meetups, camps, and virtual classes

How to help build the community online

  • Existing infrastructure: IRC, E-mail, Forums, Groups, Documentation
  • How to get remote presenters
  • Drupal Dojo - There is a lot of work being done on to revive this great service, and we'll be reporting on how to get involved.

Projects, Tasks and Initiatives

Resources

Related tracks and sessions

Drupal Groups

Other

Program Leads

  • [add your name if interested]

Comments

gusaus's picture

We've decided to continue this DrupalCon session with a regular series of Drupal Dojo programs (see the lineup) - still working on a format, but the subject matter will be derived from this wiki. Ideally we can use this as a vehicle to connect people on the community level with Drupal Association members to work on common goals, collaborate on projects, and pool resources.

Participation is welcome on any level, so please chime in w/ your ideas on where we can go w/ this.

Gus Austin

Outreach to Drupal beginners

jdwalling's picture

We are holding a Drupal clinic for beginners in Seattle, scheduled for October 2nd. We started registering Aug-4 and we filled our quota of 40 slots on Aug-14 and we have now 17 people on a waiting list. We used a variety of online Tech Event venues to promote the clinic. We asked people where they found out about the clinic and I see a viral aspect to the responses (friend-to-friend) so we can't be sure where all the information was picked up in many cases.

Later in October we are holding a separate event for Drupalistas without a beginner track. It will be interesting to find out how holding separate events (beginner vs. advanced) works to everyone's benefit.

Each Drupal region could pool its resources for reaching beginners. Holding events for beginners would then be an engine for rapid growth (too rapid?).

Another resource we could all share is best practices/curriculum for holding a one day beginner course. Also example press releases for the more traditional news outlets.

Event Links:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/25586
http://groups.drupal.org/node/24368

Outreach for beginners and the unaware

gusaus's picture

There definitely seems to be more and more newcomers coming out to a local meetup or Drupalcamp, but it's often difficult keeping people involved between those events. Community projects and industry specific events seem like good ways to keep people interested and reach those more interested in the solution than the technology behind it.

Sharing ideas, learning materials, documentation, and other resources between groups is quite a challenge and a main reason why an ongoing community track, recurring sessions and a reinvigorated Drupal Dojo could help fill the void.

Gus Austin

We were all beginners

jdwalling's picture

We were all beginners at some point in our careers. I think it is important to lower the barriers to using resources such as Drupal Dojo. Otherwise, Drupal will keep its reputation as being too complicated for mere mortals. I don't assume beginners are more interested in technology than solutions. Many are looking around for something that will meet the practical needs of their small non-profit or business enterprise. Another common scenario for beginners is they are trapped in a large organization that has a one size fits all approach to IT.

More outreach to Drupal beginners

dougvann's picture

I discovered Drupal 21 months ago this weekend. I was fortunate enough to have an employer that sent me to 4 Lullabot workshops and DrupalconBoston2008.
The result of it all is that I'm loaded for bear now and I love giving it back.
After working for smaller dev shops and mostly on my own I hooked up with www.DuoConsulting.com which is organizing a Duo Drupal Training Workshop for Oct-13th Details at http://www.duoconsulting.com/marketing/chicago-drupal-training-workshop
I'll be presenting a repurposed version of my Drupal Intro Session, and focusing on some hands on experience with a sandbox that we will provide.
I'll be very curious to hear how the Seattle event goes!

  • Doug Vann [Drupal Trainer, Consultant, Developer]
  • Synaptic Blue Inc. [President]
  • http://dougvann.com