Our users group, http://groups.drupal.org/twin-cities, had our monthly meeting last night. A good group of about 12 people attended what amounted to being an experiment for our gathering. Normally we have a relatively formal presentation-- either a demo, case-study, sometimes even slides are involved. This month we decided to try something different.
One of our members, Frost, daringly brought his frustration with not being able to get the Media Mover module to work on his site despite much work, much help from maintainers and even a trip to Drupalcon DC for assistance. He volunteered to do a from-scratch attempt to install and configure the components necessary to get this feature to work.
The group followed the frustrating proceedings, brainstormed troubleshooting ideas and, just in the nick of time, ended up powering through the problem and collectively implementing a solution that worked. The results are being documented on our group site, Frost's site, and (soon) drupal.org.
I'm not sure of the format other groups follow, but I think making a group-troubleshoot/brainstorm on a specific issue/feature can be a successful alternative (or supplement) to a more conventional presentation or social "around the room" meeting.
Barry Madore, Advantage Labs, Inc.
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Twin Cities Drupal Users Group
Comments
Very Nice!
I love this story!
It differs from our HackFests in that the problem is dealt with by the whole group rather than by a few people in the corner of the hackfest meetings that we have had tremendous success with.
I like this model as well. I will cross post this to my group and see if it sparks a fire!
Thanks Barry
BTW: Everyone will likely benefit from the examples and resources listed under a session that Barry co-paneled at http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/session/training-boosting-our-raw-capacity-p...
Thanks and more ideas...
Thanks, Doug. Hope it can be a catalyst for creative ideas. Thanks, too, for posting a link to my session notes on training (and for the great conversation you and I had after that session which contributed to my write-up, BTW). The full notes are available here: http://www.advantagelabs.com/drupalcon-report-drupal-training-session
It occurs to me that our Lab Hours model (basically a weekly Drupal Study Hall drop-in session) could be adapted to be used in a users group setting. Maybe I'll post some thoughts on that.
Barry Madore
Advantage Labs, Inc.
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
Barry Madore
Triplo
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN