March Drupal User Group Meeting

Marc Shor started good series of talks several months ago outlining how a beginner/non-developer could use and configure Drupal for some common, must-have client features (eg: WYSIWYG editing node content). I'd like for us to continue that concept, and perhaps refine the presentation style making them more BoF-like.

This typeof of talk has an obvious benefit for new and/or non-dev users as it can help understanding of some modules that are definitely built-by-and-built-for developers. It also benefits more expert users/developers as nothing solidifies your knowledge in a subject more than offering to present it in front of a group!

Off the top of my head, here are some possible topics:

Git:

• The basics and why do I want would use it if I'm not a module developer?
• Managing a site deployment/upgrading modules using Git

Views

• What is Views and when do I use it
• Building a site search using exposed filters/sort/pagers
• Building an easily customized front-page slideshow using Views

Others (updated with topics from http://groups.drupal.org/node/164869#comment-565864)

• Responsive Design or Mobile sites
• Organic groups (OG)
• Panels and panels plugins
• Integrating OG and CiviCRM
• Commerce on Drupal 7
• Advanced Theming
• Um... clearly there's much, much more... Like I said, off the top of my head

I'd also like to suggest a format for these presentations:

• Main presentation: 5 minute (maybe 8 minutes MAX?). NOTE: You don't need to know all the answers to every question about the topic you're presenting. Just a good, basic knowledge and a willingness to do a bit of research beforehand.
• Group additions: 2 - 3 minutes. Ideally, very short (one breath?) additions to the main presentation. This is where we gain from the community's knowledge. We've all done the same things in Drupal, but 20 different ways. This is where we can mention those different options without going into a debate on the why because...
• Q&A: 10 minutes. Here's where we put our "why use option A vs option B" questions. Or "can you clarify how/why you do this specific step." Or "what if I need to do that, but with this strange variation."
• Total time < 20 minutes. Ideally we could do two or three in a single SeaDUG so that a given topic (eg: Views) could be fleshed out in greater detail.
• In order to make this work, someone would need to be Time & Topic Cop -- keep us from going over-time or off-topic. This could be the main presenter or someone else (meeting organizer?)

Any suggestion like this needs its first victim -- I'd be happy to present an "Intro to Views" or "Easy site search with Views Exposed -Filter/Pager/Sort" -- and we can see if this idea sucks or not.

Let me know what you think...