The next Downtown LA Drupal meetup is on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 and will be at Droplabs, a Drupal event and coworking space in Downtown Los Angeles. At this meetup, we'll be featuring two presentations: Introduction to VPS Hosting and Managing Servers with Virtualmin, Featurize! and Business Model Generation for Drupalpreneurs.
Light food and refreshments will be served throughout the evening courtesy of our food and drink sponsor, Chernick Consulting. We are a full IT outsourcing organization that can help you make your computers do anything you want it to (except cook or do laundry). We have a great deal of experience following corporate policies and procedures and will gladly supply IT services for larger organizations with branch offices in Los Angeles.
For any changes to our agenda for the evening, stay tuned to this meetup announcement or click the Sign up button below (or both!) to be notified when the agenda has been updated.
Agenda
LA Drupal meetups follow a basic format and start off with Drupal news and announcements, local job announcements, raffle prizes and full-length presentations. As always, we'll also have community Q&A, during which time anyone in attendance can ask questions, divine answers from the crowd and give brief, 5-10 minute-long presentations known as lightning talks. We'll finish off the night with more networking and a Drupal After Dark at 9:30pm.
6:30pm
Users Helping Users
Projector and tables / chairs setup
7:30pm
Introductions and job announcements
News and upcoming events
Community questions and answers
8:30pm
Presentation: Introduction to VPS Hosting and Managing Servers with Virtualmin
Presentation: Featurize!
Presentation: Business Model Generation for Drupalpreneurs
Lightning talks
Raffle prizes!
9:30pm
Wrap-up, Clean-up and Close-up
Drupal After Dark and networking session
Join us on Twitter, Google+ and IRC!
During the meetup, several of us will be in the #drupal-la channel on IRC and the LA Drupal hangout on Google+ and all are welcome to join us. The event organizers will also be monitoring Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @ladrupal or use the #ladrupal hashtag.
Users Helping Users
The meetup begins at 7:30pm but the doors open a little earlier at 6:30pm for 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 bona fide consulting from a Drupal professional that there are plenty of Drupal experts and professionals who attend our meetups and sometimes they need help, too!
Presentation: Introduction to VPS Hosting and Managing Servers with Virtualmin
Christefano (@christefano) of Exaltation of Larks (@LarksLA) will give a brief introduction of the various categories of hosting (shared, managed, VPS, grid, dedicated, etc.) and will focus on VPS hosting, a subject he will be presenting on in more detail at Droplabs on April 21, 2012.
He will also introduce Virtualmin, a free, open-source control panel with a web interface similar to cPanel's and Plesk's that makes running your own VPS a lot easier than just using the command line and editing configuration files by hand.
Presentation: Featurize!
In collaboration with Timebanks USA and the Echo Park Time Bank, Droplabs will be hosting a barn raising and Features code sprint on April 28th for the Community Weaver 2.0 hosted Drupal platform. At this week's meetup, we'll discuss how the Features module works and describe the plan to "featurize" the codebase to make updates, maintenance and deploying new functionality easier.
Presentation: Business Model Generation for Drupaltreneurs, by Philip Horvath
Before user stories, before wireframes, before design and before Drupal, there is the business model. In order for your project to be a wild screaming success, it needs to perch on a strong foundation of a solid business model. To kickoff our Entrepreneurship meetups that will happen on the last Saturday of every month at Droplabs, Philip Horvath of philip, LLC will present on Business Model Generation.
Learn about a simple design tool that will help you quickly test the viability of your business model, make sure all aspects of your business are addressed, that ensures your design is truly customer focused, and that allows you to communicate your ideas to key partners that can help you build your business (such as investors).
Lightning talks
Given enough time, we'll also have a few lightning talks. These are brief, 5-10 minute presentations, demos or discussions that anyone can give. It can be about a new website you're working on, a Drupal module you've written or come across recently that you'd like to talk about, or just a burning question you'd like to ask of the crowd.
Drupal After Dark
Even if you can't make it to the meetup, you're welcome to join us for a Drupal After Dark. After we wrap up the meeting and clean up, a group of us will go to a nearby restaurant or pub. One time we had beers and a bonfire and were serenaded by Skrillex. We've also gone to a variety of other locations, including Barbara's at The Brewery (at 620 Moulton Ave., just a 5 minute walk away) and Carnitas Michoacan (on 1901 N. Broadway, just a 5 minute drive away).
Location and directions
Droplabs
651 Clover St.
Los Angeles, CA 90031
Droplabs is in the Mission Junction neighborhood of Los Angeles at Big Art Labs, just 1 mile down Main St. from Philippes (the first-ever venue for LA Drupal meetups!) and Union Station. We're one block west of The Brewery, the largest live-and-work artists' colony in the world.
Free parking in our large parking lot is first-come, first-served. After parking in the lot, follow the yellow signs that point to Droplabs. (If our lot is full, you can park for free on Clover St.)
Droplabs is a brief walk from the Main St. / Lamar St. stop on the the Metro Local 76 bus line. To carpool or catch the Droplabs shuttle from Union Station, post below in the comments.
What to bring
Just bring your laptop, your business cards or whatever else you need. You're also welcome to bring some light food, sodas or beers to share with others at the meetup.
Please note that our guest wireless network is limited to 1Mb per client, so bring your MiFi router or a phone you can tether with if for some reason you need a lot of bandwidth. Access to our high-speed network is included with a Droplabs membership.
About Droplabs
Droplabs is a collaborative Drupal event and coworking space in Downtown Los Angeles. Created in 2011 by LA Drupal members for the LA Drupal community, we are focused on serving the greater LA Drupal community, enriching the Drupal skills and lives of its members, and bringing joy to our Drupal practice. Our founders represent several local area businesses that have deep roots in the Drupal and open source communities.
To learn more about Droplabs, visit droplabs.net, follow @Droplabs on Twitter, sign up at Meetup.com/Droplabs or like DroplabsLA on Facebook!
About Downtown Los Angeles Drupal
Downtown Los Angeles is one of the most active areas for Drupal in Los Angeles and LA County. We've been meeting regularly on the 3rd Tuesday of every month since early 2010 and now schedule up to 4 regular meetups a month and occasional trainings and social gatherings. Downtown LA Drupal members also produce special events, code sprints, and the annual Drupal Design Camp LA conference
Attending Drupal events in and around Downtown Los Angeles is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend as many meetings and special events as you'd like. Whether it's to find solutions to problems you've been having, sharing something you've learned or just meeting interesting like-minded people, the Downtown LA Drupal events are an essential resource for Drupal professionals and hobbyists alike.
If you aren't already a member of Downtown Los Angeles Drupal, it's easy to join our community. Our community calendar is on our "Events" tab on our home page at http://groups.drupal.org/node/219129