Posted by Walt Esquivel on January 11, 2007 at 9:49pm
The first Tuesday of each month, 6-9 pm
24% (5 votes)
The first Tuesday of each month, 7-10 pm
24% (5 votes)
The first Wednesday of each month, 6-9 pm
19% (4 votes)
The first Wednesday of each month, 7-10 pm
33% (7 votes)
Total votes: 21
Comments
It's a little bit unclear
It's a little bit unclear from the post whether you're suggesting a time between the hours noted (e.g. 6-9 on Tuesday) or during the three hour time period. Three hours is a long time for this kind of meeting unless there's going to be a lot of material to cover each time.
And it seems like have a long time period could be counter-productive in that some folks might come early, some for the whole thing and some late, with the early birds and late-comers missing each other.
Just a thought.
Hopefully clearer...
Your point is very well taken and I understand your concern.
For our January Meetup, the publicized hours were 7-10 pm - a 3 hour duration. I showed up around 7:30 and stayed until 10:30, as did quite a few others. There was no clear agenda and we simply got to know each other a bit, learned about projects folks were working on, and spent time towards the end looking at attendees' web sites and things they were working on. I don't know about the other attendees, but for me it's not simply "a meeting" but also a chance to socialize a bit and make some new friends. And maybe drink a beer. :)
Although there is interest in meeting, no one has yet stepped forward with any type of agenda such as material they'd like to cover, a presentation on a module or two they contributed, a discussion of a web site they built, etc. These are all worthy of including in an agenda, even if we only cover 1 or 2 things. Of course, if someone would like to present something, it helps to have a time slot he/she can do so, e.g. 8-8:30 pm out of the total 3 hour duration (or 2 hour duration if we eventually go that route).
I think we're still in the formative stage here in Austin so perhaps with time, folks that have the experience (I certainly don't) and want to teach/cover something in particular will step up and offer their time. I'm not a developer and am acting in more of a facilitator in trying to get things going.
The Austin DUG is free to do whatever it wants and if anyone wants to offer suggestions and take a lead on things, I'm all for it. I know there are folks in the Austin DUG with extensive Drupal knowledge, and I'm sure I speak for the Austin DUG in stating that we welcome any offers to present as mentioned above. If anyone in the Austin DUG reading this would like to cover something, please add your comments. In closing, if you're a member of the Austin DUG, how do YOU expect to contribute? My contribution, quite simply, is to help facilitate things, so I'm throwing this out to see if it sticks! :)
Thoughts?
Thanks!
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
From a Newbie
Hi, Walt,
I had a nice message with clever (hopefully) comments about my background and what I would like to get from Austin DUG. But alas, I lost it through my own silly rush to cut and paste. So here's the short version because I don't have time to write it again.
Drupal newbie
Use Drupal on two sites, want to convert all of my sites
User of technology, not really into how it's developed etc.
Great at writing and organizing content, determining goals, purpose, etc.
Good at teaching other users how to use technology tools
Think there might be a place for two levels of participation -- technical (like subjects listed in other messages) and basic/user (for those of us who just want to apply the tools in our business/community)
Any day or time works -- I set my own work hours
Any thought about Schlotzsky's as a meeting location?
How many people typically attend?
Will contribute in any way I can
Gee, that's probably a better message than I had composed before.
Happy day,
Anne
Anne Easterling
www.anne-easterling.com
Anne Easterling
www.anneeasterling.com
Thanks for your post
Hi Anne,
I'm kind of in-between where you are and where developers are in that, like you, I'm a user of the technology but I'm also somewhat interested in how it's developed...but just a wee bit because my eyes sometimes glaze over when I look at code. ;)
As to your "two levels of participation," I'll let the Austin DUG participants determine how they want to contribute. I'm all for everyone getting as much as they can out of our meetings. Some meetings, depending on what's covered/discussed, might be over the heads of folks like me, while other meetings might be at just the right level for me. So I'll attend, make some new friends, and learn some new things.
I haven't thought about Schlotzsky's as a meeting location since I'm simply letting other folks who do recommend a venue, such as you, post here that the venue does, in fact, have wi/fi and that a group of, say, a dozen or so folks could get together over laptops. Anyone reading this should feel free to make venue suggestions whether at a bar such as Gingerman, an office, or a university setting such as UT Austin.
We had 11 folks attend our first-ever Austin DUG meetup in January.
I hope to see you in February. I'm waiting to see how the voting turns out to finalize the day.
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Meeting site
Most if not all Schlotzsky's locations have free wi-fi. The location on Lamar near Town Lake is centralized and could easily accommodate 12 people for an informal gathering. I can call them if you'd like to see if they would mind a group meeting. The spot is my favorite for client meetings because it is laptop friendly.
Anne Easterling
www.anne-easterling.com
Anne Easterling
www.anneeasterling.com
I'm leaning towards Dog and Duck...
per my comment here.
I think Schlotzsky's sounds good during the day but for an evening event, I'm not so hot on it.
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Requests?
Does anyone have a technical topic they'd like covered? I can prepare a presentation.
My key expertise:
- Module development
- Database schema and query optimization
- Database atomicity (transactions, locks, etc)
- Database security (query safety and database user account permissions)
- PHP optimization with mod_fcgid and APC
- Drupal internationalization
- Very high performance Drupal configurations
Just no specific Drupal 5 topics, please. While I've read all the literature, I haven't built modules for it yet.
Oh Yeah.
I have some questions on several of these topics, specificallly DB optimization, PHP optimization, and high performance Drupal configs. I would love to discuss this at the next meeting, and if we cannot find the time, I would love to discuss it through some other medium.
Ryan Oles
Pare Technologies
info at paretech dot com
www.paretech.com
I'll be presenting how DB
I'll be presenting how DB optimization relates to module development. Within that topic, I'll be presenting my new caching module, PressFlow Preemp. I'll use the code to PressFlow Preempt Panels as an example. Both modules are publicly released right now for Drupal 4.7 and 5.
Module development & DB security
David,
Awesome! Thanks for your suggestions & I'd like to hear more about module development & DB security.
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
I was unfortunately stuck in
I was unfortunately stuck in New York at a conference during the last drupal meeting so ill refrain from voting on a time or topic until I can actually make one.
I dont mind sharing anything i know about drupal but i dont know how my level of expertise compares with others in the area. Does everyone know the drupal boot straping process and how that relates to initialization of the whole system of caching, themes, modules, etc? that seems to be a logical place to start if not. Essentially the life of a page request from a birds eye view and any necessary details.
I am also presently working on using organic groups as slighlty restricted independent sites with fully qualified domain names and the ability select a theme, post content, and administer group users and set a to set a few site level variables like title, etc. Basically this will centralize the storage mechanism in drupal and still allow independent content from disparate sites. As you might imagine the ability to aggregate and query this centrally stored information is useful.
I have a strong interest in OG...
...and I would appreciate anything you, or anyone else for that matter, can provide on OG - whether it's what you mentioned in your post, OG itself, and/or any of the OG modules. I'm focused on wellness and am in the process of setting up a chapter (a group) in the Austin area. It, and any future chapter (group), will rely extensively upon OG and its associated modules to provide the geographical community it serves a wide range of features and benefits. Are there other folks reading this that are using/will use OG and who would like a presentation and/or discussion on this?
And Michael, please plan on attending the February meetup because we need you to vote and be our tie-breaker! ;) I noticed, curiously enough, that we have a 4-way tie on the poll with 12 folks having voted thus far!
Thanks!
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
St. Ed's meeting space limited to weekends
For what it's worth, I checked into getting a space at St. Edward's University for meetings, but they recently instated a policy to limit outside groups to meeting on weekends because of limited parking.
Tuesday either time
I have an ongoing commitment on Wednesday, so either time on Tuesday is better.
Rats
Doh! Tuesdays and Wednesdays are no good...indefinitely. Oh well, maybe next month.
Aaron Stanush
Four Kitchen Studios
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Aaron Stanush
Co-founder, Four Kitchen Studios | Editor, That Other Paper