High Performance Drupal Meetup at Droplabs on July 3, 2012

The High Performance Drupal meetup is meeting once again on the 1st Tuesday of the month. Please join us at Droplabs, your FREE Drupal event and coworking space in Downtown Los Angeles, on July 3, 2012.

Our meetups follow a basic format and start off with Drupal news and announcements, local job announcements, breakout sessions, 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 9:00pm.

The projector, raffle prizes and video conferencing support for this event are being provided by Exaltation of Larks, a Drupal strategy, consulting, development and training company with a team of Drupal experts in Los Angeles. Follow us at @LarksLA to learn more about our Drupal services and upcoming trainings.

For any changes to our agenda, stay tuned to this meetup announcement or click the Sign up button below (or both!) to be notified when the agenda has been updated.

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.

Agenda

   6:00pm
   Coworking and Networking
   Projector and Tables / Chairs Setup

   6:45pm
   Breakout Session Planning Discussion

   7:00pm
   News and Upcoming Events
   Breakout Sessions

   8:00pm
   Raffle Prizes!
   Featured Presentations

   9:00pm
   Wrap-up, Clean-up and Close-up
   Drupal After Dark and more networking

This is an meetup that focuses exclusively on advanced topics and there will not be a Users Helping Users portion to the evening.

Join us on GoToMeeting, Twitter and IRC!

This meetup and its featured presentation will be broadcasted via GoToMeeting. To join the meeting, click the Sign up button below to receive the meeting URL and password.

During the meetup, several of us will be in the regional #drupal-la channel on IRC and all are welcome to join us. The event organizers will also be monitoring Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @DowntownDrupal.

Breakout Sessions

We have several spaces available for breakout sessions. This is an opportunity for a open, multi-track format where we break into groups and discuss a variety of topics, such as high performance hardware (SSDs, SSL accelerators, etc.), monitoring and alerts, hosting and infrastructure, and so on.

Each breakout session is led by a volunteer who picks the topic, picks the space and can optionally report back to the larger group in the form of an announcement or lightning talk.

Featured Presentations

We are soliciting speakers for this meetup. If you would like to give a presentation or see one given on a particular subject, please post in the comments below.

Raffle prizes! Collect them all! Must be present to win!

Our raffle prizes often include discount codes, magazines, DVDs and books. We are always grateful to our sponsors for their continued support. If you have any items you'd like to donate to the raffle, please contact any of the organizers at the meetup.

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. This is also the Lincoln Heights / Chinatown DASH stop.

To carpool or catch the Droplabs shuttle from Union Station, post below in the comments.

About High Performance Drupal

What is the High Performance Drupal meetup about? The "high performance" part of the name is a catch-all to describe Drupal scalability, performance and benchmarking but we also discuss hosting, infrastructure, deployment, monitoring and highly repeatable processes.

Also, this meetup has been held at coffeeshops in the past and the addition of caffeine makes our meetings feel as if they go faster and faster as the night goes on.

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.

We've been open to the public since May, 2011, and the use of our equipment and facilities, including conference room, tables and chairs, is free until our official launch. See http://groups.drupal.org/node/145934 for more details about our open beta period and http://droplabs.net/prices for our list of free amenities and member perks, including our high-speed WiFi, an espresso machine, printer and scanner services, and more.

Droplabs is the host of the monthly Downtown LA Drupal meetups, LA Drupal's weekly Pro Drupal 7 Development book study group and special events including the Varnish 3 Release Party, a Leave GoDaddy Day workshop and LA Drupal's job fairs. To learn more about Droplabs, 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 calendar of events is on our "Events" tab on our home page at http://groups.drupal.org/dtla