Join us Tuesday, September 11th, 2012 at Coloft for presentations on The Drupal Spark Initiative by Ashok Modi of CalArts and Semantic Web Building by Jody Lynn of Zivtech
Every month we have experts guide our local community, it's always a spectacular lineup of topics and presentations centered around Drupal. Plus we help users answer questions, and resolve issues with solutions surrounding planning, supporting, and developing with Drupal.
Mark your calendars for the second Tuesday of each month as "LA DRUPAL DAY"! Plus the event is FREE!!!!
7pm-9pm (sharp!)
- Main presentation: The Drupal Spark Initiative by Ashok Modi of CalArts and Semantic Web Building by Jody Hamilton of Zivtech
- Lightning Talks: (5min ea) Open Floor. Come share something cool, new, and Drupalie! (post a comment to lock in your spot now)
- And,,,, +Raffle prizes from: Build A Module DVD's & monthly memberships, +Job announcements, +Networking, +Wi-fi, and more!
When: Tuesday, September 11th, 2012 from 7:00-9:00pm (repeats every second Tuesday night of the month)
Where: Coloft
920 Santa Monica Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401
Park on the streets, but be mindful of the signage!
Thanks to Our Sponsor: Coloft
A big up to our venue sponsor, Coloft, a community and work space focused on empowering entrepreneurs, startups, & freelancers. They love tech. And they believe in awesomeness. Meet and network with talented, like-minded people and be as productive as you can possibly be.
Follow @CoLoft or learn more about who they are.
AGENDA:
7pm-9pm
- News & Announcements
- Job announcements
- Main presentation
- Lightning Talks
- Users Helping Users
- Raffle prizes & Giveaways
- Networking - bring your business cards
- Parrallel Track: Coders Lounge & Open Contrib Lab
9pm-Late
After hours ("Drupal After Dark"): After the meetup, it is typical for many of us to meet at a local restaurant or pub for additional Drupal networking. Please make a suggestiong (with link to map) in the comments, based on suggestions we'll decide as a group during meetup and everyone is welcome to join!
For any changes to our agenda for the evening, stay tuned to this meetup announcement or click the Sign up button below to be notified when the agenda has been updated.
Meeting Details
Main Presentations
Drupal Spark
Ashok will talk about Drupal Spark, an initiative aimed at improving the content authoring experience through Drupal 7 and 8. I will walk through installing it (a guide through using drush make), go through modules that are a part of the distribution, and go through how editing content work. Read more about everything in the initiative at http://drupal.org/project/spark.
Semantic Site Building
Jody Hamilton of Zivtech is our guest speaker for the evening and will talk about Semantic Site Building:
The usability of a CMS for its administrators and editors is closely tied to the semantic sense of the site build. Likewise, the maintainability (including ease of upgrade and feature addition) is greatly enhanced by intelligent semantics. By semantic site building in Drupal, I mean that all content types should be labeled and represent types of content, that user roles should be labeled and represent permissioned roles of users, and so on.
Drupal has always let site builders make creative use of its features to create functionality far outside the semantic meaning of those features. Often we mashup Drupal concepts in new ways (e.g. 'Taxonomy Menu', 'Content Profile', 'Views Field View') to varying results. It's very common to build complex scenarios that in turn have complex problems. For example, if your site navigation is created with taxonomy, fields, or some other creative solution, you soon have to add other solutions to handle your breadcrumbs. After an organic site building period riddled with concessions to the small voice that says "this can't really be the best way to approach this", a Drupal site easily becomes a mess.
A semantic site will require minimal documentation for its administrators. It can be readily worked on by any Drupal site builder. It leverages, rather than working around, the functionality of core Drupal and its other building blocks.
I will give examples of semantically harmonious and dissonant choices in many of the major site building interfaces (content, fields, users, views, panels, features, menus, taxonomy etc) and explain how to improve an existing site and future builds both technically and culturally in a team.
Questions Answered by this Session:
- Why is the concept of semantics so important to Drupal site building?
- How does Drupal 7 and the new entity system empower site builders and developers toward better semantic choices?
- What are some strategies for cleaning up a site that has a confused architecture?
- How should we weigh common site building choices: (e.g. taxonomy term vs nodereference, new menu vs sub-navigation)?
- How can we verbalize and explain our advocacy for a site's long-term quality over the immediate feature demands of the site owner?
Lightning Talks
We have time as well for lightning talks, which are 5 minute presentations from attendees who would like to share something with the group. If you'd like to give a lightning talk, be sure to come a few minutes early and bring your laptop (and power and display cables) and whatever else you need.
If you'd like to give a lightning talk, presentation, announce a job position or ask any questions of the group, please leave a comment below and plan to come a few minutes early.
Join us online remotely / We want your feedback!
During the meetup, we'll be gathered in the #drupal-la chat channel (IRC) or our live Google+ Hangout (Video), and all are welcome to join us. The event organizers will also check Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @ladrupal or use the #ladrupal hashtag.
As always, please feel welcome to leave a comment below and let others know what you'd like to present ahead of time.
Job announcements
At the beginning of each meetup LA DRUPAL provides an opportunity for local businesses to make job announcements and ask for referrals and recommendations.
Raffle! Prizes! Collect them all!
We love our sponsors and have several raffle prizes from our sponsors in the Los Angeles area and around the world. If you or your company would like to sponsor a raffle prize at the LA Drupal meetups, please come early or contact the LA Drupal managers.
What to bring
Bring a co-worker, maybe your laptop or tablet, but definitely bring your business cards for networking. We do a lot of networking!
About LA Drupal
LA Drupal is Southern California's largest hub for all things Drupal, and is one of the world's largest regional Drupal user groups. We host a monthly meeting on the second Tuesday of every month. LA Drupal also produces the annual DrupalCamp LA conference, one of the largest independent annual Drupal training events world-wide since 2007, and host to Drupal Design Camp LA a traveling design-oriented conference.
There are also other member led social gatherings and meetups throughout the southland. Visit http://groups.drupal.org/la for more details.
Attending LA Drupal events is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend meetings and special events regularly. Whether it's about finding solutions to problems you've been having, sharing something you've learned or just meeting interesting like-minded people, the LA Drupal events are an essential resource for Drupal professionals and hobbyists alike.
If you aren't already part of LA Drupal, it's easy to become a member (read below) and find events announced at http://groups.drupal.org/la/events
LA Drupal welcomes you and encourages your input & participation!
Comments
Lightning talk: how to choose a module
I have a 7 minute lightning talk on how to select a Drupal module.
Here are the links from the 'Discovering Modules' slide:
http://drupal.org/project/modules
http://drupal.org/project/distributions
http://drupalmodules.com/new-modules
http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/top-drupal-7-modules-summer-2012-edition
Sounds great! But lets keep
Sounds great! But lets keep the actual talk to 5min or less, please.
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mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
I'll keep it to 5 mins np
I'll keep it to 5 mins np
A backup presentation
No one has suggested a longer presentation (can we let Erin present his presentation as needed?) so I have a couple I can throw into the mix:
1) CalArts Jazz Archive: We launched our Jazz Archive (http://jazzarchive.calarts.edu) a few weeks ago. I can try to give a case study on how we built the site and what we're hoping/planning to do.
2) Spark distribution: We can step through what is looking to be a very impressive installation profile.
If no one is interested, that's fine. If someone else comes up with a presentation idea, I'd prefer giving that priority and holding out on these for a later time.
Spark +1
:) I was just asking in IRC the other day if anyone requested (or presented) Spark to the LA crowd yet.
Spark +1
Chris Charlton, Author & Drupal Community Leader, Enterprise Level Consultant
I teach you how to build Drupal Themes http://tinyurl.com/theme-drupal and provide add-on software at http://xtnd.us
ha! just saw these comments
ha! just saw these comments ... I just installed spark last weekend ... was a bit of a pain (if you don't read the readme), but ya if others are interested in the future of Drupal WYSIWYG -- I'd love to hear Ashok talk about it.
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mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
Talk Volunteer
I'm in LA this week and will be here for this.
If you're interested in a guest speaker I'd be happy to give my talk on Semantic Site-building: http://vimeo.com/44884744
I'd love to see the latest Spark demo too though, so could just do a lightning talk.
I'm def. interested in this
I'm def. interested in this and can shorten mine down as the demo shouldn't take all that long.
We can skip my presentation
We can skip my presentation and you can have my time - I would really like to hear about this.
Thank you.
Looking forward to both
+1 for both the Spark initiative AND Semantic site building. These two talks address what, to me, are the two biggest weaknesses in Drupal sites: A back-end that can be just about incomprehensible to a lay-person (or content editor), and the faux-WYSIWYG editing system we have today.
I'll be there.
These presentations look
These presentations look awesome!
Can anyone confirm if there will be food at this meeting?
For Drupal After Dark, I noticed the Bodega Wine Bar is in walking distance (http://www.bodegawinebar.com/). I've never been there but would be happy to try it out. Map: http://goo.gl/maps/cx2EU
Google hangoutvideo
I can not access video feed. Why does google hangout say "party is over". Ok I am a little late...
Remote access
There is no video hangout available. There is nothing going on on IRC. This is not the first time I have been disappointed. Why do you guys publicize "IRC and Google Hangout!!" when it doesn't work? At least tell us what we have to do to get on the hangout.
Frustration. Not awesome.
The link to the Google+
The link to the Google+ Hangout hasn't worked since at least June, 2012. While I agree that it's time that this group gets its act together and updates its marketing content, it's worth pointing out that LA Drupal's two monthly meetups are free and run by volunteers. I humbly suggest that you adjust your expectations.
Sadly, much of the marketing content in question was copied wholesale from event announcements that I've written long ago, and I feel that I have some stake in this. Nearly everything in the "We want your feedback" and "About LA Drupal" sections should either be removed or completely revised because they're incorrect and / or out of date.
I hope these comments will encourage those in charge to make some changes and use some originality.
Please tone it down, and
Please tone it down, and don't throw stones in a glass house.
The previous week: http://groups.drupal.org/node/250223#comment-812688
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mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
Is that a stone I see? Hmm?
Thanks for responding to my comment. I really appreciate the comment about not throwing stones in glass houses.
Constructive
Thanks Christefano for the constructive comments. Critique is sometimes a good thing I have learned. But there is definitely an allergy to it in these parts (USA). It's not personal!
I will adjust my expectations (humbly). I was really looking forward to the presentation but it's on the other side of the world for me from where I live in Altadena so I thought I would just go home and watch. Alas! and Alack! Oh well live and learn. Hopefully others will be duly informed now about possible inconsistent info.
Yours etc
Tony
Hi Tony,You can get 90% of
Hi Tony,
You can get 90% of the information from last night's meeting by watching a couple videos:
The 3 videos on this page introduce Spark:
http://drupal.org/project/spark
And Jody's talk on Semantic site building is:
http://vimeo.com/44884744
Of course you'll miss out on the in-person glamor and charm Ashook and Jody brought to the room. You'll also miss the drawing and the conversation. Most importantly you'll miss the after-hours beer at Bodega. But you wouldn't get any of that on Google Hangout anyway.
Great meeting and thanks to the organizers, speakers, and venue sponsor.
irresistible
Charm, Glamour, Conversation and BEER. Next time I will drive to Hawaii for that!