We're excited to announce the 2nd event in our series of Frontend Drupal meetups, which are on the 4th Tuesday of every month.
This month, we're meeting at Media Temple in Culver City, between 7-9pm on September 25, 2012. This meetup focuses on design, usability, accessibility and theming, and as part of the Design 4 Drupal movement is about inviting the larger design community to become a part of the Drupal community.
We're soliciting presentations for this meetup. If there's a topic that you'd like give a presentation on, please leave a comment in the comments below. Likewise, if there's a topic that you'd like to learn more about, you're welcome to make a request in the comments below. Thanks!
At last month's meetup, we had presentations about the Foundation framework by Ishmael Sanchez, another presentation on Adobe Edge by shaRon, and lightning talks on @fontyourface by joyseeker and an overview from oseldman of the theming- and design-related sessions at DrupalCon Munich.
Our 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.
About Design 4 Drupal (D4D)
Translating a design into a Drupal "theme" is often a high barrier and it has been difficult and costly for many designers to have a “design-driven approach” to Drupal. Feedback from the design community has often focused on the difficulties of designing for the Drupal theme system, which combines several programming disciplines and languages, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP.
Design 4 Drupal is an organized movement in the Drupal community to help make Drupal more friendly and approachable to designers, information architects and usability engineers, and in general anyone who is interested in customizing Drupal’s output to the web page.
At its core, Design for Drupal is about inviting the larger design community together to be a part of the Drupal community and enabling designers, usability engineers, developers, information architects and themers to coordinate efforts, come up with creative ideas and work towards making Drupal easier to use and look beautiful.
Thank You to Our Sponsors!
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. We create fun websites, mobile apps, virtual worlds and e-commerce sites.
Follow us at @LarksLA to learn more about our Drupal services and upcoming trainings.
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.
Light food and refreshments will be served throughout the evening by Media Temple. Please sign up by clicking the Sign up button below to help us get a head count. Food is not guaranteed for those who don't sign up.
Do you have a job announcement? Bring a copy of your job description and several business cards for our "take a card, leave a card" table.
Agenda
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.
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.
6:55pm
Start of WebEx Meeting
7:00pm
News and Upcoming Events, including:
• Accessibility Camp LA
• Drupal Design Camp LA
• Drupal Travelers Program
• Drupal Coworking Friday
Breakout Sessions
8:00pm
Raffle Prizes!
Featured Presentations
9:00pm
Wrap-up, Clean-up and Close-up
Drupal After Dark and more networking
Join us on WebEx, Twitter and IRC!
This meetup and its featured presentation will be broadcasted via WebEx, courtesy of Exaltation of Larks. WebEx works in your browser, whether you use Linux, Windows or Mac OS X.
To join the meeting, click the Sign up button below to receive the meeting URL and password (a Drupal.org account is required).
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.
Featured Presentations
We're soliciting presentations for this meetup. If there's a topic that you'd like give a presentation on, please leave a comment in the comments below. Likewise, if there's a topic that you'd like to learn more about, you're welcome to make a request in the comments below. Thanks!
At last month's meetup, we had presentations about the Foundation framework by Ishmael Sanchez, another presentation on Adobe Edge by shaRon, and lightning talks on @fontyourface by joyseeker and an overview from oseldman of the theming- and design-related sessions at DrupalCon Munich.
Raffle prizes! Collect them all! Must be present to win!
Raffle prizes at this meetup have been provided by Exaltation of Larks. 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. Thank you!
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.
Location and Directions
We're meeting at Media Temple's corporate headquarters in in Culver City, CA:
Media Temple
8520 National Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90232
There is on-street parking as well as a parking lot on Hayden Ave, but the street parking is closest to the venue.
To find the meeting space, first park and then enter Building C (the corner building; suite 101). If you enter Building A you will be led by a Media Temple employee to Building C, where the meeting is being held.
Comments
Accessibility and Adobe Shadow
I'd be happy to present on either of these two topics:
Regarding accessibility, it turns out that the first Accessibility Camp LA is coming up on October 20th:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/253128
We can mention it during the news and announcements or go into some more detail if that's something attendees of this meetup would like.
Drupal Happy Hour
A couple of us are meeting for happy hour before the meetup at Kay and Dave's near Trader Joe's. If you're reading this, that means you're invited!
Kay and Dave's
9341 Culver Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
Their happy hour menu is on their website:
http://www.kayndaves.com/pg_happy_hour.html
The meetup is about a mile away at Media Temple and starts promptly at 7pm, so please take that into account.
Media Temple
Do you have an address for Media Temple?
Media Temple address
Media Temple is at 8520 National Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90232 [map]. The Front-End Meetup is using a smaller room than the LA Drupal meetup used to use; directions for finding it are in the announcement.
Rather than drive to
Rather than drive to tomorrow's Frontend Drupal meetup, I've been thinking of taking the Expo Line from Union Station:
http://www.metro.net/projects/exposition/
Does anyone who has already done this have advice for how much time it takes?
Sadly, this means I won't be offering a carpool option from Droplabs this time around. Follow travelers are welcome, though!
Riding Expo for Fun and Profit!
Living in downtown Culver City, I've become a huge fan of the Expo Line, which I ride downtown and transfer to other lines to go to Droplabs, Hollywood, the NoHo arts district, and so on.
One thing to note is that the Expo line terminates at 7th Street/Metro Center [map], not Union Station.
If you're riding from Union Station, take the Red/Purple line to 7th Street/Metro Center and transfer to Expo. (Careful not to get on the blue line to Long Beach, which departs from the same platform. The expo trains will say "Culver City" as the destination.) If you're coming from Droplabs, the Metro 76 bus will take you to 7th Street and you can walk to the train station.
Expo takes about half an hour to get you to Culver City.
You can exit La Cienega and walk a couple blocks down National [map], or come all the way to Culver City if you're early and want to come to the pre-meetup happy hour. (I'll be there!)
Edit: I should point out that for directions, I've had good luck with the "transit" feature of Google Maps.
Expo line
I've never done it either, but I was considering trying to get there that way myself (so I'll see you Thu whenever you decide to go). I think the 'hardest' part of the trip will be getting from Droplabs to Union station -- as a matter of fact, it is easily walkable (a little over a mile) in the worst case. I've been through these rail lines so many times, I think I can help you make it pretty straight forward.
Some Quick research last week indicated that we could probably go almost to the end of the Expo Line, & be there.
One thing you want to think about is "How am I going to get home?" -- some lines stop running past a certain time, & can leave you stranded. If just getting back to Union station is all you need, or even getting to some part of Pasadena -- I don't think you will have much problem. If you need to travel some distance, plan on getting out of the meeting no later than ~9pm.
Use Google Maps to get good directions for bus travel in LA -- it's just a different button from the driving directions one, & it helps pull the picture together for you.
A few things to consider when
A few things to consider when commuting via Mass Transit in LA:
1) There's an Android/iPhone app (though I've yet to download it but might be helpful for those new to riding mass transit here): http://thesource.metro.net/2012/04/20/metro-launches-new-smartphone-app-...
2) Fejn is correct about taking your return trip into consideration as it might affect your plans for participation in, say, a Drupal After Dark. I've taken the Metro Line before at like 11:30'ish coming back from the Westside so you might be ok here.
3) If your return trip's final destination is Droplabs you can do 1 of 2 things: a) take it all the way back to Union Station & walk or just wait for the 76 on Cesar Chavez next to the gas station (the bus will say 'El Monte' as it's destination) OR (what I'd suggest) b) take it back to Metro Center, then walk 2 blocks east to 7th/Hill & wait for the 76 there.
4) The easiest way to get to the meetup from Droplabs would be to take the 76 (going South on N. Main) to 7th Street (& Grand) & then you just walk 1 block west to Hope (I think) where you'll see the subway-like entrance to Metro (it's directly West of the CVS/Longs whatever it is drug store).
5) Fare. It's $1.50 for each ride, whether by bus or train. The way to go is to pay $5 for your Daily Pass via Tap Card (card costs an additional $1 but is reusable & good for several years). The only problem is that I'm pretty sure you can't buy a TAP card from the bus (a problem since your trip originates via bus & not a train) but it will take your $1.50 cash. Some of the TAP kiosks take debit cards but some don't, I've never payed this way. So if you wanted to, you could pay $1.50 for the bus portion & then just purchase the daily pass once you get to 7th St/Metro Center for the rest of the trip & its return.
6) The #76 starts running roughly every hour once 10pm hits so take that into account on your return trip to Droplabs.
7) You can follow @MetroLAAlerts which is kinda handy since they post about delays & such, exclusively.
I'd normally be everyone's "LA Mass Transit Tour Guide" but as part of my bday celebrations this year, I'll be at the Angels game w/my bro. However, I'll be everyone's Tour Guide next month or whenever we have another meetup at Media Temple (the train is really close) & am happy to answer any questions since I've been riding public transportation in LA since the 80's & kinda know my way around. ;)
Miguel Hernandez - www.migshouse.com
Founder & CEO - The OpenMindz Group
Writer- Linux Journal & TechZulu
Fare
1) Want to get a TAP card as soon as possible. You can buy one out of certain machines at Union Station, and probably Chinatown station.
2) If you don't know how much you will be using it, or much about where you are going, just get a TAP Card, & put ~10.00 value on it -- that would probably cover you for Media Temple & back.
3) As Techivist said, there are cheaper ways to do it (buy a pass...) which you will figure out after getting to know how much & when you use the bus.
See you tonight.
Edge Inspect and MAMP Pro
A quick update on using Adobe's Edge Inspect (the formerly named Abode Shadow -which I like a lot better, btw) when using local virtual hosts whether manually or via MAMP Pro:
There is a great write up on configuring the virtual host conf file to allow Edge Inspect to work with you locally configured domain on the adobe shadow blog (http://blogs.adobe.com/edgeinspect/2012/06/19/shadow-xip-io-virtual-host...). This is a improved version of a previous workflow that required you to set up a Charles Proxy. Yup, and thats where yo'll loose a few people. Front-End Designers and Dev's and other 'people who don't want to have to mangle under the hood all the time' fear not. If you are running MAMP Pro (or presumably XAMMP, etc) a quick modification makes this a LOT easier thanks to MAMP Pro and xip.io from 37signals.
If you happen to use MAMP Pro you only need to enter 1 line to your MAMP Pro settings:
Under the 'Customized virtual host general setting’ area of theHost screens Advanced tab:
add
ServerAlias mobile.*.xip.io
Done! Yup that easy! But now how do you get it to work?
In Chrome (the browser you are now using to feed to your mobile devices via Adobe Edge Inspect) enter mobile.10.0.0.2.xip.io, where 10.0.0.2 is replaced by your local IP address. Voila - The mobile device now shows your work. Happy manipulating. Of course you can change mobile to anything you want like 'iamtestingthisthingout.*.xip.io'.
A few hints:
* Use an actual device with the remote inspector (the <> brackets in the Edge Inspect browser button) than the simulator (A LOT! - and you don't need Edge Inspect to resolve a local virtual host in the simulator)
* This method requires an internet connection because of the xip.io DNS
* Your device is not a mirror for the desktop 'view' but is fully functional and you can interact with it - so go and touch!
* The device view in Edge inspect does NOT have back buttons, etc so when testing your mobile web you may have to reload it via the browser! Or open it in mSafari to test.