Ideas for the next Denver Drupal Meeting

Laura, to answer your question about what else we covered - basically it was a "download, unzip, edit settings.php, upload, mysql, and do basic configuration" meeting where we watched Mike's standard way of creating a site.

The big challenge in my mind is keeping the topics broad enough that they are accessible to lots of people without being boring for the "old hands".

I learned a couple interesting ideas from mike's presentation last night like the idea of putting all of your mysql scripts into one big mysql file as a way to quickly load the site. Of course, for me in a 4.6 environment that would probably look like

cat database/database..mysql > myscript.mysql;cat modules//.mysql >>myscript.mysql

And his whole idea of providing a purpose, a basic site navigation, content text, and a list of modules inside of a text file as a plan felt right at home for me. Then you grab those modules, do the above command, fire up mysql, fire up the browser, and the site is implemented.

The CLUE Denver meetings have a "KISS" presentation for a half hour at the beginning of the meeting that is supposed to cover more introductory topics and then an hour long presentation on some topic followed by people breaking into smaller groups and doing personal interaction and Q&A. Perhaps that would be a good format for us to follow, but I'm not sure about what to stick into that hour long presentation in the middle....

I'm partial to that location - even the projector worked out in the end though we blinded a few folks. The only drawback in my mind is parking, but if Bindu didn't get a ticket then we can know to advise people to park where he was :)

--
Growing Venture Solutions
Drupal Implementation and Support in Denver, CO

First of all a big thanks to Greg and Mike for putting this all together. Even though the topic may have seemed basic I still got a lot out of your great presentation, Mike.

For topics I'd love to see covered:
- views, as well as covering the sql queries to generate the views as well as work with other nodes as well;
- creating modules. This would also expand on people's understanding of how drupal works in general.
- working with themes and themable functions.
- the events module, in particular how to retheme that to look better.
- flexinode, and theming it, in particular generating sql to get info from flexinodes, pros and cons.
- useful versus not so useful modules... what do we really need?
- ajax... what the heckuva is it and how do we incorporate?

Just for starters... more to come.

Thanks

I can echo the following as interesting topics ...
- views, as well as covering the sql queries to generate the views as well as work with other nodes as well;
- creating modules. This would also expand on people’s understanding of how drupal works in general.
- working with themes and themable functions.
- ajax

As to the format, well, I think it is great to try to serve a diverse group. Any thoughts on trying to use a wiki to create some loosely formed agenda? Maybe have a few speakers presenting interesting stuff that they're working on and issues that those are causing or maybe lessons learned in the process of implementing them?

Also, something closer to boulder would be great.
If there is anywhere triangulated between denver, boulder and ft. collins that might be interesting too.

Matt