DrupalCamp Florida 2010 Sessions Planning

Planning for the DrupalCamp Florida 2010 Sessions

Please use this page to brainstorm and plan out any sessions or session ideas you might have for the forthcoming DrupalCamp Florida 2010.

The schedule grid has been put into its own page: http://groups.drupal.org/node/35010

Misc Thoughts

• (damienmckenna) Session tracks: from my experience at two different camps (FL 2009, Atlanta 2009) I think having some designated skill-based tracks are extremely important. I think a lot of visitors who are new to Drupal or are inexperienced would greatly benefit from us making it easier for them to find sessions they are more suited to based on skill level.
• (damienmckenna) More descriptive session names / summaries: we should focus on making session names and descriptions as clear as possible, so e.g. a Views newbie doesn't wander into a session called "Panels 3 Plugin Basics" and get overwhelmed ("well, Views is a plugin..?").
• (damienmckenna) The final sessions list needs to available online for at least one week prior to the conference, and preferably also have a downloadable PDF.
• (damienmckenna) All sessions should be based around Drupal 7. Exceptions to this should be agreed upon by the group. Yes, this is a hard line to draw when D7 isn't out yet, but between the D7CX effort and the several months until the conference there should be plenty of time.
• (damienmckenna) We should have at least one session on upgrading sites to Drupal 7.

Session Ideas

• What's new in Drupal 7.
• Upgrading sites to Drupal 7.
• Beginner's Guide to Building Websites with Drupal (see below)
• The Basics of Theming Drupal 7
• Even More Drupal 7 Theming (follow-on to the Basics)
• Dividing up your Content With Content Types
• Building Custom Output (Views)
• SVN & Drupal including Externals

Beginners' Track

• (damienmckenna) I want to work with someone on the beginner sessions, to build up a series of talks that would truly be for the beginner to get a feel for how it all works. I also feel it should start with a gentle introduction to how web servers work, how web sites work, where PHP fits in, where CMSes fit in, why Drupal, etc, so someone who didn't know why you needed a CMS could understand.
• Pre-requisite: some basic HTML knowledge
• Start showing how static websites are built page by page
• Want to share some page elements, so look at PHP to include shared blocks.
• Share editorial responsibility, put some parts in a database.
• "How easy would it be for me to move things around.."
• "How easy would it be to add comments to some pages?"
• "How easy would it be to import data from this service?"
• "How easy would it be to add tags?"
• "How easy would it be to announce posts on Twitter?"
• "How easy would it be to upload video to Youtube?"
• Value of using a CMS
• Value of using Drupal
• Starting with DAMP
• First login
• First post!!!
• Categories
• Menus
• etc