although held on a cold windy night...the first meetup for the philly area group warmed me up like a good cup of hot chocolate(ah...sorry couldn't resist)...
thank you Nate for posting the Event...and Ivan(quixoticlife) for creating this group. Just a note...Most of the attendees to the meetup were unaware of the Mid Atlantic Group and its close affinity to our area. We obviously would like to keep communication open with that group...and if it is suitable...work closely together.
the group maintained a quasi agenda of 1)introduction; 2)some group goals, 3)neat/essential module talk 4)basic workflow of solving issues or finding answers
1) people who attended ranged from individually motivated users to people integrating it to work related projects. A couple to note -Franky from the Science Leadership Academy and a group from the Philly Independent Media Center .
2) there was some active talk on doing sessions/presentations next month(and in future meetings) to be held at the Science Leadership Academy by group members on a few topics:
a) step by step process for setting up/building a drupal site. Ideally being presented by more than one person
to get a gauge the different/similar processes that people go through
b)module building
c)a group member's essential or preferred module- presentation on why,when,how to use it
d) Quixoticlife mentioned future possibility to get guest presenters from the New York group or others
We also spoke about giving something back to the overall community- some talk about eventually hosting a Philly drupalcon...may be outside philly....damn unions!:)kidding...We also shared very similar concerns about picking modules and templates - there may be some action takin torward making the drupal user's experience in deciphering these things easier. talk about rating systems- or user's notes of some sort
3) Modules----we just scratched the surface on this topic----talked mostly about CCK's features and advantages
4) Probelm solving work flow---lullabot, handbooks, and drupaldojo, forums were all mentioned but most of the what came out of this discussion was all of these combined and just trial and error. In addition, the philly area group is able to give a extra help to individuals in the group as well.
Just a couple of other notes is that there is a SEO group meeting thursday night down in the PENN area which should be posted in the group soon. Also, the 1st Thursday in April the Standards Group (CSS gurus) and PHP group has a meetup in the area. So, keep a look out for that. Thank you to Nate Gasser for that info.
Til Next Time....:)
jamie