Posted by pcoleman on October 21, 2013 at 7:47pm
Start:
2013-10-24 18:00 - 20:00 America/Los_Angeles Organizers:
Event type:
User group meeting
Last Thursday at or monthly meetup we ran out of time. There was much more to talk about, so we decided to get together informally.
We will meet at BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse in Pasadena. This is at the corner of Colorado Blvd and Marengo Ave. We can get some snacks and have general discussions on Drupal for a few hours.
Attendance to the last meetup is not necessary so everyone is welcome to come.
Comments
Not many have signed up.
Hi,
I just checked not many have signed up here or at meetup.com. I am not sure how big and area to stake out for our meeting. Sign up today if you can.
See you there.
Paul
Lots of folks may not know
Lots of folks may not know that BJ's website is in Drupal and that the work was done here in the Greater Los Angeles Area. It might be fun to have a "reverse case study" at this meetup where we figure out how the site is constructed — and how we would build a similar website.
Fun Get together on Thursday night
We had some great discussions on Thursday. Got to know a lot about each other, not just Drupal. Drupal was discussed as well as background, likes and things we enjoy.
It would have been nicer to have a larger turnout. Any ideas on how to get more to come to the meetups?
Larger Turnout...
I don't think there is any one thing that is a 'magic bullet' for larger turnout. However, if we had a 'planned agenda' for a meeting (subjects to be covered), that might pull more people -- I doubt that there is any particular subject that is a guaranteed draw. The 'focus' in the Burbank group emphasizes 'problems that developers are having, & how they solved it -- or just look for others to help get more traction on the issue. I generally find that approach very useful, as almost everyone has/will encounter similar problems along their ways.
This approach seems to be the point of the informal gatherings for SGV, but it doesn't provide enough focus for the meeting to be a draw.
I'm not suggesting that there should not be informal meetups -- some of the most useful things I've gotten out of them have been the result of something that came up in a context I had never considered/tried, so I came away with more tools for my kit.
For growing our numbers, I
For growing our numbers, I think we need to reach out to more local companies and organizations who are using Drupal and invite them to our events.
We have a Greater Los Angeles Area business directory where anyone can feature startups, individuals, etc. when we learn of them:
https://groups.drupal.org/node/73063
A few organizations in the San Gabriel Valley using Drupal include Caltech, Alhambra Source, Joico, Pasadena Media, SSD Software Solutions. There are certainly others but these are the ones that come to mind.
I agree wholeheartedly, but
I agree wholeheartedly, but how do we reach out to companies that we are barely aware that exist (seems to be the problem in going into new areas)? This is where your connections will help a group take root.
I think our turnout of 5 or 6
I think our turnout of 5 or 6 people at last week's informal get together was pretty awesome, especially when the announcement only went out a couple days beforehand. I'd love to attend more of these casual roundtable get togethers.
Informal is fine, but it
Informal is fine, but it seems that less formal meetings are more likely to lose their focus, and from there, potentially their value. Informal will alwayts have a place, & can probably be drummed up out of almost any group, but the new methods and approaches (say, Site Audits or 'how to implement tax policies for online sales') are the type of things that are really valuable to me.
Good discussion
This is a difficult issue to resolve.
We all have our own businesses/lives/employment that we need to balance with our community involvement.
I know that I can only get out of the community what I am willing to put in. This gets difficult when you try to be balanced. I laid out a full plan in the past for Ektron to have local user's groups. The plan never received enough traction to get started.
The things we can do right now to keep up our momentum are:
So we need to find a location for November and December then next year.
For my part by the end of the week I will identify a module I have worked with for a show and tell or interactive discussion of how it works and some applications. 15 - 30 minutes.
Can we have a meetup on training? There is buildamodule.com, drupalize.me, Lynda.com and the formal training like Exaltation of Larks. Maybe we can contact some of them to see if the want to present something to highlight their offerings. This can be in preparation for GLADCamp.
First things first where will we meet on November 21?
Great discussion
Good 'summary'
Good summary of the issues faced in keeping a group going.
My 2 cents on points made above:
-- balance between businesses/lives/employment and community involvement: This is the elephant in the room. Although we had more people at some of the earlier meetups, I am in contact with several of them who are still interested, but have conflicts (often business = time) related. These people are probably 'recoverable' in the long term.
-- your mention of having put a plan together for Ektron might be a place to start if you are willing (or even think it worthwhile) to put it out there as a template for SGV meetups.
-- BTW, if you use/have used Ektron in the past, would it be anything that other people might be interested in? I investigated it once, found it to be rather expensive and wasn't really able to fairly evaluate it before the Sierra Club decided to go with Drupal 7 on a national basis (the prime driver for my having gotten involved with Drupal).
Themekey
I can give a show and tell/interactive discussion of how the Themekey module works. Depending on how you want to take the program from there, it could serve as an intro to a discussion on responsive design. (A question I almost always get in reference to Themekey is 'Can it be used for mobile sites?' Basic answer is 'Yes, but that is not what it was primarily designed for' -- something I can help clarify, bu not something that there is a simple 30 second answer to. (15 - 30 minutes.)
Jeff
Sounds great, Jeff! I've
Sounds great, Jeff!
I've started a "suggested topics" wiki page so we can create a running list of topic requests and offers. Would you be up for adding your topic to that page?
https://groups.drupal.org/node/367243
Training
A meetup on training is a GREAT idea! Everybody needs it -- mostly when they are least expecting it.
It is also something that would allow huge flexibility in an opening talk about almost any aspect of Drupal, which could serve as an intro to a discussion on training by way of 'how I found out about this in the first place'..
I have used most of the training programs you mentioned above at one time or another:
OSTraining.com is another
OSTraining.com is another one. Have you checked them out yet?
Anyone who visits Droplabs is welcome to watch anything from their video catalog while at Droplabs. We also have the coupon code DROPLABS to get 10% off a monthly membership.
OSTraining.com
No, I haven't tried them out yet (that I'm immediately aware of). Thanks for the mention of it. A discussion of the various training offerings out there would save a lot of people from just going with the 'luck of the draw'....
Thanks, Jeff
Meetup on training
We could definitely talk about video learning and mentoring and have a "video learning shootout" that compares the various video training services.
For anyone who's interested in video mentoring, check out the page on Droplabs.net about it:
https://droplabs.net/services/video-learning-and-mentoring
I'm one of the founders of both Droplabs and Exaltation of Larks and would be glad to talk about how Droplabs helps facilitate and / or host these video mentoring events.
As a point of comparison, Exaltation of Larks also provides private, on-site trainings and formal, public classes with printed curriculum, group exercises, etc.
Perspective
Your perspective on the offerings in the market would be much appreciated, as a participant, & someone who is in contact with what people tend to look for in training (and why).
A training site test case: Features
I'm just learning Drupal. I like to automate build/test/deployment of whatever I do, so
my favorite Drupal thing so far is Drush.
I'd like to know how a team of three developers can work on the same site
without tripping over each other's shoelaces. In particular, the fact that
settings and content are all munged together in one database means
it's conceptually hard to deploy changes from a staging site onto the live
production site without losing live production data.
After thinking up a scheme to enable this using incremental mysql backups,
I happened to search for "rapid drupal development", and ran into the Features
module, which appears aimed at this very problem.
The doc for Features looks a bit thin, so I looked at the training sites mentioned above.
Of all of them, only drupalize.me had anything I could find on Features.
I would love to see a meeting on Features or on the general topic of how to
do staging/live site deployment using tools like git, Features, drush, and shell
scripting.
(/me goes off to try doing a toy site with Features now...)
I think we have a few videos
I think we have a few videos on Features, which we're about to re-upload later this month at our video sprint at UCLA:
https://groups.drupal.org/node/373208
Build a Module.com definitely has videos on Features, Drush, and sane development practices. I don't remember if those videos are part of their freemium offering, but you can watch all the videos for free at Droplabs where we have a site license for our video learning and mentoring program:
http://Droplabs.net/programs
You can also use coupon code DROPLABS to get 10% off. (Droplabs does not receive a financial kickbacks when people use this code.)
I'll be glad to update our "suggested topics" wiki page with Features and team-related workflows when I can later, but hopefully someone will beat me to it. :)
https://groups.drupal.org/node/367243
Thanks for the info. I think
Thanks for the info.
I think I failed to find Features videos on some sites because I was looking specifically for Drupal 6, not 7. I should probably look at 7, too.
I found a few at
http://codekarate.com/daily-dose-of-drupal/drupal-7-features-module-intr...
http://www.ostraining.com/blog/drupal/features/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDdEoZunkkM
...