Portland (Oregon)

So we are having our DrupalCamp on May 10th. One hell of a crowded meeting last night, so clearly DrupalCampPDX is something we as a group are excited about. Folks came from other parts of Oregon too, including one from Eugene, a sure sign that it's going to be a statewide event at the very least. I volunteered to organize programming. Of course I'm really a Joomla! spy, so get ready to talk a lot about Joomla!. Okay, okay, I'm kidding, no need to write a Grant_is_a_Sod_Bastard module.

A group of volunteers will soon be getting together and talking about programming and general organization and touring the available function space. This will give us a better idea what we can do with programming. Not surprisingly, given the name, you can expect to see plenty of BarCamp-style programming, but we will also have some pre-planned topics, many with a panel of speakers.

Of course programming content will not be determined by me, it will be determined by all of you. Our resident cheerleader drewish set up a wiki (thank you drewish) so please add your panel ideas there, and mention whether you are willing to join a panel on any panel ideas already listed. It's open to all of you so please chip in. We will be having some items where there will be 3 to 5 speakers (one of them a moderator), so feel free to add yourself to an item if you want to volunteer. Also add yourself if you are willing to present either lightening talks, lightening presentations or lightening demonstrations, all around 5-6 mins max, and timed. With enough interest we will group several of you together and make for a fun hour or two.

Please reply to this post if you have any general comments or ideas on programming that may not fit on the wiki.

Please also reply here if you're willing to help me with the organizational side of programming, as time is quite short. Drewish, you are involved by default I think ;) (and I assume you will be at the "Organizing Committee" meetings).

Thanks,
Grant

I'm getting ramped up with Drupal and finding it tricky fitting the 'key in the lock' for hooks. One area we're running into trouble is CCK. It's a really useful module for creating custom node types but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to hook node actions.

We need to be able to send email or populate tables, etcetera if a nodes are hit or forms are submitted. Using mytheme_myformid_submit() on a CCK node kept the CCK handler from picking up the form. Assigning a function with hook_form_alter also failed.

Consider this the kick off for discussion of the following. Everything written below is open for conversation/discussion.

What
A one-day, multi-session, free to everyone drupal-camp. Hosted and 'taught' by members of the portland drupal group.

Who
Two groups to focus on:
1) Introduce more of the general pdx dev community to drupal - particularly the what makes it good and examples of successful implementation.
2) Current drupal users/developers who want more training/education.

When

I'm just wondering how some of you guys handle extremely difficult clients, especially those who are so bad that you have to let the project go and you know they're going to head back to the Drupal community to find someone new.

Do you warn fellow developers about the client? Let them know that any project they bring forward is going to be at least 4 times as large as they say it's going to be? That it's best for all dealings to be via email so you have proof of what's said?

And do you wait to give them the files and such that you've worked on until they pay for the work?

I want to drop a paid service I have on my website and implement a sign-up function so that visitors, who generally will not be registered users, can sign up for an email list so that we can send them occasional news updates. It needs to have proper double opt-in capability. I looked on drupal.org and found mailman manager, notify, and simple news. The last seemed to be closest to what I'm looking for. Does anybody have experience with these? Thanks ahead.

For those who missed it, I made a few notes about the get-together with Lullabot. I posted them here:

http://thirdworld.livejournal.com/208916.html

Comments, corrections, additions welcomed. Any other reports out there that I can check out?

Hello Oregonians,

Just wanted to make sure everyone knows about the upcoming Lullabot workshops happening in Portland next month. The team will be in town from January 7th - 11th teaching Intro to Drupal Development and Advanced API and Module Development. You can sign up for either workshop individually or attend the whole week at a discount.

I hope we get to meet some of you while we're in town!