Hi everybody,
I work for a large federal contractor. We are getting more and more calls for Drupal work from our client agencies and in order to keep up with demand we need more Drupal developers. We'd prefer to grow them in-house rather than hire from outside. So, we need to train people up.
Now I don't know about you but I learn best when I get my hands wet in the code, yeah? So I was thinking maybe some kind of code sprints? Get some of our more experienced Drupal folks to kind of organize/supervise?
I have not yet actually done a code sprint myself, but I am familiar with the concept, and more familiar with Agile methodology, which it sounds a lot like. What I'm looking for is some guidance, ideas, how we might go about doing something like this.
Maybe we can get a discussion going and I can develop some more specific questions from that?
Thanks,
--Jeff
Comments
Forum One hosts regular sprints
Forum One hosts code sprints in the DC area every other month or so. Past Examples:
https://groups.drupal.org/node/453283
https://groups.drupal.org/node/448928
The next one isn't yet scheduled, but stay tuned to this group!
The focus of these events isn't so much on learning the basics (although learning naturally happens when working on core!) rather it's about trying to make progress in the issue queue. If you have some people who are looking to learn about Drupal from scratch, then I'd suggest attending one of the area meetups:
DC: http://www.meetup.com/drupal-dc/events/219560178/
NoVA: http://www.meetup.com/drupal-dc/events/220127886/
MD: http://www.meetup.com/drupal-dc/events/220433320/
Some local firms occasionally provide training events. Although I don't know of any coming up soon.
Internal Drupal Training
Hey Jeff,
We offer on-site training at reasonable rates. Shoot me an email, and I'll be glad to discuss with you that option as well as others. Thanks,
J.R.
Simple Information
Live Training in DC March 25-26
OSTraining, authors of Drupal 7 Explained, are hosting a live class March 25-26. Here's a link with details to see if it fits what you're looking for.
https://www.ostraining.com/classroom/class/181-washington-dc-drupal-expl...
The trainer, a humble expert on Drupal will host a happy hour Q&A session after the first day. We'll have details on Facebook soon.
General Tips
I am not sure what the quals of your team are, which makes it hard to advise you. But I do think starting off with some good old-fashioned site building of first a simple and then a complex site is a good way to practice skills for any new Drupal developer. You usually want to do that (along with learning the basics of how to research Drupal issues, the basics of permissions and users, where to look for stuff in admin menus) before moving on to learning Drupal's coding standards, common hooks, how to develop modules, or how to build themes, for instance. I am just trying to tell you what I think, but I don't offer training myself so have no horse in this race. Feel free to contact me off list for further thoughts if you want.
Forcontu Drupal Training
Hi Jeff, we can help by providing our Expert in Drupal 7 books for free. Just send me an email.
http://www.forcontu.com/en/books/expert-in-drupal-7-pack
We use our own online courses to incorporate new people to the team. It's a good way to train them before they join our company or a customer. The full course lasts seevn months (420 hours), but we can adapt it depending of the needs of each company and the time the student has available (from 15 to 40 hours/week).
http://www.forcontu.com/en/expert-in-drupal7
Fran Gil
www.forcontu.com/en
Acquia Private and Public Classes
You can find Acquia's schedule of upcoming publicly available training events at training.acquia.com/events. Acquia has Site Building, Layout & Theming, Panels and Module Development classes running regularly. They also have a Learning Services group that develops custom onsite private classes. We are an Acquia training partner that deliver Drupal 7 training almost almost every week of the year. Personally I've trained lots of federal and state employees including House of Reps, SSA and US Probation Courts. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.