1st Drupal Meet Up - Success!

Yahoo! Our first meet up was a resounding success!

• It was well-attended (16 participants from NGOs, government, schools, and private corps; plus 7 staff from Dig It All Solutions)
• Lots of interest and discussion about: configuring Drupal (for beginners); themes, cck/Views, taxonomy, module development (for advanced users)
• Thanks to Jeff, Val, kenneth (sofiya) and Lee for sharing their knowledge on Drupal, and also for Loloyd, Jon (jorap), and Mark Caballero who pitched in! Thanks to Data for giving away Drupal bag tags.
• Popular questions: What sets Drupal apart from other CMS? How to campaign so that our organizations will use Drupal? Why is an open source CMS package better than building one on your own?
• Discussed next steps and beyond: join the mailing list/GDO, tell others about Drupal, invite others to join, ask questions via the mailing list, look into interoperability with Sahana Disaster Mgt System.
• Lots of food, thanks to the people who brought in pizza, pasta and chicken (kenneth aka sofiya), chichiria (jan aka jpabellon), muffins (ken), pancit and chicken lollies (data), etc etc

5-7 pm, as expected, was not enough to discuss all questions for a first meet. We resolved to continue discussions via GDO (http://groups.drupal.org/Philippines or the googlegroups: drupal-phil@googlegroups.com), and meet again next month (Oct).

• To discuss specialized topics or just getting together: set up your own meet ups. Just post the info here on where you want to meet up and the sked.
• Meet ups for no apparent reason are encouraged :)
• A few of you gave this nice feedback: "Now that there is a clear support group, we're not afraid to push for Drupal."
• Still others congratulated the people for their spirit of voluntarism -- and we agree! We can make a difference in our organizations and our country just by telling everyone about Drupal! Sounds lofty but it's possible, yes? :)

Valman and shey - please post the photos and share them here.
Data - pls post the names of those who attended.

To everyone, maraming salamat and let's spread the word: Drupal for Knowledge Sharing!

benc