Lynda.com / SDUG / Creating Our Selves

Last night was fab! First a vibrant and passionate SandCamp planning meeting and then a very informative meeting, followed by drinks at the Prado. Thanks KRK and Cristoph for a good meeting.

So we have a wonderful opportunity to create SDDUG Lynda.com training. We would do this as a group, we would spread the Drupal Gospel/KoolAid-drinking word and ultimately provide valuable training to the greater community. For those of you that don't know Lynda.com, they are the premiere online technical training for web & design professionals.

I have a vision of what would work from a project and business-owner side but this is really your project. Send some feedback on these items - no feedback and interest means no project, this on a wiki on purpose :-)

1. Are you interested enough to participate?
2. What do you know well enough to TEACH (not demo)
3. What would you like to learn yourself?
4. Anybody in the group actually an educator/curriculum specialist/writer?

While I am an eternal optimist and will volunteer to coordinate and manage, the topics all have to be driven from this community. The technical expertise and materials have to be sourced and vetted from our group.

It's a rigorous path to get included into the Lynda.com curriculum but it will set us apart and as the experts in a growing and competitive community. While we are all busier than we might even want to be today, it is this moment that is important for marketing for the future. Marketing during a drought is a sad thing to do.

So send me your feedback about this (and the RFP process too!).

Susan

From Dries at Drupalcon:
If you wish to travel quickly, go alone
If you wish to travel far, go together

--Al Gore

Questions from a potential video maker (Karl)

• What length will the videos be? That might give us a better idea of topics that can fit into the available space.
• What's the time commitment, very roughly speaking?
• This is not possible to be sure about, but what kind of money could one reasonably expect to see / month?
• I can ask Chris Charlton if he's willing to give us some of that data too, he might know better.

Volunteers

1. Ron Toland (Achieve Internet)

   • Can Teach: Simpletest, Views customization, REST Web Services Integration
   • Like to Learn: Designing Easy-To-Theme Modules, Building Admin Interfaces for Custom Modules using Good UX Principles, Installation Profiles
   • Teaching Experience: taught physics labs as undergrad, mentored two students while an engineer at NASA, trained corporate clients in Dreamweaver, Flash, project management tools and Agile Development
   • Writing Experience: wrote press releases and news articles for Public Affairs Office at NASA/Goddard

2. Dave Currence (CATWIRED.com)

   • Can teach anything simple like Drupal basics, etc.
   • Like to learn more about views and custom modules
   • Teaching Experience: I am a Computer Software Instructor for the Science Museum of MN.
   • I used to be a Television Producer so I have those skills as well.

3. Karl Scheirer (Freelance)

   • Can Teach: open to suggestions, Views2 and solr have been 2 areas of work recently
   • Teaching experience: Math & Statistics tutor for small groups, given several sessions at drupal events, developed some initial training programs for programmers new to Drupal while at AchieveInternet