Hey all, I just wanted to give a quick report on this morning's BAD Camp session. We had a lively discussion with a few video pros involved, and came up with a number of great ideas for the next wave of Drupal Dojo.
The biggest change suggested was to consider moving away from lengthy "live" sessions, and towards shorter, more targeted "produced" video segments, similar to the style that add1sun demonstrates so well in her "quick and dirty" series. I think this is probably a good idea, much as I love the "live" format and all the work we've done with VNC to make this possible. The reality is that our largest audience is going to see these lessons after the fact, not live, and to fulfill our mission to the fullest we should be catering to this group.
That means tighter, more streamlined lessons with higher production values, and lessons that are 10 to 20 minutes rather than an hour and a half or more. We talked about how to make lessons We talked about standardizing some practices for this process: creating outlines and scripts, standardizing screen-cap settings, having lesson series, etc. We also talked about trying to fit the lessons into target-audience buckets:
- Evaluator: what's a good solution for a given use-case? (is this just marketing? out of scope?)
- Administrator: getting the most out of drupal without writing code
- Designer/Themer: making drupal beautiful and usable
- Developer/Engineer: how to develop the drupal way
These categories would also be the basis for a redesign of drupaldojo.com. If we're going to produce a higher volume of targeted lessons, we'll need a more tabular interface to the video library. We'll also want to make the front page a simple, welcoming splash screen that will direct people to the content appropriate for their role.
We also brainstormed a starter list of lesson topics as well:
Evaluator
- Is Drupal 6 Right For me?
** Do specific use-cases
** Again, is this really on-target for our group?
Administrator
- The Basic Modules You Need
- HowTo: Upgrade from 5.x to 6.0
- Making your site secure
- Choosing an ISP
- Setting up a wiki
- Setting up a social network
- Setting up an event site
- Setting up maps
Designer/Themer
- A guide to Drupal's CSS
- Tour of template files
- How to use simple PHP in theming
- Guide to reading code
Developer
- Setting up a good development environment
- Hello world
- The lifecycle of a $node object
- Hook, not hack (a series)
- Deploying code, manging complex updates
- Writing secure code
- Multisite
There are many more lesson ideas we could come up with. Suggest some in comments!
Comments
on the live videos
I'm one of the people that have struggled to make the live sessions, practically every time. The timing is just bad for me. So, where they exist my dojo learning has mainly been through watching the screencasts.
I don't know if anyone else has the same experience, but I actually love it when the production values are a little lower. I'm not talking sound or image quality obviously; but rather the semi-unplanned sessions, where the tutor is figuring stuff out on the fly. It helps me to understand how people programme, solve problems and generally think.
The shorter videos are obviously useful for explaining simpler or smaller things like making a patch or upgrading the site, but the unedited, rougthly planned, longer sessions are a winner I think.
I also think the live sessions aid the community spirit. It helps bring people to life in ways the shorter videos don't; the tighter the production, the more of the personality you cut out. And even in retrospect, seeing the tutor respond to IRC comments makes it all seem like there is a real community here.
So more shorter videos: good.
Moving away from longer videos: very bad.
-
www.alanpritt.com
It's a question of emphasis
I think given that we have the infrastructure in place to do live screencasts, they're likely to continue to happen. I'm thinking more in terms of emphasis over the next few months during the lead-up to Drupal 6.0's release. Clearly no-one is going to stop anyone from having VNC sessions and recording/posting the results. :)
I also greatly appreciate the value of the "semi-unplanned" lesson in that it gives people an opportunity to see real-world problem solving in action. I think for that reason alone the live and/or spontaneous sessions are worth keeping around.
However, I think over the months of Dec/Jan, I'm going to put my own efforts towards building a library of less rambling clips that will be easy for people who are new to Drupal to digest. Again, the idea is to prime the pump for the 6.0 release, as we can reasonably expect another surge in interest.
http://www.chapterthreellc.com | http://www.outlandishjosh.com
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
What about...
What happens when there is a video that either falls out of any of the categories, or needs to be in multiple categories
Well
I have three potential answers to this:
1) Multiple categorization could of course be an option, or...
2) We could also create a "misc" category, or...
3) We can try and have a discipline around the content we produce, and make sure it has a "target audience" in mind.
I also think that the skill-level/target-audience taxonomy is but one of many taxonomies. We'd also have tags, of course, and I could also see keyword search being a prime way in which people discover content. The idea with the "admin/designer/coder" breakdown is both to help people find appropriate content quickly, and also to get us, the producers, to do a little extra homework and make sure we have a viewer in mind for the videos we generate.
http://www.chapterthreellc.com | http://www.outlandishjosh.com
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
...
I agree with #3... I think that's the best option for us to take.
However...
I came up with an idea for the approximate timeframe of the Dojo project and I'd like your opinion
depending on when Drupal 6
and friends are release & compatible
We could organize this w/ a subdomain of Drupaldojo.com and a stock book module
Nice timeline
This timeline looks generally good, although I think we should make every effort to "get ahead" of the official Drupal 6.0 release as much as possible. The code is already pretty stable, and it's very likely that we'll see an RC release in the next month. At that point, I think we can try and start making videos, even though we know the official release will be delayed a bit by the need to bring up some critical contrib modules, upgrade drupal.org, etc.
I think we can probably make some improvements on the Drupal Dojo in Nov that will be well worth it. I would love to get at least comps for a redesign done. We could also generate a big list of "lessons to be recorded" as well as a solid set of standards for how they will work would be good goals.
Realistically my time will still be short until early December, but hopefully others can start moving sooner. I'm thinking about trying to record several lessons before the end of the year, so that in early January we can celebrate the 1-year-birthday of the Drupal Dojo in style. :)
http://www.chapterthreellc.com | http://www.outlandishjosh.com
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
Couple of thoughts
I totally agree we should get ahead of Druapl 6, however the timeline is for the site... we can't develop the site in Drupal 6 when the modules aren't upgraded. However making videos for it already is a great idea.
For the improvements in november, those are just mainly bugfixes (getting feedback to work, getting the countdown timer back to a working state). Let's start the comps during phase 2 of the planning (1 is the "list of features", 2 is "where do these features fit in to the site"). I was actually thinking of using the book module and setting up a site like planning.dd.com for it.
Until December Senpai, addi, and I will handle the bugfixes and setting up the new planning site.
Ahh...
Sorry, I misunderstood. I was thinking the timeline was for the overall group.
I still think a re-designed frontpage can be done before we migrate to 6.0, and will be key in helping us "get ahead" of the release. It will be cool and fun to get the site moved to Drupal 6, but I kind of see that as peripheral to getting the new practices in place and the video documentation going for the general 6.0 release. After all, it doesn't really matter what software dd.com runs on, as long as people get access to the vids. :)
http://www.chapterthreellc.com | http://www.outlandishjosh.com
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
Textual documentation
Should the Dojo get involved with textual documentation (and the handbooks) as well? Or should we keep it just video?
Views 2 will have ? (tooltips/helptips) everywhere, and I think that might be a good project for the Dojo.
Tooltips be damned. We want Views2!
One of the key points that Webchick, Josh, Myself, and SamTresler kept hammering at the outset of the Dojo's birth was the need to keep information flowing from the Dojo into the Handbooks. I for one have been doing my part to update the Handbook pages, HowTo's, tutorials, and other such things as I come across them while learning about Drupal.
I'm positive that others are doing the same, cause the Handbooks are really getting a LOT better when compared to last year's versions. It will continue to be necessary in the coming years to continue this one-way flow of information. I do realize, however, that the Dojo has evolved significantly in the past few months to become a formidable training dround for new Drupal talent, not just those who already know some hooks and want to learn how to cut a node to pieces with a razor sharp epee.
The Handbooks are not suffering. But you are correct, Dmitri. We cannot forget to pass on the tidbits of knowledge gleaned from these sessions to others who might now have the time or resources to learn via a streaming video. After all, one cannot yet grep a vidcast for "node object + form field + hook_delete()".
Documentation is not dead. Long live Documentation.
Senpai (my d.o account)
Joel Farris | my 'certified to rock' score
Transparatech
http://transparatech.com
619.717.2805