Hey Drupalers,
I was talking with some of Bradley's IT higher-ups as part of a portal project that my students are helping skin. Once mentioned that our university webmaster was looking at Drupal, and I immediately began to espouse the benefits of Drupal. (Several of the Slane College sites use Drupal, with several more on the way.)
I mentioned that I'd be willing to help them plan such an implementation, and then someone asked if I could show a few people around Drupal, and maybe do a little training.
In the spirit of the Drupal community, I asked if Bradley could instead sponsor a DrupalCamp. My contacts in IT seemed very receptive to the idea, and said that we could get some labs and some food. We also have a few local multimedia shops who might be able to sponsor anything else that was needed. Bradley has a wireless campus, A/V equipment, and nice labs.
My current schedule and the BU academic schedule will necessitate that this happen in mid-May once final exams are done, and everyone is quite a bit freer. So what do you think, everyone? I think there would be value in having one track full of lower-level sessions designed for beginners, so that we can teach Bradley staff and anyone else who's curious about Drupal some things and get them over the first few humps of the learning curve. (I'd love to see the same kind of sessions as we had at DrupalCampWI: How to contribute, how to do podcasts, using the big contrib modules, theming, etc.)
At the same time, we are lucky in that we could get KarenS, Brian and myself, Crell, or any number of people to also do a track of advanced sessions, but I think it would be great to have one full track for the new or very inexperienced user.
Let me know what you think, but I am very excited at this opportunity, not just because it looks like most of BU might move to Drupal, but also because we have a chance here to use our nice facilities to get a lot of people involved and up to speed.
Steven 'Sven' Merrill
http://www.cascadingstyle.net/
http://multimedia.bradley.edu/bio/admin
Comments
UIUC Druapl Activity and Need to for beginning level track
People are working in various directions at UIUC such as OPEN CMS, Expression Engine, and Drupal. We're trying to get a sense of which colleges on the campus are using Drupal and there appears to be a few. I think a beginning level track would hit the spot for a lot of people here on campus. People often don't like to do nights and weekends here because of childcare etc. so weekday might be better for a beginners track.
I can poll the UIUC Webmasters list and see what level of interest there is for it whenever you want me to.
The theme of this year's UIUC Webmaster networking group brownbags is CMS. The theme of the annual conference is redesign. So we're doing a talk on redesigning sites into Drupal at the local conference in April.
John
www.johnbarclay.com
I'm willing to help...
While it would be hard for me to be involved in much of the physical planning, I'm more than happy to drive down for the event.
You might be interested in some of the feedback we got about DrupalCampWI.
While I think two tracks would be a great idea, having critical mass to pull off the second one is tough in a Small / Medium size market (like Milwaukee).
If I had to do it over again I'd like to see a second track be a bit more "hands-on" and actually build a site / write a module / test a patch etc... (I know this would be hard to turn into sessions, but might help the intermediate level folks).
Whichever direction you end up going with, I'll be happy to help as much as I can.
Hands-on development session
It would be interesting to participate in a hands-on development session just to see other peoples' development environments. I have a laptop that I run Apache, lighttpd, MySQL, and Postgres on, with six or so dev installs of Drupal to test various versions and configurations, and mixtures of bzr and cvs to keep things organized. It can be a bit overwhelming at times, even for the relatively simple modules I work on.
-- Steven N. Severinghaus <sns@severinghaus.org>
-- Steven N. Severinghaus <sns@severinghaus.org>
I'm in if possible
May is also php|tek in Chicago, and I've a few other things planned, but I'm definitely willing to come down if I can. I thought the dual-track setup worked well, too. I'm not sure if you'd want to go BarCamp-style like Wisconsin did or have sessions more pre-planned. There's good arguments both ways. The Association can likely also provide assistance if you can tell us what to do.
Weekday would be harder for me, since I'd have to get time off of work. You'd also want to recommend a hotel or two, as Peoria is a bit further to drive to than Milwaukee (and I'm not as fond of long distance driving as KarenS apparently is :-) ).
On the other hand, the Chicago folks have been talking about doing a Chicago-based DrupalCamp over the summer. That would be three Lake Michigan Basin (for lack of a better term) DrupalCamps in the span of six months. I worry about over-saturating the market. :-)
I certainly don't want to
I certainly don't want to steal DrupalCampChicago's thunder here. I am very much thinking that two tracks would work, but really make them both explicitly for newbies. Perhaps this is not a DrupalCamp, but a DrupalBootCamp - whip those newbs into shape. ;)
I think having prepared sessions (or at least beginner - intermediate topics that people sign up to cover) would work out well for an event like this.
I would forsee it going something like this:
DrupalCampChicago folks, do you think would overlap too much? That's certainly not our intention. I think that if we purpose this just for newbies, we can train them, get them excited, let them go play for two months, and tell them to bring their questions and ideas to DrupalCampChicago in August.
EDIT: Edited for general disregard for grammar.
DCC overlap
The terminology of DrupalCamps, Drupal BarCamps, Drupal Day, Drupalcon, Drupal User Group Meet Ups, etc. can get confusing. Maybe the association can post a expected format for each?? Currently, CDMUG has two type of events.
We're going to discuss the Central IL newbs camp and other DCC topics as a group, Monday, Feb. 25th in IRC: freenode.net #cdmug - please join. First thought is any time you get people in a room to Drupal - its never a bad idea.
No expected format
Currently, as far as the Association is concerned there are two types of Drupal events: DrupalCon, which is run, sponsored, and organized by the Association, and "all that other stuff". :-) We want to help encourage that other stuff more, but so far there's no actual policy for what an event "has to do" in order to "earn" the name DrupalCamp.
Drupal Test Drives?
CDMUG promotes Drupal Test Drives (DTD). All CDMUG members are allowed to have 1 free Drupal site hosted on cdmug.org. We walk new users through the installation process and explain everything that is going on. I would be more than willing to organize a DTD session in central Illinois. I am even willing to keep the websites hosted on cdmug.org no matter how many people participate. Offering risk free Drupal sites is a great way to attract new Drupalers.
I really like the idea of small, area "Drupal Newbie Bootcamps"
I really like the idea of small, area "Drupal Newbie Bootcamps", and I don't see it stealing thunder from CDMUG's planned DrupalCamp, quite the opposite.
I can think of several towns in IL / WI / IN / MI even IA where this would work - hell lets march Drupal straight to Buffalo - across the entire Great Lakes Basin ;-)
But seriously, raising Drupal awareness beyond the local Chicago developers is one of the goals of the Chicago Drupal Camp, so why not reach out to other areas in the region?
And Matt's generous offer of a free drupal site for each member is a great way to support these Newbie Camps
Queried UIUC Webmasters
I asked the UIUC webmasters email list this afternoon if they would be interested in an all day Drupal beginners training of some sort in Peoria in May. 12 said yes so far which is a fair amount of enthusiasm for that list. They generally all prefer weekdays.
www.johnbarclay.com
Friday?
If you're going to do a weekday, I think it would have to be Friday. I don't see how you're going to be able to pull many non-students otherwise, especially non-local ones. Even then, how many students have classes on Friday that they wouldn't be able to miss?
From an attendees point of view, a weekend is a much better time.
AT UIUC, weekdays are good for non-students, bad for students
All the developers I know work during the weekdays so its the best time for a Drupal training. Some developers don't use Drupal at work though and might not be able to take time off for a Drupal training. The students have class so its bad to have an all day event for them during the week.
Weekdays are probably the worst for trainers and travellers though and a weekday might be hard to pull off, even if it were desired.
John
www.johnbarclay.com
+1 for weekend
I'm with Crell on this one.
It would be harder for me to drive down and take the time off if it's not on the weekend (not impossible, just more difficult).
happy to attend
I am pleasantly surprised to find the group, and will surely attend whatever event happens in May.
I've been plucking away at drupal for about a week now, and I could use a DrupalCamp tomorrow! (Is there a group where its appropriate for really green newbies can ask really dumb questions?)
andy wiese
code carpenter
champaign il
andy wiese
code carpenter
champaign il
I understand the IRC
I understand the IRC channels have tolerance for newbies.
:)You're welcome to email or message me off-list, too, if I can be of any help.
-- Steven N. Severinghaus <sns@severinghaus.org> (also in Champaign)
-- Steven N. Severinghaus <sns@severinghaus.org>