Posted by dharmatech on September 24, 2010 at 3:16pm
We are running a Drupal BoF at The Utah Open Source Conference on Friday, Oct 8th at 7:30pm. Please consider attending the conference; Ignite is always fun; and any help during the Drupal BoF would be appreciated. :)
We haven't worked out a format yet, but the idea is to try and cover beginner to advanced topics at a high level... depending on the group. Hopefully it's a group of people that have never heard of Drupal and want to learn more. If it's a more advanced group, we're happy to dive in but the goal is to spread the word.
Comments
I read your post...
And the page on the conference site.
I still have no idea what a BoF is, or why I would want to run one....
(sorry - can't help. I've already been to SLC twice this year, and that's about my limit!)
Pete.
Then why comment?
Pete,
Not sure why you would waste your time commenting if: you don't know what a BoF is, you don't know why you would want to run one and you're not coming to help.
That's not very informative for anyone else involved in the Utah DUG.
A BoF (Birds of a Feather) is a common term used at conferences. Birds of a feather, flock together. You get the idea. Here's the UTOSC definition of BoF.
It's a shame you won't be able to make it to the conference. Sadly, it's not in SLC. It's in Sandy. Normally well beyond the range of even an SLC gathering (let alone Syracuse). Anything beyond 2100 S may as well be South America. Dharmatech is going to help talk about Drupal and put in some volunteer time. UTOS Foundation puts a lot of time and energy in pushing open source solutions. Many people are making the drive from Layton, Logan and Orem/Provo. The point of the post to the group was to let others know Drupal will be discussed and there's an opportunity to educate others.
It's a communication issue
Really, I didn't know what a BoF was; http://www.acronymfinder.com/BOF.html shows 35 known definitions of the acronym. My first thought was 'Beginning of File? Haven't heard that term since I last programmed in Cobol...'
When communicating in English, it's standard practice to define acronyms when you first use them in a document. e.g, 'We're running a Drupal BoF (Birds of a Feather) at The Utah Open Source Conference.."; then people who don't have special knowledge (in this case, of programming-related conferences) will be able to look up the subject and find out more about it. That really was my main point.
Pete.
Then why didn't you ask?
You could have simply asked "What is a BoF?" or follow the hyperlink to the conference page which has a hyperlink "Birds of a Feather (BoF)" describing a BoF. Instead your post read as "I don't know what something is and it doesn't matter because I won't be there anyway." Not helpful for anyone in the Utah Drupal User Group (DUG) or anyone attending the Utah Open Source Conference (UTOSC). That's the point.
The session was fun and included four people representing two different Idaho DUGs (Rexburg and Boise). There were 6 or 7 others that had no experience with Drupal. We started off with the basics and built a site that duplicated the conference site (built with ConMan) demonstrating taxonomy, content types, blocks and views. Then we discussed rapid Drupal deployment, installation profiles, drush make, etc. We walked through our install profile, makefile and scripts we use to build a base configuration Drupal site. This was valuable to the Idaho guys since they didn't have any experience with those tools. Hopefully others in the audience were able to come away with an understanding of the power and flexibility of Drupal.
Looking forward to the BoF
I look forward to seeing everyone at the Birds of a Feather meeting at the Utah Open Source Conference.
I would suggest starting out the first 30 minutes with an "Introduction to Drupal" to make newbies comfortable,
then do a roundtable for everyone to introduce themselves and show a demo of their favorite Drupal sites.
My favorite site (for newbies) is the "Learn By The Drop" video tutorials for customers that want to maintain their
own sites or learn more about Drupal. http://learnbythedrop.com/
Thanks for the suggestion!
See you there.