I am happy to annonce the second Melbourne Meetup. This time I hope to make things a little more structured, and hopefully more people will get more out of this.
Special thanks for Luke Hodge @ Sustainable Living Foundation who have kindly offered their premise for us to have the meetup and for also providing internet access.
I am proposing the meeting on the 22nd July 2006 @ 2pm but Luke is flexiable and if someone recommends another time that no one objects too we can change this.
See you all at
Sustainable Living Foundation
Level 2, 140 Burke St (between Russell and Spring St)
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&ll=-37.812818,144.968934&spn=0....
I am being a bit more orgainsied this time as well and have a small agenda,
Agenda
2:00pm - Introductions.
2:30pm - Demostration of the location, Gmap, CCK, Views, and the Node Import module for Australia.
3:30pm - Discuss Melboure Meetup III and beyond
3:45pm - Question and Answer Time.
If anyone else wants to show things they have been doing then please let me know and we will add it to the agenda. Just email me gordon@heydon.com.au, and I will make the changes.
Also thanks to Russ Porteous who also offered a location for the meetup, but was a bit smaller than, and we could not of had as many people.
Also if people can please sign up below, so that we have a rough idea of how many people are going to be turning up.
Comments
Saturday's are a really
Saturday's are a really inconvient time, means i gotta travel back from home into the city again, would be best after work during the week. (so i can get there afterwork, i work in southbank)
Also interfere's with my other hobbies, panelbeating & car-restoration :D
also means everyone would have to PT it into the city, peak time saturday afternoon, good luck finding any carparks
No time is perfect, but I
No time is perfect, but I can do either.
Feedback on melbourne meeting II
Would be interested to hear some feed back on the melbourne meeting
Tom Burton
Thx Gordon for ur
Thx Gordon for ur presentation on Saturday, I have learnt a lot from the meeting and it is good to see all drupal genius gethering and share their knowledge and experiences.
Kelvin.
I actually hope to discuss
I actually hope to discuss this more at the meeting for Meetup III. 1 good thing that having it on a weekend provides is that people from out-of-state can attend.
The last meetup and this meetup we have people from Sydney.
I have updated the agenda to reflect the discussion.
--
Gordon Heydon
Sorry
Sorry guys, can't make it this time - I will be skiing in Falls Creek. Looks like Sammy will be the Sydney ambassador for Meetup II. =)
Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh
Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh
No Problems. If you have any
No Problems.
If you have any ideas on moving forward for future meetings to help out of state people attend the Meetup please either post them here or email them to me, and I will make sure they are included in this discussion.
--
Gordon Heydon
Would Like To Come ...
.. but will have to play it by ear, as we have a new arrival in our household :-)
David McDonald
Web Designer
http://www.davidmcdonald.org
congrats
Way to go Dave! How'd you get one that doesn't look like Winston Churchhill?
Hey well done!
Congratulations. All the best.
John
Was doing social distancing before it was cool.
Congrates. It seems like
Congrates.
It seems like everyone is having babies this year. My wife and I are expecting a little boy which is due early December.
--
Gordon Heydon
Anyone for bread? Just kid-ding!
Congrats to davemac for the cooked bun.
--
Sammy Spets
Synerger
http://synerger.com
Apology
I really regret that I have to cancel my signup for the Meetup. I will not be able to attend.
Something more important than Drupal has come up.
Now, what could be more important than Drupal? And naturally the answer comes back - not 'what', but 'who'.
And.. she is.
Have a good meeting; I look forward to seeing the podcast. :-)
Hopefully I can make it next time.
John.
Was doing social distancing before it was cool.
As long as the meeting is
As long as the meeting is public,, It would be nice to explore !!
yes, public
Anyone is welcome.
Feedback.
Well on Saturday we had the second meetup at the Sustainable Living Foundation.
I felt this was a great meeting, and would once again like to thank the Luke and slf for the use of the office, projector, and wireless. This really made the meeting, and enabled us to see gmaps running of Australia and a few other bits and peices.
I myself felt this was a great meeting, and we are looking to have a major meeting every 3 months, and maybe smaller more focused ones in between.
The next meeting will most likely be October/November, and I would like someone to prepare a demo and show somethings that other people have been working on or are interested in and would like show something. Please let me know, and I will be putting them on the spot for the next meeting.
--
Gordon Heydon
For those who couldn't make it
Are there any Flickr pics, or plans to podcast the meetings in future? Is it worth starting a Melbourne Drupal Group ' group on Flickr for pics etc?
David McDonald
Web Designer
http://www.davidmcdonald.org
great catch-up
Hi all
Thought I'd put up my own re-cap. Sorry I don't have any photos. I have a too-crap phone camera and a too-good Canon. I think we missed AlsoJohn's camera work really.
Well, a few new faces for me, I think there was only myself and Gordon from the first meeting. So it was great meeting new people and putting a face to a few names.
The venue
SLF have some space on the 2nd floor of a building in Bourke st. One wall is plastered with a giant gantt-like chart of their upcoming Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne in February. That link reminds me of the other notable object in the room being a giant thong. (If you don't know what a thong is in Australia, follow the link to find out.)
The demo
Gordon's demo combined location, cck, gmap, node_import and views. Many of these are important modules which are having a big impact on Drupal, and are even finding their way into core.
The objective was to create a custom node that could be plotted on a google map. Then, within the drupal site, the user can display search results as a map with the nodes plotted on the map.
The demo bits
1) location was used to manage the geographic information. In, this case Gordon loaded some Australian post code data, and then restricted/defaulted the rest of the location settings to Australia.
2) cck was used to create the custom node, I'm a bit rough here about how the postcode was identified, there was a cck widget presented by either location module or gmap module that made this possible.
The module installation page was really confusing with cck, location etc all providing multiple modules.
3) gmap provides access to the google maps api. gmap can be customized a lot. Both the look of the map, behaviour, and the default locations etc.
4) After the node object was created, Gordon imported a CSV file of about 80 nodes using node_import. The design of the node_import interface made a lot of sense - and, for example, it would be very easy to train someone to use it.
5) So, with all the data in place, Gordon then created a custom report in views.module. I won't mis-represent views by trying to describe it - only to say that Gordon's report displayed 200 nodes per page, with all the nodes displayed in a google map rather than in list form. :-)
(If I've misrepresented anything then pull me up. I've tried to stay brief.)
Wrapping up
Overall it went very smoothly. There were a couple of glitches and tweaks, but nothing serious. Of course, if I were to have tried this from scratch it would have taken me 3 days, so I think everyone appreciated having this demonstrated the way it was.
Beer-o-clock was celebrated at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow. I, personally, got drunk enough to talk shite, but at least I didn't have to type at the same time (eg IRC). Twas all great: the presentation and the networking. I look forward to the next Aussie Drupal Fiesta.
(Sammys, I remember now it was Nachos Cantina and margheritas I recommended, not Taco Bills! But you'd all have to come to Aspendale for that one.)
Thanks again to Gordon and Luke/SLF.
Simon
Thanks
Simon,
Thanks for the notes on the Melbourne meeting. Sounds like it was very impressive.
I hope to be able to make it along to the next one.
David McDonald
Web Designer
http://www.davidmcdonald.org
Longingly from the west...
Hi All,
Great to get the run-down on your meetup II, wish I could have made it. I'm going to have to put some pressure on work to send me over to the east for one sometime soon. The demo sounded very interesting - we handle a lot of GIS data at work and this sounds like it could be useful to incorporate into the new work site I'm building in Drupal.
Podcasts or even vodcasts of these meetings would be really cool for those unable to make it to meetings. The east coast is a big ask for me but I would like to attend say once a year to meet up with others and keep in touch. Any chance of organising an annual forum/workshop which we could plan for in the future? I'd have a better chance of convincing work to send me over if it were say a 2-day thing with a mix of sessions for intro to advanced level.
If venues are an issue I may be able to assist through our network - I'm pretty sure we could find somewhere suitable
Cheers,
Andrew
Cheers,
Andrew
Missed the meetup
Sorry I missed the meetup, but getting to town in the weekend is problematic for me (an hour each way). Any chance of doing a meetup one weekday evening?
Meetings on week day nights
Hi,
We did discuss this, and thought that we maybe able to have smaller/more local meetings between the quartly meetings, which I do think could be during the week.
If anyone has a good reason to hold a meeting, then I am happy to organise it.
--
Gordon Heydon