Downtown LA Drupal Meetup on March 20, 2012 at Droplabs: State of the Drop - Live from DrupalCon Denver!

The next Downtown LA Drupal meetup is on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 and will be at Droplabs, a Drupal event and coworking space in Downtown Los Angeles. At this meetup, we'll be featuring two presentations: Building an AJAX-driven Application in Drupal and State of the Drop: Live from DrupalCon Denver!

Light food and refreshments will be served throughout the evening courtesy of our food and drink sponsor, Exaltation of Larks, a Drupal strategy, consulting, development and training company with a team of Drupal experts in Los Angeles.

For any changes to our agenda for the evening, stay tuned to this meetup announcement or click the Sign up button below (or both!) to be notified when the agenda has been updated.

Agenda

LA Drupal meetups follow a basic format and start off with Drupal news and announcements, local job announcements, raffle prizes and full-length presentations. As always, we'll also have community Q&A, during which time anyone in attendance can ask questions, divine answers from the crowd and give brief, 5-10 minute-long presentations known as lightning talks. We'll finish off the night with more networking and a Drupal After Dark at 9:30pm.

   6:30pm
   Users Helping Users
   Projector and tables / chairs setup

   7:30pm
   Introductions and job announcements
   News and upcoming events (Drupal Design Camp LA, DrupalCon Denver, LA Drupal Business Summit, etc.)
   Community questions and answers

   8:30pm
   Presentation: Building an AJAX-driven Application with Drupal
   Presentation: State of the Drop - Live from DrupalCon Denver!
   Lightning talks
   Raffle prizes!

   9:30pm
   Wrap-up, Clean-up and Close-up
   Drupal After Dark and networking session

Join us on Twitter, Google+ and IRC!

During the meetup, several of us will be in the #drupal-la channel on IRC and the LA Drupal hangout on Google+ and all are welcome to join us. The event organizers will also be monitoring Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @ladrupal or use the #ladrupal hashtag.

Users Helping Users

The meetup begins at 7:30pm but the doors open a little earlier at 6:30pm for Users Helping Users, which is a chance for members of the community to help and be helped by others with whatever questions and problems they're having with Drupal.

Please note that while Users Helping Users is not designed to be a replacement for bona fide consulting from a Drupal professional that there are plenty of Drupal experts and professionals who attend our meetups and sometimes they need help, too!

Presentation: Building an AJAX-driven Application with Drupal

New LA Drupal member Chris Paul (@cpjeeves) will present on a complex web application he built that has a desktop feel. Using AJAX, CKEditor and a host of other modules, his web application has an application-like experiance for the user and a nearly seamless content creation process.

By leveraging the power of ctools command style AJAX, AJAX submit handlers, and a few custom upgrades, users are able to create content, view that content in relative lists, and then even edit and refresh those lists to suit their needs. This kind of in-place create-and-edit system promotes a more intuitive creation process that doesn't break your train of thought while you rapidly input and modify your content.

Drupal has always been capable of pushing the envelope. Join us as Chris shows us how he did it for this client project.

Presentation: State of the Drop - Live from DrupalCon Denver!

DrupalCon is a Mecca for thousands of companies and individuals that call the Drupal community home and, naturally, many Drupaleros from Los Angeles will be attending DrupalCon Denver this month.

At our meetup this Tuesday, we'll be discussing Dries Buytaert's keynote from the conference earlier in the day, what's coming in Drupal 8, and be joined by special guests via video conference!

Lightning talks

Given enough time, we'll also have a few lightning talks. These are brief, 5-10 minute presentations, demos or discussions that anyone can give. It can be about a new website you're working on, a Drupal module you've written or come across recently that you'd like to talk about, or just a burning question you'd like to ask of the crowd.

Drupal After Dark

Even if you can't make it to the meetup, you're welcome to join us for a Drupal After Dark. After we wrap up the meeting and clean up, a group of us will go to a nearby restaurant or pub. One time we had beers and a bonfire and were serenaded by Skrillex. We've also gone to a variety of other locations, including Barbara's at The Brewery (at 620 Moulton Ave., just a 5 minute walk away) and Carnitas Michoacan (on 1901 N. Broadway, just a 5 minute drive away).

Location and directions

   Droplabs
   651 Clover St.
   Los Angeles, CA 90031

Droplabs is in the Mission Junction neighborhood of Los Angeles at Big Art Labs, just 1 mile down Main St. from Philippes (the first-ever venue for LA Drupal meetups!) and Union Station. We're one block west of The Brewery, the largest live-and-work artists' colony in the world.

Free parking in our large parking lot is first-come, first-served. After parking in the lot, follow the yellow signs that point to Droplabs. (If our lot is full, you can park for free on Clover St.)

Droplabs is a brief walk from the Main St. / Lamar St. stop on the the Metro Local 76 bus line. To carpool or catch the Droplabs shuttle from Union Station, post below in the comments.

What to bring

Just bring your laptop, your business cards or whatever else you need. You're also welcome to bring some light food, sodas or beers to share with others at the meetup.

Please note that our guest wireless network is limited to 1Mb per client, so bring your MiFi router or a phone you can tether with if for some reason you need a lot of bandwidth. Access to our high-speed network is included with a Droplabs membership.

About Droplabs

Droplabs is a collaborative Drupal event and coworking space in Downtown Los Angeles. Created in 2011 by LA Drupal members for the LA Drupal community, we are focused on serving the greater LA Drupal community, enriching the Drupal skills and lives of its members, and bringing joy to our Drupal practice. Our founders represent several local area businesses that have deep roots in the Drupal and open source communities.

We've been open to the public since May, 2011, and the use of our equipment and facilities, including conference room, tables and chairs, is free until our official launch. See http://groups.drupal.org/node/145934 for more details about our open beta period and http://droplabs.net/prices for our list of free amenities and member perks, including our high-speed WiFi, an espresso machine, printer and scanner services, and more.

Droplabs is the host of the monthly Downtown LA Drupal meetups, LA Drupal's weekly Pro Drupal 7 Development book study group and special events including the Varnish 3 Release Party, a Leave GoDaddy Day workshop and LA Drupal's job fairs. To learn more about Droplabs, follow @Droplabs on Twitter, sign up at Meetup.com/Droplabs or like DroplabsLA on Facebook!

About LA Drupal

LA Drupal is one of the world's largest regional Drupal user groups and is Southern California's largest hub for all things Drupal. In addition to scheduling up to 6 regular meetups a month and occasional trainings and social gatherings, LA Drupal members produce special events, code sprints, and the annual DrupalCamp LA and Drupal Design Camp LA conferences.

Attending LA Drupal events is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend meetings and special events regularly. Whether it's to find solutions to problems you've been having, sharing something you've learned or just meeting interesting like-minded people, the LA Drupal events are an essential resource for Drupal professionals and hobbyists alike.

If you aren't already part of LA Drupal, it's easy to become a member and find events in our community calendar at http://groups.drupal.org/la/events