Downtown Drupal Meetup in Downtown Los Angeles at Sensis Agency on January 7, 2014

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christefano's picture
Start: 
2014-01-07 19:00 - 21:00 America/Los_Angeles
Event type: 
User group meeting

The 1st Tuesday of the month is coming up and it's time for the next Downtown Drupal meetup! We're meeting at Sensis Agency in Downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 7, 2014 from 7-9pm.

There will also be Drupal Happy Hour earlier in the evening at 5:30pm. See our agenda for more information.

At this meetup, we're having our usual news and announcements, as well as raffle prizes, community Q&A, lightning talks (which are short, bite-sized presentations) and featured presentations. Is there a presentation topic that you're interested in? Post a comment to either request or offer a presentation, or contact any of the organizers listed above.

Drupal Happy Hour

Join us between 5:30-7pm for happy hour at Takami Sushi & Robata Restaurant (one floor above Sensis). Takami serves the highest quality Sushi, Robata and Japanese-influenced entrees and boasts unparalleled views of the LA area with outdoor patio dining. Happy hour at Takami is between 4-7pm and their phone number is 213-236-9600.

Thank You to Our Sponsors!

Sensis Agency Our venue sponsor is Sensis Agency (@SensisAgency), a cross-cultural advertising agency with digital at its core. We got our start building websites and have expanded into a full service advertising agency, helping our clients take advantage of the fundamental changes taking place in the marketing world.

Exaltation of Larks - Expert Drupal strategy, consulting, development and training Our parking sponsor for this event is Exaltation of Larks, a Drupal design and engineering firm with a team of Drupal experts in Los Angeles. Visit us at www.larks.la and follow us at @LarksLA to learn more about our Drupal services and upcoming trainings.

Droplabs Los Angeles Our organizing sponsor is Droplabs (@Droplabs), a Drupal-friendly coworking space, classroom and makerspace in Downtown Los Angeles. We're the leading low-cost coworking space in the Greater Los Angeles Area and have shared and private workspaces that are uniquely designed for entrepreneurs, freelancers and remote workers.

Drupal After Dark

Even if you can't make it to happy hour or the meetup, you're welcome to join us afterward 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. Stay tuned to the comments below for suggestions for a Drupal After Dark location.

Agenda

We'll start our meeting promptly at 7pm, so if you are at happy hour please be sure to request your check along with your food order.

Our meetups follow a basic format and starts 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 9:00pm.

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.

   5:30pm
   Drupal Happy Hour

   6:55pm
   Projector and Tables / Chairs Setup

   7:00pm
   Introductions
   News & Upcoming Events, including:
     Mobile Device Lab on January 9, 2014;
     High Performance Drupal Meetup on January 21, 2014;
     Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp, March 7-9, 2014;
   Raffle Prizes!

   7:30pm
   Lightning Talks
   Featured Presentations

   9:00pm
   Wrap-up, Clean-up and Close-up
   Drupal After Dark and More Networking

Featured Presentations

At this meetup, we're having our usual news and announcements, raffle prizes, lightning talks (which are short, bite-sized presentations) and featured presentations.

Stay tuned to our agenda for more information.

Raffle prizes! Collect them all! Must be present to win!

If you have any items you'd like to donate to the raffle, please contact any of the organizers at the meetup. Our raffle prizes at meetups often include discount codes, magazines, DVDs, books, and free seats to professional Drupal trainings. We are always grateful to our sponsors for their continued support. Thank you!

Location and Directions

   Sensis Agency
   811 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 2050
   Los Angeles, CA 90017

Carpooling

To carpool or catch the Droplabs shuttle from Union Station, post below in the comments.

Public Transportation

Our venue is 100 feet away from the 7th Street / Metro Red Line Center Station. For information about bus routes, see http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/bus_overview/images/802.pdf  

   7th Street / Metro Center Station
   660 South Figueroa St.
   Los Angeles, CA 90017
   213-922-6000
   http://www.metro.net

Parking

Anyone who carpools and parks at United Valet Parking, Inc. (757 South Flower St.) will be reimbursed for their $6 parking courtesy of our parking sponsor, Exaltation of Larks.

  • United Valet Parking, Inc. (757 South Flower St.; 213-622-0137)

This parking location is within a 3 minute walk of our venue and has a $6 evening rate if arriving after 4pm.

Street parking is $5 per hour from 8am-8pm Pacific. There are ample parking lots and garages in the immediate area. For additional parking locations, see http://en.parkopedia.com/parking/815_west_7th_street_los_angeles_ca_90017/

About Greater Los Angeles Drupal

With several weekly and monthly events, the Greater Los Angeles Area is one the most active areas for Drupal in the world.

Formerly named "Downtown Los Angeles Drupal", we've been meeting regularly in and around Downtown Los Angeles, California, since early 2010, and now organize a large number of events in the area. Our signature events include the Drupal Job Fairs and the Downtown Drupal, Frontend Drupal and High Performance Drupal meetups.

Our members and organizers have produced hundreds of Drupal events, including job fairs, meetups and workshops, conferences, paid trainings, coworking days, study group sessions, movie outings, FREE tutoring sessions from Drupal professionals, and website barnraisings to benefit non-profits and members of our community.

Attending Drupal events in the Greater Los Angeles Area is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend as many meetings and special events as you'd like. 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 Greater Los Angeles Drupal events are an essential resource for Drupal professionals and hobbyists alike.

If you aren't already a member of Greater Los Angeles Drupal, it's easy to join our community. Our community calendar is on our "Events" tab on our home page at http://groups.drupal.org/node/219129  

We proudly participate in the California Drupal Travelers Program, which aims to connect businesses and community members who are visiting the area with our local community and events. Inquire within by contacting any of the Greater Los Angeles Drupal organizers, or by joining the global Drupal Hospitality Network.

Sign Up!

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Comments

Would anyone like to offer a

christefano's picture

Would anyone like to offer a presentation on anything? We have a "suggested topics" wiki at https://groups.drupal.org/node/367243 if anyone is interested at taking a crack at it.

I can do a lightning talk on Cron key, a module I recently contributed to Drupal.org. It's super simple (so it's great for a lightning talk) and I can go into what it does, how it works and how to jump into writing custom modules without fear.

"Drupal internals" focusing on cron

christefano's picture

Come to think of it, if anyone is interested I can do a longer "Drupal internals" talk and cover the entire Drupal cron system, how to tune cron settings appropriately per site, which contributed modules exist for more flexibility, etc.

Lightning talk

oseldman's picture

I can do a quick lightning talk about some current ways for beginners to get involved in D8. Should only take a few mins.

I don't think I'll be able to make it down there in person tonight, so it will have to be via the webex, if that's ok.

Burbank study group

fejn's picture

Hi Oliver (& anyone else interested),

You might be interested in participating in the Burbank/Glendale study group led mainly by Rain Breaw and Joe Chellman; it's main goal is to get people in the group to build their own D8 sites. Next meeting is ~Mon (1/20/14). Mons & I are currently participating in it;probably anyone can join (I'd give Rain a shout instead of dropping in completely out of the blue. This is not a 'formal class' like the Module Bootcamp, so come on over.

Jeff

Three more ideas for talks

dankegel's picture

I'd listen to that.

My current questions are
"Which page cache should I use - drupal's own, Varnish, or nginx's built-in one?"

"how can I use block and page caching in a site that is mostly the same for all users,
but has some blocks that differ from user to user?"
The answer seems to be to use things like Block Cache Alter and Authcache.

"how does one turn on APC"
(that seems dead easy, but I haven't walked through it myself yet)

Any of those things I'd love to either hear a short talk about, or give
one myself once I come up to speed on them.

Turning on APC is dead easy,

christefano's picture

Turning on APC is dead easy, but be sure to configure it correctly and set a apc.shm_size larger than the default setting or your Drupal site may be worse off than before APC was enabled.

I can put together a diagram of the major levels of Drupal caching for Drupal (browser caching, CDNs, reverse proxies, PHP caching, memcache, etc.). Would anyone else like to hear about that?

Hi. Do you know anything

judikins's picture

Hi. Do you know anything about Media Browser Plus?

I don't have any personal

christefano's picture

I don't have any personal experience with it. If there's time at the meetup, we can do a walkthrough and take a look.

What questions do you have about Media Browser Plus? It's possible another member or attendee of the meetup can help you.

Oh yes, good suggestion. When

judikins's picture

Oh yes, good suggestion. When using Media Browser Plus there is a widget where you can indicate a custom location for media files. We cannot hide this widget (Media Selector) from users. It seems to be something specifically in this module because I can hide other widgets throughout my site.

Sure, that looks like a fun

christefano's picture

Sure, that looks like a fun widget to customize. Would you like to come between 6-7pm during happy hour? We'll be able to look into it a bit deeper and then hopefully have a solution to present to the larger group when the meetup begins at 7pm.

Great. As long as traffic

judikins's picture

Great. As long as traffic cooperates I should be there.

Great, I hope to see you

christefano's picture

Great, I hope to see you there. I'll be sure to bring my laptop to the happy hour.

If you carpool and park at United Valet (at 757 South Flower St.), our parking sponsor will reimburse you for your parking.

Speaking of carpooling…

christefano's picture

If anyone wants to carpool from Droplabs, please be sure to be ready to leave no later than 5:30pm.

Will there be a WebEx for

nodiac's picture

Will there be a WebEx for tonight's meeting?

Kraken Digital Media & Technology
Founder
http://www.larks.la  
Droplabs
Robot Coordinator
http://droplabs.net  
Greater Los Angeles Drupal
Organizer, Dragonslayer
http://drupal.la &n

Sure, use the following URL

christefano's picture

Sure, use the following URL or meeting ID to join the meeting:

   URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/detail?uuid=MCVM17V5D9UM5YF0C0N75SU9BQ-2J4J
   Short URL: http://ex.tl/ZQo
   Meeting ID: 193 483 719

To test that WebEx is working for you prior to this meetup, check out this "Join a Test Meeting" page:

   http://www.webex.com/test-meeting.html