While we're fresh off the heels of Florida DrupalCamp 2011, it's a good time to take a look back and see how we did as well as try to figure out how to make next year's camp even better. Using results from our post-camp survey as well as feedback from my fellow organizers, here's a closer look at some specifics.
A few weeks ago I was invited to speak to a technology committee of a large organization that was considering standardizing their various web sites on Drupal. They requested a presentation and then some Q&A time - unfortunately, I didn't have any slides ready to go, so I had to scramble a bit. I decided to spend a couple of days (and evenings) creating a generic slidedeck that I could use for other potential clients as well as share with the rest of the Drupal community.
As the planning for Florida DrupalCamp 2011 winds down (the event takes place February 12-13, 2011), I thought it would be a good time to share the incredible success we've had with forming partnerships and finding sponsors to (hopefully) pull off an amazing Drupal event.
Tickets for Florida DrupalCamp 2011, February 12-13 at Rollins College in Winter Park, are now available at the official site: FLDrupalCamp.org . This year's event promises to the be the largest Drupal event Florida has ever seen with more of what’s been growing crowds for the past few years - now at a bigger, more comfortable venue. Tickets are just $10 and include a t-shirt, and plenty of food and drinks.
The Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership Center at Rollins College's Crummer Graduate School of Business is having Ryan Price from DrupalEasy as a guest speaker at their Winter Park Campus. Here are details about the event. Leaders Series: Free Software Tools for Nonprofits Effective technology is absolutely essential to efficient and successful nonprofits. Technology, software, and IT support are integral to back office functions and engaging clients, donors, volunteers and the community. Take advantage of technology that can reduce your operating cost and increase engagement and outreach with clients and donors. Take advantage of and learn tips about: Google and Google Docs Facebook, Twitter, YouTube RSS Feeds, Podcast Feeds, Blogs Drupal Content Management Popular Open Source Projects Date: Friday, January 14, 2011
Packt Publishing keeps churning out Drupal-related books - by my count they've published nine this year alone! One of their latest efforts is Drupal 7 by David Mercer . It's a basic "intro to Drupal" book based on Drupal 7 geared towards readers new to the platform. There are a number of topics in the book that are a bit unique, starting with a nice discussion about the GPL and the rules governing its basic usage. It's not something that is seen very often in Drupal books, and it a great introduction to open-source licensing. There is also a short section on Open ID that provides the basics without trying to go into too much detail.
The Right Service at the Right Time, the latest DrupalEasy launch, harnesses the function of several contributed and a few custom modules to create a one-stop online shop that connects struggling Orange County, Florida residents directly to the government and social services they need. The Orlando-based Orange County Library System (OCLS) which contracted with DrupalEasy to develop the site, is going all out to promote the program, and is getting great feedback already. With the launch of The Right Service at the Right Time, people across Central Florida can take advantage of the full range of resources available to them, all from their home computers or those provided in libraries throughout the county. Before the new site, those without Internet access would have to travel from one government office to the next to access assistance from the various agencies.
It's pretty rare for me to read a Drupal book that I can't recommend to anyone. So rare, in fact, that this will be the first time I've done so while reviewing books for DrupalEasy. Before I go into details, I want to be clear about something: writing a technical book isn't easy. While I haven't written one myself (unless my Master's thesis counts), I have written my share of technical articles and I'm never surprised at how much longer it takes me than I originally imagined. This is mainly due to the difficulty to make my thoughts clear to a large group of people. Combine that with a topic as difficult as the Panels module and you've got quite a task ahead of you. While the idea behind panels is easy to grok, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details . Earl Miles ( merlinofchaos on drupal.org , and one of the very few to score "11" on CertifiedToRock.com ), the creator of panels, has stuffed every conceivable option and an unbelieveable amount of flexibility into the Panels suite of modules. As with many things in the Drupal community, this makes for something very powerful, but also something very time-consuming to fully understand and use - both in theory and practice.
Florida DrupalCamp 2011 will be held February 12-13 in Winter Park, Florida on the campus of Rollins College. Sponsorship opportunities are now available to interested parties. The first day of the camp will be a 4-track learning experience and the 2nd day will feature a site building sprint where we build a complete Drupal site for a Florida non-profit organization. At last year's camp we sold out several weeks before the event at 175 people. For 2011, we've found a new venue and will be able to support over 300 participants.
DrupalEasy is one of the sponsors of this Saturday's (August 28, 2010) first-ever Drupal Camp Connecticut , to be held at Yale University in New Haven. The camp sold out with about 175 attendees a few days ago, so if you don't have a ticket, you might be out-of-luck (you can always try begging). Mike Anello from DrupalEasy (born and raised in Connecticut!) will be presenting three sessions: Introduction to Theming with Fusion and Skinr Site Maintenance Basics Image Workflows
Much has been written in the past couple weeks about the recent DrupalCon SF , the vast majority of it overwhelmingly positive. By most accounts, it was a successful event, with the overwhelming majority of attendees leaving satisfied. Granted, the accounts I read come from sites whose posts are aggregated via Drupal Planet - an admitedly very pro-Drupal crowd.
At first glance at the title of this book, you might be tempted to think that it is not too much more than a reference guide to the complex Ubercart module. Surprisingly, you're only half right. While the authors, George Papadongonas and Yiannis Doxaras, do a great job of covering almost all aspects of the modules that ship with Ubercart, they also go way beyond that.
Ryan Price and Mike Anello from DrupalEasy will be at DrupalCon San Francisco this April with a (hopefully) full agenda. Workshop: Intro to Theme Development DrupalEasy is proud to announce that we've been selected to present one of the official pre-conference workshops for DrupalCon SF on Sunday, April 18. We'll be teaching our beginner-level Intro to Theme Development workshop. In this course you'll learn the anatomy of a theme, basic XHTML/CSS/PHP, and basic template modifications. By the end of the day, you should be able to take a static HTML theme and turn it into a Drupal theme. The cost for the workshop is $350 and you can sign up on the official DrupalCon SF site .
DrupalEasy is proud to announce that we're a Gold sponsor for Florida DrupalCamp 2010 to be held February 20-21, 2010 at the offices of Mind Comet in
Several months ago Ryan Price interviewed Emma Jane Hogbin , one of the authors of Front End Drupal , for DrupalEasy Podcast 10. At the time I hadn't received a review copy of the book, so I made a mental note to check out the book based on the interview. Six months later, the folks at Prentice Hall were kind enough to send me a copy, and I was not disappointed. Emma Jane Hogbin and Konstantin Kafer have written Front End Drupal in a way that makes it a valuble resource for virtually anyone who uses Drupal in one form or another. The strength of the book lies in the fact that it explains core concepts and best practices of how sites are built in Drupal, with an empahsis on theming. Rather than writing a full-on review for a book that has already been reviewed more than a couple of times elsewhere, I thought that I'd provide a list of 10 things that this book covers really well.