DrupalSouth - The Kiwi Drupal Event, 1-2 November 2008

Feedback from the Weekend!

mdance — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:16:50 +0000

Great weekend everyone!

Where can I possibly begin summing up the weekend, the conference, and my first impressions of Christchurch!

Really enjoyed the event! Venue worked out perfectly with some great variety of beer which is always nice haha

Highlights from the event would have to be:

1. Dave Lane trying to explain to the waitress downstairs what Drupal is, and watching her glaze over and look at me in the eyes, as if to say "Oh shit! What have I just got myself into, when is this guy going to stop"
2. Vintage Aviator Site overview with dman hearing how he was showcasing revision 7 of the theme to Peter Jackson with his custom 50 000 inch screen, to realize that things for some reason didn't render properly, and that he didnt want any whitespace in the site
3. Populating the google map with 50 000 nodes to test scalability and seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in the resulting map

Most memorable conversation:

Bevan: "Gold do you know any transvestites?"
Gold: "Yes I know two, would you like an introduction?"
Bevan: "Yes"

If I end up living in Christchurch we will definitely have to setup more meet ups! The majority of my drupal development has been on my own as my city did not have much of a drupal scene, so its great to be in a place with an active community locally! It would be great to be able to collaborate and bounce ideas back and forth on a regular basis!

The presentations I saw were great! I got some great insight through the discussion and walk thru demo's afterwards so great job on that... Interesting to see the scalability tests with gmap, and full screen technique details! I can just imagine Bevan burning the midnight oil trying to work out problems with those features haha

One of the most memorable was sitting down with dman with the Vintage Aviator site! Absolutely incredible the attention to detail and theming in the site, lots of little details you wouldn't realize until he explained them to me. Combined with his stories and pictures from working with Peter Jackson to build the site was hilarious. I really wish he would have done a session for the site would have made for a very captivating talk! Certainly raised the bar for my own development.

Food was good, especially the pizza! quite impressed with the menu, its always a bit hit or miss with bar food, so I didn't know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised!

I certainly don't have any complaints, but if I had to come up with suggestions for next time:

Don't schedule the seminar the day after halloween :P...

Friday night I was dressed as one of the 3 amigos, and later as the burger king, and decided to go down to the local base backpackers bar "Sinners and Saints" for A DRINK... As was obvious from the fact that I missed the majority of the talks saturday, and strolled into the conference at 1 pm with a red bull... one turned to many, and before I knew it I was doing "foxy brown" shots with a 6 ft 6 maori dressed like Beyonce Knowles

Long story short.. Next time please do not schedule the conference after any kind of international day of gathering or celebration where drinking may be involved, as I obviously have no self control.

Having come late on the first day, I might have just missed it, but talking to people it sounds like it never happened, and that was introductions. Go around individually, or have people split into groups or "tracks" based on background, skill level, or what they are trying to get out of the weekend. This would provide a sort of consensus of what the skill level of the room is, and goals for the weekend. Would have been great to know who exactly to go to for themers, etc. Perhaps on the nametags for next time we could have developer, themer, sales, advocate, whatever...

Would be good to organize and schedule breakout sessions at the start to have some time to get ideas together, and know exactly when, where, and who was interested.

I have also seen a sponsor/business card table at other conferences where people can place business cards, and advertising materials. I had a few people hand me business cards, but it would have been easier to go to a table and pick up everyones cards.

I think some great presentation topics/sessions for next time would be best practices for deployment, version control, repository, and development techniques. I found people doing things in a variety of different ways, it would be informative to find out who, what, and why people chose to do things the way they do, and use certain software...

For example:

* Do people use single or multiple codebases for projects?
* Download vs CVS checkouts for modules?
* Development Environment highlights, Textmate, Komodo, Eclipse, etc. personal pro's and cons each person had related to Drupal, to figure out if I should switch, etc.

Sessions like the Civicrm demo, and Bevans Hub were excellent, and would love to see more sessions highlighting integrations, innovative drupal uses, or modules. I think they are great for getting people to think outside the box, raising the energy and enthusiasm, and providing an insight into functionality people might not have known about, or time to learn about. Things like facebook integration, SMS, Asterisk, Panels, mailhandler, Organic Groups, Piclens, etc.

I was also asked, or heard questions along the lines of what is panels, give me your definition of a node/cck, views, etc. so I think it would be helpful to showcase some of the harder to get modules or concepts in drupal.

Great job on the photos Stein!

For anyone still lingering around! I am still touring around Christchurch if you would like to meet up get in touch! michael.dance --> gmail.com

DrupalSouth is On

Bevan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:22:12 +0000

DrupalSouth is on! Don't forget to tag your blog posts, twitter tweets, photos, videos etc with "DrupalSouth".

Room For More!

Bevan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:03:47 +0000

There are still a few places available at DrupalSouth. If you, or anyone you know wants to come, there is still time -- register now!

$50 NZD registration fee includes lunch both days and drinks on Saturday afternoon.

DrupalSouth is Almost Upon Us!

Bevan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:45:15 +0000

DrupalSouth is almost upon us. Are you ready? DrupalSouth is THIS WEEKEND. You are receiving this email because you have registered.

Saturday dinner

We have made a booking for dinner on Saturday night at Mitchelli's, an Italian restaurant across the lane from the venue, the Twisted Hop. If you would like to join us, you MUST sign up at http://drupalsouth.net.nz/dinner -- otherwise Mitchelli's may not be able to cater for unexpected extras. Mitchelli's have arranged a set menu for the group at $30 per person, which is NOT part of the registration fee.

Get the most out of your time

In order to get the most out of DrupalSouth, start thinking about what you would like to get out of it. Don't be afraid to ask around for whatever information, skills or knowledge you are looking for. Checkout the list of attendees and speakers and see who would like to meet.

Share and share alike

Be prepared to share. If you have something you think others might like to see, think about running an informal demonstration, tutorial or BoF in the afternoon unconference. Take or prepare any materials you think might be useful.

Friday drinks

If you are already in Christchurch on Friday afternoon or evening, the Effusion Group has a regular booking for table DOWNSTAIRS at the Twisted Hop (DrupalSouth will be hosted upstairs). Folk usually start arriving from 5pm. Look for the table with the most laptops, iPhones and PDAs, or ask for Effusion's table at the bar. Let us know if you plan on joining us so that we can ask for larger or extra table if necessary.

Sunday socializing

It is likely that the Drupal Kiwis will converge for one final round of drinks and meal on Sunday afternoon/evening. Keep your eyes and ears peeled.

Last but not least
See you Saturday!

From the DrupalSouth organisers; Jonathan, Gold, Bevan
And the Sponsors; Catalyst IT, Signify, CivicActions, Egressive, Encode, Evolved Development

Buon appetito at Mitchelli's (updated)

jonathan.hunt — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:12:41 +0000

We've arranged a set-menu dinner for up to 30 people at Mitchelli's, across the alley from the Twisted Hop. Join us for excellent Italian cuisine. We need a minimum of 20 people for it to happen, and you need to sign up by Friday 24. You'll need to pay Mitchelli's on the night.

Update Tuesday 28: We're a fraction short of the numbers we need for this to go ahead; if you haven't already done so, please sign up by end of Wednesday 29, thanks.

DrupalSouth Theme

Bevan — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:08:43 +0000

UPDATE: Buddhika Amila Sampath created the Light Fantastic theme, not Joshua Brauer. Joshua is the maintainer.

The theme used on DrupalSouth.net.nz is called Light Fantastic, which was created as part of the Google Summer of Code 2007 by Buddhika Amila Sampath and is maintained by Joshua Brauer.

We found it via Themebot, which is a great Theme gallery for Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla and other themes.

Light Fantastic has only been released for Drupal 6, so I (Bevan) backported it for Drupal 5 with four simple changes;

Implement the backport of preprocess theme hooks for drupal 5 in template.php.
Add function lightfantastic_regions() in template.php with regions defined in lightfantastic.info.
Remove lightfantastic.info.
Fix the parameters of lightfantastic_comment_wrapper().

We fixed a few other things which appear to be not-criticial bugs in the drupal 6 version (unverified.) We submitted a backport and bugfixing patch to the Light Fantastic issue queue on Drupal.org.

Social Networking Tags; Flickr, Del.icio.us, Twitter, Et cetera

Bevan — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:24:23 +0000

If you're tweeting or blogging about DrupalSouth, adding links to Del.icio.us, photos to Flickr, videos to YouTube or any other content or media to other social media/networking services, make sure you include the tag or keyword "DrupalSouth" -- One word.

This help us find each other's posts, tweets, links, photos and videos and pull them into one DrupalSouth lifestream-kind-of-thing.

Thanks!

Photo in the site header

Bevan — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:48:57 +0000

If you were wondering about the awesome panoramic photo from the Port Hills over Christchurch and the Canterbury plains to the Southern Alps at sunset in the header, I originally found it on google maps, which shows highlighted geocoded photos from Panoramio, just like Google Earth. We found the photographer's website through Panoramio and emailed him a request for permission to use his photo.

It turns out that Mark McGill uses open source software, The Gimp, to edit and manipulate his photos! Mark gave us permission.

Thanks Mark! And when you get around to giving your website a facelift, you know which CMS to use!

DrupalSouth on Twitter and RSS

Bevan — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:41:28 +0000

Follow DrupalSouth on twitter to get all the latest news in your twitter timeline. You can also get DrupalSouth news by RSS feeds, or email (thanks to feedburner). There are three RSS feeds, for news, discussion and comments.

Also, don't forget to mention about DrupalSouth in your tweets; They'll show up in the new "Who's tweeting about DrupalSouth" block ~~we'll be adding shortly~~ we've just added!

Discount Flights on Grabaseat and Carpooling

Bevan — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:23:49 +0000

Grabaseat has cheap airfares today from Christchurch to Rotorua on Monday 3 November, for $69. Move fast; there are only 5 left at time of writing.

Grabaseat frequently has discounted fares on domestic flights to and from Christchurch. They are restricted both in the number of seats available and the dates fares are available for; however now is the time to be checking grabaseat daily for flights to and from DrupalSouth; they seem to publish discount fares for flights about 4-8 weeks ahead.

Also, if you're looking for overland travel, ask in the discussion forum for carpooling or a rideshare.

There are also several websites that help match ridesharers and riders up:

Press Release: DrupalSouth: The New Zealand Drupal Event for 2008

Bevan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:19:51 +0000

DrupalSouth is the New Zealand Drupal Event for 2008. DrupalSouth will bring NZ's Drupal community together for the first nation-wide Drupal event and the first ever Drupal camp in NZ.

DrupalSouth runs for two days in the first weekend of November, starting at 9:30 am on Saturday 1st November and concluding at 6 pm on Sunday 2nd November 2008. The morning of each day will be filled with presentations, while the afternoons will be open to less formal talks, discussions, demonstrations, tutorials and hacking.

Many of the speakers are well-established Drupal and Open-Source community contributers like Dan "dman", Brenda "Shiny" Wallace, Bevan Rudge and Marek Kuziel (Open ID, Python, Postgres). Others have won NZOSS awards for their contributions to Open Source, like Joshua Campbell and Dave Lane.

The awesome line up of presenters will present on a variety of topics, such as How Drupal stacks up in enterprise, OpenID and Drupal and Google Maps in Drupal, to name just a few.

DrupalSouth presents a great opportunity for attendees to learn new and interesting Drupal skills, techniques and resources, network face to face with industry leaders and Drupal professionals, companies and users, engage new clients, employees and contractors, discover how others are using Drupal or promote their own company or services.

DrupalSouth is great value at $50 NZD and includes catered lunch on both Sunday and Saturday and drinks on Saturday night. You can register for DrupalSouth at DrupalSouth.net.nz/conference.

DrupalSouth is sponsored by these great Drupal companies from New Zealand and abroad Signify, Catalyst IT, CivicActions, Egressive, Encode and Evolved Development.

DrupalSouth is organised by a collection of individual Drupal professionals in the Christchurch Drupal community, primarily; Jonathan Hunt of Hunt Design and Egressive, Gold of Evolved Development and Bevan Rudge of CivicActions.

Find out more about DrupalSouth at DrupalSouth.net.nz.

Welcome to DrupalSouth.net.nz

Bevan — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:49:05 +0000

DrupalSouth sponsors and organisers are excited to (finally) present to you DrupalSouth.net.nz! We have been working hard over the last week getting our hands greasy, pulling in views, nodes, content types, CCK fields and other nuts and bolts.

If you're coming to DrupalSouth, register now! There is only room for 50 attendees at DrupalSouth, and places are already filling up fast.

DrupalSouth registration costs only $50 NZD, which is great value! Just look at what you get;

Quality presentations and talks by the best of NZ's Drupal community
Learn new and interesting Drupal skills and resources
Face to face networking opportunities with industry professionals and companies
The chance to engage new clients, employees and contractors
Promote your company or services in the NZ Drupal community
Discover how others are using Drupal
Catered lunch on both Sunday and Saturday
Drinks on Saturday night
A great social event too!

Any profit generated from the event will be either donated to the Drupal Association, or held in trust for the next major NZ Drupal Event. No one, including the organisers, is generating income from this event.

Don't forget to checkout our sponsors; It's thanks to these high profile Drupal companies that DrupalSouth has been made possible:

Many thanks also goes to the wider Drupal community who have contributed modules and code to Drupal core, all of which has made it possible to get this website out in just 7 days; Isn't open source just great!

We look forward to meeting you at DrupalSouth.

Site Sprint

Gold — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:11:38 +0000

Development on the site is starting in ernest today. We're mostly managing the development behind the scenes through a mail list.

We're also working on site layout and content types.

There should be more to see tomorrow. We may even have actual content...