DrupalSouth Discussion

Wellington Drupal Meet-up

fiasco — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:39:33 +1200

Its been some time since DrupalSouth earlier this year and about time there was another Drupal event in Wellington. So, we're gonna have a Drupal Meet-up on July 8th at Catalyst IT on Willis St from 6pm. We're aiming to have about 3 speakers followed by a general discussion. If you're interested in coming along, please RSVP on facebook

so we can get an idea of numbers.

DrupalSouth Wellington A Success

Bevan — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:47:59 +1200

DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 was a booming success! And that would be an understatement. 100 Drupallers from NZ, Australia, North America and Europe came together for 2 Wellington-wet days in a brewery and couldn't stop talking about Drupal!

Here is DrupalSouth by the numbers;

1: Code sprints
2: Tracks (simultaneous sessions)
2: Duration in days
2: Lunches provided
2: Organisers
2: Attendees from parliament (Green party)
3: Keynote speakers from North America (Liz Henry, Emma Jane Hogbin & Angela Byron)
3: Platinum Sponsors
3: DrupliBeanBags
4: Attendees from the IRD
5: Gold sponsors
5: Percent of attendees from Hawkes bay
5: Months to organise
6: Companies involved in the wireless internet
6: Wireless access points
7: Value of each bar token in NZ dollars
8: Silver Sponsors
9: Varieties of beer brewed on-site
10: Start time on Saturday
11: Thousands of dollars turned over in event production
15: Attendees from NZ government agencies (IRD, Greens, NZ Police, various ministries, etc.)
16: Sponsors
16: Percent of attendees from Australia
16: Percent of attendees from Christchurch
18: Age of youngest attendee
20: MBs of synchronous bandwidth
21: Percent of attendees from Auckland
26: Speakers
28: Attendees who also attended LCA the week before
29: Sessions
30: Percent of female attendees
32: Percent of attendees from Wellington region
36: A3 sheets of printed sponsor logos
60: Registration cost
64: Cost of food and snacks per attendee
100: Registrations sold
220: Bar tokens printed

Some of my personal highlights were;

Spontaneous code sprint on Saturday night
Drupli-bean bags
Natasha's Dr Seussian poem about Drupal Permissions
Getting the group photo (unfortunately a lot of attendees were not present at that time)
Drupli-Thank-You-Card signed by attendees
Fast and Rockin' internet
Dave Spark's session on managing clients
Webchick's energy
Satisfaction of pulling off such a magnificent event
Energy among others to organise the next DrupalSouth (See DrupalSouth 2011 and Beyond)

Thank you to;

The organisers for all their hard work and their families for their patience and support.
DrupalSouth's sponsors
Everyone who helped make the internet great
Katie Graham at Delicious Mint and Josh Campbell at Zype and Egressive for their awesome design contributions
Packt, Pearson, O'Reilly and others for great book give-aways and other swag
Speakers for such great presentations
Attendees for just rocking the house!
Mac's Brewery and Restaurant for being so accommodating and keeping the drinks flowing

Read other's post-DrupalSouth write-ups at;

DrupalSouth 2011 and Beyond

Quartz — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:01:37 +1300

Hi there Drupalers and Drupalistas,

It's only been one month since DrupalSouth 2010! Can you believe it?

Already there are ideas floating around about where, what and how the next DrupalSouth will take shape - just look in our forums!

We'd like to consolidate and standardise what the community is thinking.

Help us to help you by taking our 3 minute, 1-page survey.

http://bit.ly/aXFnzB

Please spread the word.

Thanks

Volunteering Design Services for the next one

Argent of Change — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:24:10 +1300

It's too early I know, but I'd like to put my hand up and say that I'd like to help out with designing whatever's needed for the next Drupal South conference. I'm not a developer and I don't know PHP, but damn if I don't know how to make something pretty!

Without even changing the website's theme, there's a lot I can do just with graphics and CSS. I also do graphic design and print production so if you need someone who can make sure that the look and feel is consistent throughout, that would be me.

Of course I could just be hoisting my own petard, but you can check if I'm up to the task by visiting my website.

Cheers!
Lee-Yan Marquez

How Was DrupalSouth's Internet so Awesome!?

Bevan — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:21:56 +1300

DrupalSouth — a 100-person technical conference — had awesome internet. This is how we did it.

DrupalSouth might well be the first Drupal conference with internet that didn't suck. For the first time, I didn't hear anyone complain about connectivity or speed. Everyone had internet access! If I didn't hear about any issues you were having, or if you had any complaints or problems, please let us know in the comments.

Egressive pulled most of this together. Egressive provides both Linux and Drupal services and know a lot of people in the industry. In particular, Rob Fraser's technical networking know-how and contacts at Effusion, IOPEN, Unleash and elsewhere are what made this possible.

Thanks Rob, and thanks Egressive!
IOPEN and members of the Effusion group built a robust scalable wireless network for Kiwi PyCon 2009, just a few months earlier. DrupalSouth's wireless requirements were very similar to PyCon's. DrupalSouth was a little smaller in number of attendees. One difference was that the network data analysis and the Wireless Weather Report (see below) generating were not done on-site but 400 km away in Christchurch using a small real-time data stream from DrupalSouth. Also, Brian Chatterton of IOPEN made a few minor configuration enhancements, renamed the the networks in honour of Drupal's founder and changed the passwords.

Brian Chatterton really understands networking. Technical conferences have such demanding wifi and networking requirements that can not be tested under load ahead of time. And usually they fail. Brian's experience and knowledge has been twice-proven by Kiwi PyCon and DrupalSouth's great wifi.

Thanks Brian!
R2 installed the purple VSDL cable and connection from the DrupalSouth network hub, out the window, up to the roof of Mac's Brewery, across the roof, up the wall of the NZ Stock Exchange building, through a window of TradeMe's offices, and into a spare wall-mounted network port nearby; which was re-patched directly into Citylink's fibre network in TradeMe's server and patch room.

Richard Naylor of R2 is very respected and well known in Wellington when it comes to internet connectivity. As a City Council employee in the 90s he founded the project that later became Citylink. He now runs a private consultancy with his son, specializing in video streaming, and live video recording and hosting online. R2 did the video recording and streaming for Linux.conf.au Wellington.

Richard and his network of industry and business contacts made this possible; he provided a missing link between the wifi LAN and Citylink's high-speed fibre network, temporarily extending it to the venue.

Thanks Richard!
Citylink's high speed city fibre optic network in Wellington connects hundreds of businesses, buildings and data centres city-wide with fast low-latency network speeds. Karen Lindsay-Kerr at Citylink was kind enough to arrange a sponsored VLAN from TradeMe's data centre to Unleash's point of presence across town. That's fibre all the way!

Thanks Karen and thanks Citylink!
Unleash, the last point in the hardware chain, provided a high speed connection to the Internet. They generously sponsored 100Gb of data, a 20Mb symmetrical link, and a whole block of 256 IP addresses. (Unfortunately we couldn't assign the public IP addresses to devices due to time constraints.)

Unleash is an ISP based in Christchurch with four data centres across New Zealand, and nationwide network coverage with fibre, wireless and ADSL2+. They provide virtual and dedicated hosting, co-location and high-speed Internet services.

Thanks Unleash!

The last component is a software layer: IOPEN created a network traffic monitoring tool that collects data about the network and monitors load and resource usage. A "wireless weather report". This is useful to fix any issues if they arise (which they didn't!) and analyse network traffic to make improvements to network configuration for next time. They also made the data from tool available to users connected to the DrupalSouth network. Here is a screenshot:

Most of the companies and individuals mentioned here donated their time and services. You can see all of DrupalSouth sponsors on the sponsor page.

Thanks everyone!

From where I sit

Quartz — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:01:27 +1300

So ok I said I would post a few of the things that went into DS2010. Here is a start.

I had only been involved since mid November, that's months after Bevan had laid the ground work, but it really does seem longer than that!

In that 2.5 months, I took over the speakers / schedule, the menu, the name tags, the LCA booth, the Em Space training day, and tried to rustle up some swag.

Speakers

This involved pursuing speakers to see if they wanted to speak. Setting some up with user accounts on DS, and sending links to their sessions if it was prudent to the cause. Eventually setting a cut-off date by which proposals needed to have been submitted to the website. Reviewing and publishing each session. Notifying speakers of their success. Reminding speakers to prepare their sessions.

Schedule

All speakers were accepted that confirmed and submitted proposals. That was 22 speakers, 26 sessions, 18 hours. I took my lead from Bevan and the previous schedule for the timing of breaks, lunches and transitions for this year, realising that DS2008 was more an unconference and due to the over-whelming enthusiasm from speakers, 2010 was going to need to have a stricter format.

Menu

15% of our attendees had dietary requests of one kind or another, with less than a handful requiring strict consideration due to health conditions. The DS registration fee was based on covering the cost of the 2 lunches and 4 am/pm teas, as the rest of the costs were covered by sponsors. The items that were served reflected the requests of the majority of our attendees. There was a bit of liaison with the venue about accommodating those with health concerns but they were really great about it and we reached an arrangement where they took orders and modified menu items to suit on the day.

Name Tags / Printing

Name tags were a hard one in the sense that not all registrations were complete even a week beforehand, and I was unable to 'compete' with Gold's lanyard note name tags from DS2008! I wanted the tags to have Real Name and D.o User Name as I thought this made for easier identification of individuals. Unfortunately both were not mandatory on the DS site and a bit of research went into matching up the two for at least 75% of attendees. In the end the name tags were 'home made' - printed, cut, stamped, laminated, punched and pinned; otherwise you'd have been writing your own names on conference name tags!

The print-ready schedule was the other main thing that had to be prepared 'at the last minute' for DS.

LCA booth

We were late off the mark to secure a booth for LCA, due I guess to the focus on the core needs of DS. Never-the-less LCA accommodated us. This meant in the week before DS, coming up with an idea for the stand. We already had the banner (as it was not allowed to be hung off the balcony at Mac's due to historic building status). For the walls I screen-shot a combination of NZ and international websites using Drupal, prepared them for almost margin-less printing on A4 card stock at optimal size, trimming, laminating, and adding velcro hooks on the back for mounting. The idea for Druplibag also came to me during this time, as the stand was to be un-manned, and I thought it needed a 'point of interest'. I also did my best to come up with a hand-out that visitors could take away with them. (There are still some of these left that if you would like to distribute in your local communities that I am more than happy to send - libraries and universities/techs are great venues!)

Em Space Training

Simon Hobbs, one of the DS sponsors, offered to provide some Drupal training, the length of which fell outside a regular session. This necessitated finding and securing a venue, instituting a selection process for awarding free places to DS attendees only, planning a loose schedule for the day, organising am/pm teas.

Swag

Thinking there was an expectation of swag at IT conferences I set about emailing/faxing over 30 companies, following each up at a later date primarily by phone. Many had supported LCA or didn't know what a fantastic marketing opportunity they were missing out on!! In the end we got 4 donees and one who has already confirmed they would support future events (Packt).

So that's my brain dump for now. I will re-edit this post instead of threading others, if/when I think of other things.
I do have some comments about how things could be different next time which I will add at the end!

[One other somewhat un-related thing is that after the event I discovered that some people did not have email addresses linked to their registration, so when the contact form was used, emails may have gone into the ether.]

Drupal Association New Zealand

fiasco — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:26:02 +1300

So at DrupalSouth we talked about what was to become of Drupal conference in the future. Who was to organize it? Should there be a committee?

Another topic discussed at DrupalSouth was the idea of Drupal training. Both for clients and developers.

What immersed in my mind was that any Drupal activity within in New Zealand should have a professional front. An association. The Drupal association could then be the public facing body of Drupal in New Zealand and could organize or oversee future Drupal conferences and any other Drupal related events/activities including training.

How would it work?

Firstly, we need a group of people willing to raise there hand and be apart of the association. Ideally, people from all over the country who are inclined to host local Drupal events, anything from camps to beers after work. My reasoning behind this is that these people will know what the New Zealand Drupal community want and I feel it is important that each region of New Zealand has its say in the Association. From these people we elect chairman, treasurer, etc.

Once we have a group of people, we can hand it over to them to decide what we do with conferences etc.

How could we fund this?

I imagine we will need funds for particular things - a website for one thing. Potentially, we could follow similar lines to what the Drupal Association does and charge a membership fee or maybe use the conferences to provide profit for us to run the association.

Where to from here?

These are only my thoughts, and I know other people had other ideas, I'm just trying to get the ball rolling because I am keen to see something happen. So lets get some feedback - what are the pros and cons. Who is keen to be apart of an association etc.

Josh (fiasco) Waihi

Interview with Berend de Boer - Xplain hosting

Bevan — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:28:53 +1300

What is your elevator pitch?

Customers: once your site has been developed, it ordinarily becomes abandonware for developers.

You're at great risk from security vulnerabilities unless your site is patched regularly. We will automatically patch Drupal core + supported modules.

Another risk is changes introduced after development has finished. We give you a staging site, you can test/see changes from a developer, but a button is pushed to automatically update the live site.

Developers: developers face having to keep several sites in sync: their own machine(s), the staging, and the live site.

Through SVN we make that very simple. Our control panel also allows you to easily manage the staging and live sites, and propagate changes between them. If you work with multiple developers and multiple sites, we also allow you to specify what developers have what rights. All in all, developing Drupal sites and bringing them live has become a great deal easier.

Send a message to DrupalSouth attendees in less than 140 characters.

Best value Drupal hosting at unbeatable prices.

Why did you choose to sponsor DrupalSouth?

To attract new customers.

What have you contributed to Drupal (or Open Source)?

I've contributed both a base theme, YUI Grid, and two small modules.

What products or services do you offer?

My company offers Drupal hosting. As this doesn't need my full time attention, I also work as Drupal contractor for other companies. Works various from pixel perfect theme development to advanced Drupal modules, third party integration, and database migration.

What can you offer to other users of Drupal? Developers? Designers? Site owners? Others?
What other similar services or products exist in the Drupal marketplace? What stands yours apart from the rest?

Everyone knows Acquia of course, who also offers Drupal hosting. But they're more targeted at really big companies. We target smaller companies and Drupal developers who seek hosting for their clients. We are unique in that we offer a development support process and tools around Drupal hosting. For example a check-in into SVN will automatically update the staging site, nothing needed from a developer. You can leave Drupal's CSS/JS caching enabled, we even flush the cache after an SVN check-in to make sure the staging site accurately reflects what's in SVN.

Also we do not just chop up one server into parts and everyone gets a piece. Because we're hosted in the clouds, additional servers kick in when the load gets too high. The scalability you can achieve there is fantastic.

How can DrupalSouth attendees contact you, use your services or get involved?

Contact: support@xplainhosting.com.

Where and when?

Quartz — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:04:52 +1300

I think the discussion got to the point of acknowledging that DrupalSouth could quite easily go ahead in 2011, being that there had only been 14 months (not 2 years) between the 2008 and 2010 events.

As for when, it could be prudent to tag DS onto the end of LCA Brisbane, which is due to be scheduled for the end of January/ beginning of February 2011.

http://followtheflow.org/

Edit 29/04/10 LCA Brisbane is January 16-22, 2011

What was on the whiteboard

Quartz — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:34:19 +1300

Feel free to transcribe this, and then the photos can be deleted to save on page load times. :)

Module recommendations - from DrupalSouth

Kimeros — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 07:22:14 +1300

I managed to note down a few of the modules that were recommended during the course of the weekend.
Please add any that I've missed!

Tag DrupalSouth content on Flickr, Twitter, Et cetera with keyword "DrupalSouth"

Bevan — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:13:31 +1300

If you're tweeting or blogging about DrupalSouth, adding photos to Flickr, videos to YouTube, links to link-sharing sites 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. Tweets will show up in the "Who's tweeting about DrupalSouth" block and flickr content shows up on the homepage.

On twitter you can use "#DrupalSouth" or "@DrupalSouth", just as long as it has "DrupalSouth". If you haven't already, don't forget to follow DrupalSouth on twitter to get all the latest news in your twitter timeline.

Pre-register for DrupalSouth TODAY

Bevan — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:46:01 +1300

DrupalSouth starts tomorrow!

If you can't wait (like us) and you are already in Wellington, you can optionally pre-register today from about 5 to 7pm at the venue; Mac's Bar and Brewery (Forgotten where the venue is?). We'll be downstairs and under the stairs where you can join us and other attendees for a chat, a drink or perhaps a meal. Note that DrupalSouth will be upstairs tomorrow and that this pre-registration is downstairs in the public bar.

On Saturday registration starts at 9am. Please be on time to make sure we can have everyone registered and inside in time for the first session.

All DrupalSouth attendees will get two bar tokens each courtesy of Sparks Interactive, which are only valid upstairs on Saturday and Sunday at for any house beer (Mac's range on tap), house wine, house spirit or non-alcoholic drink (not sure about tea or coffee though). In addition to the bar tokens, tea and coffee will be made available at times during the conference.

The 6 wifi networks are named "dries-[ag]-[123]". If you can, use the A networks ("dries-a-[123]"). Otherwise you should be able to connect to the G networks ("dries-g-[123]"). Check your email for your password. Please do not use Mac's own wifi network.

Finally, there will be a 20 minute photoshoot on Saturday at midday.

Don't forget to checkout our sponsors. Our 3 Platinum sponsors are Xplain Technology, .nz is our home and Sparks Interactive. Several sponsors (including some very new ones), are responsible for the wifi and internet access; IOPEN, Effusion group, Egressive, Unleash and Citylink. We also have R2 and TradeMe to thank for the last 50 metres of the internet backhaul!

We have been working hard to make this a great event. We are super excited to kick off the event tomorrow after almost FIVE months of planning!

From the DrupalSouth Wellington Team, now actually in Wellington (at last)!

The Heat is On!

Quartz — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:45:13 +1300

You will find the schedule attached to download and print if you like. (You may need to "shrink to fit" as it is for A3.) We are running sessions in two rooms. The "Blue Marine" is the main room and "Garland" is the smaller training room. Obviously the presentations for everyone are in the main area. We can never be certain about your enthusiasm for a particular presentation though, so please bear with us if we need to make a last minute swap to cater for audience sizes.

Just so you know, two of our main speakers are with us for part of the weekend only. Liz until lunchtime on Saturday and Angie flies out Sunday. You don't want to miss them speak so please mark their presentation times in indelible ink in your mind now.

Please note that we have allowed a long lunch on Saturday, to allow time for attendees to browse the stalls at the Linux Conference Association (LCA) open day. We also want to squeeze in a group photo at the very beginning of the lunch break, with everyone down on the waterfront. It will be busy, busy, busy.

Get Connected!

Quartz — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:02:32 +1300

A few mainly kiwi Drupalers/ Drupalistas have been hanging about in the Freenode, IRC channel #drupal-nz.

We also have a Twitter account @DrupalSouth.

Check these out now, prior to this weekend, and lets get connected at DrupalSouth.

Need a Room and Bed?

Bevan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:45:46 +1300

Thanks Gold for adding accommodation marker pins to the DrupalSouth map!

Share Your DrupalSouth Love

Bevan — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:17:08 +1300

Add this image (or copy the embed code below) to your website, blog or email signature and let everyone know you're coming to DrupalSouth!

Embed code

<a style="display:block;text-align:center" href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/"><img src="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sites/drupalsouth/files/DrupalSouth-Badge-I-am-going.png" alt="I'm going to DrupalSouth 2010" /></a>

Thanks to Katie Graham (Katiebot) of Delicious Mint for the awesome design and Josh Campbell (JoshC) of Zype for the famous Druplikiwicon logo and vectorization of Zype's original raster artwork.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License.

Tickling your tastebuds!

Quartz — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:23:23 +1300

After the undoubted over-indulgence in Christmas fare, we are talking food again. This time the lunch menu for DrupalSouth.
A finger food lunch will be provided Saturday and Sunday and is included in your registration fee.

So here is what you have got to look forward to:

Saturday 23rd January

CLUB SANDWICH selection with assorted fillings
CHICKEN TENDERLOINS pieces marinated with chilli and soy sauce
MINI MINTED LAMB MEATED BALLS with mint sauce
FRESH COROMANDEL MUSSELS, served in their shell, gratin style with a herb and garlic crust
FETA CHEESE TARTLETS, served in golden filo pastry
BLINIS with a selection of vegetarian toppings
ASIAN STYLE SPRING ROLLS served with sweet chilli dipping sauce

MINI CARROT AND PINEAPPLE CAKE
CHOCOLATE COVERED PROFITEROLES filled with Baileys custard cream

Sunday 24th January

GOURMET SAVOURIES Feta spinach - Sun-dried tomato - Gourmet mince
VEGETABLE AND SALMON SUSHI selection with traditional accompaniments including a ginger, soy dipping sauce
BEEF SATAY served with a peanut, coriander and coconut sauce
CLUB SANDWICH selection with assorted fillings
FISH GOUJONS served with classic tartare
VEGETARIAN SAMOSAS with yogurt, cucumber and mint sauce
CRISPY LANTERN DUMPLINGS with feta and tomato with soy dipping sauce

MINI LEMON AND LIME CHEESE CAKE
MINI BLACK FOREST GATEAU

I believe this will accommodate those who have indicated preferences, and gives plenty of time for any others to preview what's on offer. If you have any further queries on ingredients please let me know.

Drupal.net.nz site re-build in 7

Quartz — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:11:24 +1300

So you've had a look at the schedule, squizzed at the sessions, checked out the speakers, but you're none the wiser about the Hack-fest?

Well, wait no longer - here are a few thoughts to get you started.

Drupal.net.nz is built in Drupal 5.
Is has great potential to raise the awareness of all things Drupal in Godzone.
To do that though it has to be a ~~S*H*O*W*C*A*S*E~~ of our very best, right from the structure and code to the theme and UI.

Drupal 7 is set to be released early 2010.
It needs to be stable.
We can help the process by stomping on the bugs, filing fixes - doing our part to contribute to the greater community; and mentor each other.

So all that said, this session is about doing just that. In the time we have got, with the minds and talent that will be packed into DrupalSouth.

What are your ideas?

How can we make it work for us?

RSS feed?

Events Calendar?

Is there a theme that you think is stunning? Or are you a theming extra-ordinaire yourself?

What content types do you think are important? Images with site information? Are you handy with CCK/Views?

How is it all going to work on the day?

Well what I was thinking was that we could have a 15 minute round table about what has been suggested and form a couple of teams. One main one for the install, code, bug fixes and another for the theming and graphics. 15 minutes to suss out how those teams are going to manage themselves and the task (sub-teams/single lead developer etc) and organise the room to work for the session.

Then we could do 25 minute bursts and a 5 minute re-group/update/report in between.

But hey, I am a newbie to this, so if there is another tried and true method, please share it with us all.

If you'd like to put your hand up for a certain team or facet of the re-build, leave a comment. The more that is sorted our prior to the Hack-fest/ Code Sprint the smoother it will run.

Remember the aim is a fully functioning website, in under 3 hours, by combining our sheer intellect, good looks, charm and community spirit!

At the same time, de-mystifying the magic around filing bug reports, rolling patches, and there could even be some documentation in there too.

Mentors and gurus we need you!

Drupal Training from Em Space

Quartz — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:00:44 +1300

DrupalSouth Gold sponsor, Em Space have made an offer we have to let you know about.

Simon Hobbs, director of the Melbourne-based Drupal house, is extending all things Drupal, to include a FULL-DAY of "Drupal Architecture 101" training, on Monday 25th January, following DrupalSouth.

The workshop details from their website are:

Course outline
This course is targeted at Drupal developers who are looking for a thorough grounding in best-practice concepts for implementing Drupal.

Your goal may be to build a site that is easy to maintain (or for another company to take over later). Or you might have a general understanding of version control and deployment, but want a practical guide to getting started in these areas which are often considered voodoo.

There are also many common requirements that require a complex mix of modules. We'll look at some proven recipes for solving common problems.

Some of the topics we'll cover are:
Server fundamentals

Drupal set-up gotchas

Recipes for WYSIWYG and others

Guidelines for Views and CCK

Neat and tidy theming

Aegir and Drush introductions

Poor man's deployment model
Who is this course for?
We recommend this workshop for developers (or even project managers) who are responsible for the sane implementation of Drupal.

It is recommended that you have the following minimum skills:

Experience using Drupal

Programming experience. Obviously PHP is good, but essentially the ability to read procedural code.

Who isn't this for?
If you are building a small Drupal site as a hobby or for a small business, then you will find that a lot of the material is not relevant to you.

If you have had experience building a Drupal site in a team, and using some sort of version control, then this course is not for you. Much of the focus of this workshop is on how to negotiate common decisions that you've already had to make!

But wait that's not all....

DrupalSouth registered and paid attendees can win one of three Em Space places!

Thats over NZ$560 for nix.

What we are asking you to do is, login and create your entry, telling us in 100-200 words why you'd like attend.

Please only enter the draw if you are able to be there for the full day on the Monday.

What are you waiting for .....?

Add your submission here: http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/node/add/training-place

Wellington - travel and accommodation

Quartz — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:18:45 +1300

Transport

There's no point in re-inventing the wheel, so here is a link through to the Wellington City Tourism site that may help with the 'how to get there' question.

This link is for getting around Wellington. Wellington have a great bus service that only costs $1 within the inner city limits. (Note though to refer to the weekend timetable.)

For those coming from the airport, here are the bus and taxi /shuttle details.

Accommodation

For accommodation, if you don't have a friend's pad to doss down in, you may like to try sites like Expedia.co.nz or the Wellington tourism site. LCA have deals going with these places. Or you may like to check out Last Minute Deals (although you really don't want to be leaving it too late!).

Some of the accommodation in the direct vicinity is:

Duxton Hotel
At Home Bed and Breakfast
Nomad's Back-packers
YHA Wellington
Wellywood Backpackers
MonVie Serviced Apartments
Base
The Halswell Lodge

I hope that is useful to you. Let me know how else I can help.

Please write about DrupalSouth

Bevan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:52:18 +1300

DrupalSouth needs your help! Please write about DrupalSouth on your blogs, and to mailing lists on related topics. This helps people to find out about the event and spread the word further, allowing us to bring together a great group of individuals for what will be the NZ Drupal community's most eventful two days!

I've included below the HTML source code for the press release which I've already posted in a number of places, and a plain text version of it for email.

HTML source code

<p><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/"><img align="right" src="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sites/drupalsouth/files/lightfantastic_logo.png" alt="DrupalSouth logo: The DrupliKiwiFruit" /><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/">DrupalSouth Wellington 2010</a> is the New Zealand <a href="http://drupal.org">Drupal</a> event.  It will be NZ's largest ever gathering of Drupal developers, designers, contributers and business folk.  DrupalSouth Wellington will be on <strong>Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January</strong> &mdash; just after <a href="http://www.lca2010.org.nz/">Linux.conf.au Wellington</a>.</p>

<p>DrupalSouth features some <a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/speakers">great speakers</a> and attendees from NZ and abroad, including
  <ul>
    <li><a href="http://webchick.net/">Angela Byron</a> (<a href="http://drupal.org/user/24967">webchick</a>); Drupal 7 core committer, Drupal community nurturer, and co-author of <em>Using Drupal</em></li>
    <li><a href="http://emmajane.net/">Emma Jane Hogbin</a> (<a href="http://drupal.org/user/1773">emmajane</a>); co-author of <em>Front End Drupal</em>, uber-documenter, Drupal evangelist/speaker and community all-rounder</li>
    <li><a href="http://liz-henry.blogspot.com/">Liz Henry</a> (<a href="http://groups.drupal.org/user/19063">lizhenry</a>), BlogHer.com developer &mdash; the largest community for women bloggers, built on Drupal since 2006</li>
  </ul>
</p>

<p><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/conference">Registration</a> costs just $67.50 NZD including GST ($60 for non-NZ businesses) and includes lunch, coffee and tea on both days – not to mention access to a great line up of <a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/speakers">speakers</a> and <a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/programme">sessions</a> on awesome topics.  The full schedule is coming soon!</p>

<p>Such a great price for such a high-quality event has only been possible thanks to our <a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsors">generous sponsors</a>, including;
  <ul>
    <li><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsor/xplain-technology-hosting">Xplain Technology Hosting</a>; Web hosting optimized for Drupal</li>
    <li><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsor/sparks-interactive">Sparks Interactive</a>; Straight talking, successful work, simple equation.</li>
    <li><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsor/nz">.nz</a>; .nz is our home</li>
    <li><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsor/em-space">Em Space</a>; Em Space is a web agency in Melbourne, Australia. We build Drupal websites for enterprise, government and not-for-profit</li>
    <li><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsor/catalyst-it">Catalyst IT</a>; Specialists in Open Source Technologies</li>
    <li><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsor/egressive">Egressive</a>; Building superior computing solutions powered by Linux and Drupal</li>
    <li><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsor/open-query">Open Query</a>; Exceptional Services for MySQL and MariaDB at a Fixed Budget</li>
    <li><a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsor/fuzion">Fuzion</a>; connect : campaign : communicate.</li>
  </ul>
</p>

<p>DrupalSouth Wellington will be at the upstairs function room at <a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/venue">Mac's Brewery Bar & Restaurant</a>, on Wellington City's waterfront, and just a few hundred metres from Linux.conf.au at the Wellington Convention Centre.</p>

<p>DrupalSouth Wellington will be the second event of it's kind.  The first was <a href="http://christchurch2008.drupalsouth.net.nz/">DrupalSouth Christchurch November 2008</a>.</p>

Plain text

DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 is the New Zealand Drupal event. It will be NZ's largest ever gathering of Drupal developers, designers, contributers and business folk. DrupalSouth Wellington will be on Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January — just after Linux.conf.au Wellington. http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/

DrupalSouth features some great speakers and attendees from NZ and abroad, including

    * Angela Byron (webchick); Drupal 7 core committer, Drupal community nurturer, and co-author of Using Drupal
    * Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane); co-author of Front End Drupal, uber-documenter, Drupal evangelist/speaker and community all-rounder
    * Liz Henry (lizhenry), BlogHer.com developer — the largest community for women bloggers, built on Drupal since 2006

Registration costs just $67.50 NZD including GST ($60 for non-NZ businesses) and includes lunch, coffee and tea on both days – not to mention access to a great line up of speakers and sessions on awesome topics. The full schedule is coming soon!  Register here; http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/conference

Such a low price for such a high-quality event has only been made possible thanks to our generous sponsors (http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsors), including;

    * Xplain Technology Hosting; Web hosting optimized for Drupal
    * Sparks Interactive; Straight talking, successful work, simple equation.
    * .nz; .nz is our home
    * Em Space; Em Space is a web agency in Melbourne, Australia. We build Drupal websites for enterprise, government and not-for-profit
    * Catalyst IT; Specialists in Open Source Technologies
    * Egressive; Building superior computing solutions powered by Linux and Drupal
    * Open Query; Exceptional Services for MySQL and MariaDB at a Fixed Budget
    * Fuzion; Campaign, Connect, Communicate.

DrupalSouth Wellington will be at the upstairs function room at Mac's Brewery Bar & Restaurant, on Wellington City's waterfront, and just a few hundred metres from Linux.conf.au at the Wellington Convention Centre. http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/venue

DrupalSouth Wellington will be the second event of it's kind. The first was DrupalSouth Christchurch November 2008.  http://christchurch2008.drupalsouth.net.nz/

DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 Press Release

Bevan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:43:28 +1300

DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 is the New Zealand Drupal event. It will be NZ's largest ever gathering of Drupal developers, designers, contributers and business folk. DrupalSouth Wellington will be on Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January — just after Linux.conf.au Wellington.

DrupalSouth features some great speakers and attendees from NZ and abroad, including

Angela Byron (webchick); Drupal 7 core committer, Drupal community nurturer, and co-author of Using Drupal
Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane); co-author of Front End Drupal, uber-documenter, Drupal evangelist/speaker and community all-rounder
Liz Henry (lizhenry), BlogHer.com developer — the largest community for women bloggers, built on Drupal since 2006

Registration costs just $67.50 NZD including GST ($60 for non-NZ businesses) and includes lunch, coffee and tea on both days – not to mention access to a great line up of speakers and sessions on awesome topics. The full schedule is coming soon!

Such a great price for such a high-quality event has only been possible thanks to our generous sponsors, including;

Xplain Technology Hosting; Web hosting optimized for Drupal
Sparks Interactive; Straight talking, successful work, simple equation.
.nz; .nz is our home
Em Space; Em Space is a web agency in Melbourne, Australia. We build Drupal websites for enterprise, government and not-for-profit
Catalyst IT; Specialists in Open Source Technologies
Egressive; Building superior computing solutions powered by Linux and Drupal
Open Query; Exceptional Services for MySQL and MariaDB at a Fixed Budget
Fuzion; connect : campaign : communicate.

DrupalSouth Wellington will be at the upstairs function room at Mac's Brewery Bar & Restaurant, on Wellington City's waterfront, and just a few hundred metres from Linux.conf.au at the Wellington Convention Centre.

DrupalSouth Wellington will be the second event of it's kind. The first was DrupalSouth Christchurch November 2008.

Registrations are open, register now!

Bevan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:39:43 +1300

DrupalSouth registrations opened this week, register now! There are already almost 30 registered attendees (the number in the sidebar is wrong). Capacity is limited to 100 and we are expecting to sell out, so get in quick!

Registration costs $67.50 including GST ($60 for non-NZ businesses) and includes lunch, coffee and tea on both days – not to mention access to a great line up of speakers and sessions on awesome topics. The full schedule is coming soon!

The registration fee is so low because most expenses have been covered by our generous sponsors (Don't forget to say thanks by checking out their services!) The registration fee just pays for the cost of the lunches, tea and coffee.

We might also include some drink tokens or a conference t-shirt, though we can't promise anything just yet.

Please be patient if you are waiting for a GST invoice or information about an alternate payment method. We are still working out some of these processes and details, and have a large amount of requests to process.

Session Proposals

Quartz — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:47:39 +1300

The sessions for DrupalSouth are shaping up to be an out-standing line up of international and national talent.

So far we have over 16 hours of programme to fit into two days, so it looks like it will be 2 tracks, folks.

Our key-note Drupal speakers for those that haven't heard the word on the street are: Angela Byron (webchick), Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane) and Liz Henry (liz henry), but that is not to say there won't be a global guru or two as well.

For a sneak peek at who else you may find delivering the proposed sessions, here they are:
http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/speakers

If you are one of our proposed speakers whose smiling dial does not yet grace the list, next to your name, how about uploading a mug-shot please‽

Looking forward to meeting you all and nailing the schedule a.s.a.p.

(Unfortunately Addison Berry will not be making it to DrupalSouth this year.)

Last call for sponsors

Bevan — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:39:42 +1300

It is not too late to sponsor DrupalSouth. BUT, there is room for only a few more sponsors and sponsorship closes this Friday 27 November. So if you want to sponsor contact us now!

All sponsors get

Logo and link to company profile on sponsors page
Detailed company profile on the website
Entire team profile on the website
Swag in the attendee pack
1 free registration

Platinum sponsors get

Largest logo on every page on the website
Flexible advertising options on the website and at the event
Large and prominent printed logo at the venue and on printed materials
Acknowledgement in all announcements and media releases
Featured article on the website, distributed to all attendees

Gold sponsors get

Large logo on randomly alternating pages on the website
Printed logo at the venue and on printed materials
Acknowledgement in some announcements and media releases

Silver sponsors get

Logo on randomly alternating pages on the website
Logo in most printed materials

There is room for ~~just 1 more Platinum sponsor from $1000, 2~~ 1 more Gold sponsors from $500 each and ~~several~~ a few more Silver sponsors from $200 each. These last sponsorship opportunities will be given on a first-come first-serve basis and are all in New Zealand dollars (NZD). Contact us about sponsorship!

GST is not included (but only applies to NZ GST-registered businesses).

Waterfront Venue in Central City; Mac's Brewery Bar & Restaurant

Bevan — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:57:41 +1300

We're really excited to announce that Mac's Brewery Bar & Restaurant will be the location of DrupalSouth Wellington 2010. The Brewery bar is right on Wellington central city's waterfront, between Te Papa and the Wellington Convention Centre. Yes, that means it's less than 300 metres from Linux.conf.au Wellington 2010 which is the week leading up to DrupalSouth!

The function room at Mac's is upstairs, so it has great views over Wellington harbour. With the mid-summer dates we have booked, we are confident the balcony will be wll used. And perhaps most importantly – keeping in the tradition of DrupalSouth – there is a bar with beer on tap and a brewery at the back!

Mac's brewery is also right next door to the NZ stock exchange building (NZX) and Circa Theatre. Here's a map of the venue showing just how close it is to LCA;

View on Google Maps.

We are working on getting a good internet link into the venue. At this stage the best option would be to install our own backhaul from the NZX building where Citylink's fibre network extends to. However we need contacts in the NZX building who are willing to help us out. Please contact us if you can help.

Callout for speakers and sessions!

dman — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:36:31 +1300

Looking for volunteers

We are now ready to start filling in some speaking slots. If you have an idea for a session or presentation you'd like to give, please register or log in and write up a short proposal.

Presentations

I don't think there will be any shortage of speakers, so get in early with your topics. Joint presentations from different developers working on different projects in similar areas would be especially interesting, so feel free to collaborate or volunteer to contribute a spot to someone else's session!
We hope to be able to reach a consensus of 'chosen' presentations without too much work, but if we get too much response for the available time we'll look into a vote of some sort. We are not expecting to split off into different streams for the presentations, but we'll see how that goes.

Sessions

For BoF sessions or workshops on specific topics, we probably will split off into groups. These may be collaborative events, and can have multiple facilitators, but need not have a formal presentation prepared, just a desire to get together and share knowledge ad do something.

Suggestions for topics you'd like to see are also welcome!

The Next DrupalSouth, Wellington January 2010

Bevan — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:22:16 +1200

Following in the success of DrupalSouth Christchurch November 2008, DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 ~~is in it's planning stages~~ will be on Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January. It will be close to LCA Wellington 2010 both in time and location, and will feature excellent overseas and home-grown speakers & attendees, such as;

Angela Byron (webchick); Drupal 7 core committer, Drupal community nurturer, and co-author of Using Drupal
Addison Berry (add1sun); Documentation lead, recipient of $100,000 Knight Foundation grant for Drupal documentation, co-author of Using Drupal
Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane); co-author of Front End Drupal, uber-documenter, Drupal evangelist/speaker and community all-rounder
Dan (dman); Numerous drupal modules and high-profile NZ websites including The Vintage Aviator and Sorted.org.nz
Others, yet to be determined.

To get updates, subscribe to the NZ Drupal group, follow @DrupalSouth on twitter and get involved!

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

Bevan — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:24:23 +1200

Follow DrupalSouth on twitter to get all the latest news in your twitter timeline.

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. They'll show up in the new "Who's tweeting about DrupalSouth" block.

You can also get DrupalSouth news by RSS feeds, or email (thanks to feedburner). There are three RSS feeds, for news, discussion and comments.