The delightful party hosted by mediacurrent at Rockbottom last night (thank you!) didn’t steal any of the conference’s momentum today as the enormous crowd of 3,300 returned for day two of DrupalCon Portland.

I am currently enjoying a delicious pour from Phase 2 and synthesizing the incredible information that was presented today. I hope you enjoy my rendition of the classic christmas carol to the right.

It seemed to be the most logical way of explaining the enormous amount of ground I covered today, which for the record is far from over. The Blue Drop Awards are about to begin and I can’t wait for the Acquia Customer Love party tonight.
Before I give you the full recap here are three things I have to get off my chest:

1) To the Drupal Association – way to class up lunch today. The white table cloths and wrapped silverware? Very nice touch. You are exceptional hosts, thank you for having me.
2) To Lullabot – the effort you put into your brand’s presence at this conference has been noticed. As an individual that recognizes the strength of a brand based on their commitment to the consistency within their messaging I applaud you and respect you immensely.
3) Technology is nothing without humans. Don’t forget it.

(1) THE SESSION: Thriving in a World of Change: Future-Friendly Content with Drupal
THE SAGE: Karen McGrane
THE SCENE: The main hall was so crowded I stepped into the overflow room for the first time and found myself surrounded by eager Drupalers ready to hear from the content queen.
THE SCOOP:
- for content to truly be transferrable between devices there must be a true separation of content from presentation
- we must abandon the notion that content “lives” on a page
- we’re moving away from technology problems and are now dealing with human problems

(2) THE SESSION: So Happy Together (Content Strategists & Project Managers Are)
THE SAGE: Jake Dimare
THE SCENE: Jake started the session with a very strategic and very interesting marketing tactic. To anyone on Twitter, tweet out the following and the first 20 tweeters will get a t-shirt. we’re #sohappy with content strategy at #drupalcon PDX! certainly flooded the drupalcon hashtag.
THE SCOOP:
- a user will go to website A over website B based on the content
- planning for the future is imperative – accounting for future content migration and disruptions should top the list
- do you know what your message architecture is? focus on the hierarchy of your communication goals

(3) THE SESSION: Mistakes Agencies Make
THE SAGE: Seth Brown
THE SCENE: Lullabot’s consistent imagery and slide presentation is causing me to have a huge brand crush on them. It is worth noting that this is the second session in a row that has included an image of a train running off the tracks. Coincidence or prevailing concern of organizations?
THE SCOOP:
- there is not a strong relationship between growth and profitability
- growth is not inherently good
- fewer, smaller scale projects are the way to go

(4) THE SESSION: Marketing & Selling Drupal
THE SAGE(S): Megan Sanicki, Glenn Hilton, Ben Finklea, Dave Terry
THE SCENE: The lively panel included several rounds of push ups by Ben and a live stream of questions from the audience using the #drupalconmktg hashtag. 
THE SCOOP:
- everybody in your organization needs to “market” and contribute to your editorial calendar (thank you for reiterating this!)
- if it takes you longer than 4 hours to write a blog post you need to re-evaluate your strategy
- treat your internal marketing initiatives like you would the needs of your clients

Is anyone else feeling like they have been in Portland for a lot longer than 48 hours?

My alarm went off at 5:45 this morning so I could hoof it across the river to Voodoo Doughnuts. Walking across the Willamette River was a beautiful start to the day. I urge every other conference attendee to take some time and go for a walk while in Portland.
Want to make friends with a handful of Drupalers?
Walk into your hotel lobby with the magical pink box filled to the brim with the scent of sugar wafting from the cardboard.

I think it goes without saying that my first food stop of Portland gets one of these. It wasn’t just the intense sugar rush that started the first official day of DrupalCon 2013 off with a bang. The adrenaline and excitement of  attendees was obvious this morning as the exhibition hall transformed from a giant empty space to a cornucopia of Drupal-related innovation.

In order to summarize my session attendance I have created the Rookie Rundown, a daily recap of what I have seen, heard, and learned.

If anyone has any intel on where they rolled the mobile coffee stations to – please let me know.

(1) THE SESSION: Designing on Purpose: Design Process & Deliverables in the Responsive Age
THE SAGE: Jared Ponchot
THE SCENE: Room 202 was filled to the brim for this morning session. Countless people could be seen nodding their heads in agreement with Jared’s presentation and laughter filled the room as his presentation was engaging, educational, and humorous.
THE SCOOP:
-focus on the purpose, not on the preferenceI
-you can’t underestimate the power of the right question
-designing on purpose revolves around asking, “why?”

(2) THE SESSION: The Current State of Drupal 8
THE SAGE: Dries Buytaert 
THE SCENE: 3,300+ Drupalers eager to see Dries speak and setting the record for the largest DrupalCon to date
THE SCOOP:
- do well, do good
- digital disruption is going going to become the heart of every business
- there is nothing more important than the power behind a great experience
- seize any opportunity to disrupt an existing system
- DRUPAL 8 (more coming on this in the very near future)

(3)THE SESSION: What Users Want (Or Why Webpages Are Dead)
THE SAGE: Nam-Ho Park 
THE SCENE: The first session post-lunch drew a crowd that seemed to appreciate the beautiful slides as much as I did.
THE SCOOP:
- don’t underestimate the power of compelling imagery in presentations
- cell phones are items that we are intimately attached to, give users a way to maintain this personal relationship with the device
- information needs to exist in an ecosystem where users can access information from multiple entry points, effortlessly

(4) THE SESSION: Games People Play (and the modules that enable them)
THE SAGE: Scott Weston 
THE SCENE: Room 204 drew a diverse crowd that diligently took notes during the engaging presentation on gamification and the strategies for implementing a successful gamification system within an organization.
THE SCOOP:
- you can’t play the game if you don’t know who is playing
- beware of tactics that demotivate people
- allow users to become masters of your site

In case none of your friends or co-workers told you, DrupalCon is taking Dries’ note of “Do well, Do good” pretty seriously. In light of yesterday’s traumatic events in Oklahoma, there will be an Oklahoma Tornado Support Code-A-Thon in the Coders Lounge at the DoubleTree tonight at 7:30 pm.

Use the hashtag #drupal4ok while you watch teams create apps that will help the victims of this tragedy in relation to transportation and housing issues.
I’m proud to be part of a community that uses the abundance of knowledge, creativity, compassion, and ingenuity at hand to hold an impromptu event like this in order to provide real solutions for real world problems.

To everyone else that attended DrupalCon: What did I miss?
I haven’t figured out how to be in 8 places at once so I know there was a lot more “scoop” out there to be absorbed. Comment or tweet us @duoconsulting to fill me in on the great information I missed on Day 1.

I wanted to share some resources for our Director of Development, Scott Weston’s, presentation on gamification on Tuesday, May 2013 at DrupalCon Portland. Scott’s presentation will focus on several aspects of gamification including strategies for implementing a successful gaming strategy within your organization in addition to exploring overall motivations behind why people participate in games.
I hope to see you there but until then here are Scott’s session notes for you!

Presentation Slides

Here are the slides to Scott’s presentation

MODULES USED IN DEMONSTRATION

Drupal Core 7.22 - http://drupal.org/project/drupal

Goals (and Goals Extras)- http://drupal.org/project/goals

Flag - http://drupal.org/project/flag

User Points - http://drupal.org/project/userpoints

User Points Flag - http://drupal.org/project/userpoints_flag

Chaos Tools - http://drupal.org/project/ctools

Entity API - http://drupal.org/project/entity

Token - http://drupal.org/project/token

Node View Permissions - http://drupal.org/project/node_view_permissions

Rules - http://drupal.org/project/rules

Views - http://drupal.org/project/views

______________________________

OTHER MODULES TO HELP WITH GAMIFICATION

Achievements - http://drupal.org/project/achievements

Avatar Selection - http://drupal.org/project/avatar_selection

Hidden Nodes - http://drupal.org/project/hidden_nodes

User Badges - http://drupal.org/project/user_badges

Radioactivity - http://drupal.org/project/radioactivity

Realname - http://drupal.org/project/realname

Organic Groups -  http://drupal.org/project/og

User Relationship - http://drupal.org/project/user_relationships

Voting - http://drupal.org/project/votingapi,
http://drupal.org/project/vote_up_down

Wiki Tools -  http://drupal.org/project/wikitools

ShareThis - http://drupal.org/project/sharethis

Messaging - http://drupal.org/project/messaging

Private Message -  http://drupal.org/project/privatemsg

______________________________

BOOKS/ LINKS/ RESOURCES

Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc & Robert Zubek, MDA: A Formal
Approach to Game Design and Game Research, http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/pubs/MDA.pdf

For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business by
Kevin Werbach - http://amzn.to/13E7qLq

The Gamification Revolution: How Leaders Leverage Game Mechanics
to Crush the Competition by Gabe Zichermann-  http://amzn.to/12mpZ41

http://www.epicwinblog.net/

http://enterprise-gamification.com/index.php/en/facts

http://gamifyforthewin.com/

Fun is the Future: Mastering Gamification -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O1gNVeaE4g

Super Better - https://www.superbetter.com/

Don’t Play Games with Me! -
http://codingconduct.cc/Don-t-Play-Games-With-Me

The Game Always Wins -
http://www.slideshare.net/BusterBenson/the-game-always-wins

When not to gamify -
http://www.epicwinblog.net/2013/04/when-not-to-use-gamification.html
______________________________

IMAGE CREDITS

http://solutions.wolterskluwer.com/blog/2010/11/its-all-in-the-play-improving-user-engagement-through-social-gaming/farmville/

http://fitfinity.net/2011/11/02/favorite-fitness-apps/

https://realitydrop.org/#community

http://seriousgamesmarket.blogspot.com/2009/11/serious-games-futuring-medical-training.html

http://sipscratchscore.com/

http://kelfen.wordpress.com/2010/03/

http://says-it.com/safety

We’ve had our official DrupalCon meeting and our team dinner reservation has been made. Brussels Sprouts with bacon sherry cream at Toro Bravo on Tuesday before the Media Current and ImageX after party? Yes, please. If your schedule looks anything like mine, you may be contemplating when you will get a moment to breath this week. If you’re anything like me, you couldn’t care less because you’re unbelievably excited.

I want to introduce you to the Rookie seal of approval.
I’ll be dishing out quick snacks of content at DrupalCon giving conversations, occurrences, parties, people, and sessions one of these.

Be on the look out for the final list later in the week.

Organizing my session schedule has been no simple task. At Duo, we focus our marketing efforts around four main categories: Drupal/Open, User Experience, Digital Marketing and Enterprise Social. I am using these segments to filter my sessions at DrupalCon so that I can discuss the benefits of Drupal in relation to each.

Here are the four sessions I will definitely be attending:

DRUPAL/OPEN
DRUPAL @ WHITEHOUSE.GOV: OPEN SOURCE & OPEN DATA
Wed, May 22, 5:00pm – 6:00pm

USER EXPERIENCE
DESIGNING ON PURPOSE: DESIGN PROCESS & DELIVERABLES IN THE RESPONSIVE AGE
Tue, May 21, 10:15am – 11:15am

DIGITAL MARKETING
MARKETING & SELLING DRUPAL
Wednesday, May 22 – 2:15pm – 3:15pm

ENTERPRISE SOCIAL
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY (AND THE MODULES THAT ENABLE THEM)
Tue, May 21, 3:15pm – 4:15pm

The other event circled in red on my DrupalCon marketing agenda is Karen McGrane’s keynote. Her expertise in user experience is bound to influence my take aways of the event in this category. I can’t wait to hear her bring down the hammer on what it means to optimize content across multiple platforms.

To any other marketers headed to DrupalCon – what sessions are you focusing on and why? If you have a unique perspective on one of these four categories, please let me know!

I’m off to ORD, PDX here I come.

- the rookie.

It’s amazing how we overcomplicate things at times, isn’t it?
Spending thirty minutes with these passionate young folks made my day for three simple reasons.

KIDS AREN’T AFRAID TO ASK QUESTIONS

After each member of our team gave a brief overview of their role and the contributions they make to Duo on a daily basis, the kids kept the conversation alive with a series of questions. It’s a refreshing (and necessary) reminder that it’s okay to ask for more information from the people who do what you want to do.

CONVERSATIONS LIKE THIS TAKE PLACE

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was updating my AOL and AIM profiles with simple HTML. It never ceases to amaze me to fall witness to excited individuals discuss their interests and dreams. The exuberance radiating off their faces as they discussed technology superstars like Elon Musk and the cool factor of Tesla was infectious.

SMART + CREATIVE = THE ULTIMATE EQUATION

Our presenting developer of the day, Mark Royko, said it: The best part about working for a company like Duo is being surrounded by really smart and really creative people.

The kind of people that educate, challenge, and elevate you.
Well if that doesn’t scream take away, I’m not sure what does.

• Michael Silverman, CEO & Fearless Leader
  Scott Weston, Director of Development
• Gordon Makely, Drupal Developer
  Brian Krall, Duo Themer
  Mark Royko, Drupal Developer
  Sonny Cohen, Director of Internet Marketing
  Tim Thurn, Project Manager

Each of our players heading to Portland has previously attended a DrupalCon or Drupal Camp event. Scott Weston is even presenting on Tuesday at 3:15. The entire Duo squad will be in attendance so come say “hi” and learn about gamification.
In the meantime, let me introduce myself as the late add to the roster: my name is Ariel and this is the Diary of a DrupalCon Rookie.

I landed my spot at Duo two months ago, filling the brand new role of Marketing Coordinator. The past 60 days have been filled with new material, new ideas, and lots of new lessons. I arrived with minimal experience using Drupal and can now proudly say I can navigate my way around the back-end of our website. I just finished updating 540 blog posts and editing our tagging taxonomy. Boo ya.

Why do I want to attend DrupalCon?

Besides the fact that I’m dying to sink my teeth into a Voodoo Doughnut, I want to feed my endless appetite for knowledge. I want to learn as much as I can about the Drupal platform and then translate it into a fierce marketing machine.

My perspective of the event is going to be wildly different than my coworkers. I’m not arriving with the ability to explain the in’s and out’s of module development or the art of scalable architecture for CSS. I won’t be bumping into old conference pals comparing notes on Portland vs. Denver over Stumptown Coffee.

This year’s theme (Building Bridges, Connecting Communities) thoroughly describes my approach to gathering information about Drupal and translating it to actionable marketing initiatives.

Building Bridges

What kind of bridges, you ask? The kind that connect people, concepts, and channels.

• Bridging People: I want to reveal how Drupal connects members of an organization, regardless of their title—developer, designer, marketer, whatever. Drupal is a solution that can bond all individuals within a company to complete the ultimate task: Building a website that gets you more customers.

• Bridging Concepts: How does Drupal serve as a superior platform to accomplish overlapping yet equally important objectives for our clients? How can we build a responsive site that still showcases the strengths of a customer’s content? What is the Drupal difference that allows us to succeed at completing simultaneous goals?

• Bridging Channels: As a marketer, I never juggle fewer than five channels. How can Drupal support the varied needs of our clients while integrating programs and platforms?

Connecting Communities

Community is an important word to Duo Consulting. We take our own, and those that we build, very seriously. We’re dedicated to the open source community and collaboration with other Drupal shops. We’re actually open to collaborating with anyone that has a good idea.

Building communities is something we have a great deal of experience in. Michael wrote the book on it, Capturing Community: How to Build, Manage, and Market Your Online Community. Developing enterprise social networks for organizations has kept our team busy for years.

I am excited to witness the interactions between Drupalers of different experience levels and backgrounds as examples of the open-source social community.

This diary will be updated (almost) daily over the next ten days.

I’ll be bringing you my proposed schedule, interviews with team members, interviews with strangers (I’ll be at booth 343 if anyone wants to talk my ear off about their thoughts on Drupal), session play-by-play, my running must-see Portland list, a full recap on my trip to Voodoo Doughnut, and much, much more.

But what if you want a big fat daily dump of everything on the site?

Commons 3 is using message notify to handle email notifications. There is an hour long screencast (but who has time?) and Amitaibu has a post on his blog about the module. However, neither really delves into sending digests other than telling you it can be done.

Don’t get me wrong – I do this Drupal thing every day but I’m nowhere near the level of a guy who can build something like the Acquia sponsored Message Notify.

So where does that leave us? We want to send a message once a day with a digest of the last 24 hours. We also want to give users an option to opt in/out of the daily email. I’m going to go contrib when I can but I’ll write some code if I have to.

I used hook_form_FORM_ID_alter to add a checkbox to the Commons Notification settings form that would allow users to opt in/out of the digest (look at the Commons Follow UI module). You will also need to add your own form submitter – and remember to do an array_unshift so you don’t break the Commons Follow submitter.

I then set up a cron job using hook_cron that triggers an email based on notification settings. I wanted to send an HTML email using views_embed_view. At first I was getting a list of content with footnotes (ugh) even though I was using an HTML header. I then used the magic of google to find out the default Drupal 7 mail system strips HTML by default. You have to make your own email system to send HTML. So look here for some information to set that up. Now that we have that working, on to scheduling…

Elysia Cron is an even poorer man’s cron that allows you to schedule cron jobs from the UI using dropdowns. I wanted our digest to be sent once a day as opposed to once an hour like the rest of the cron jobs on the site so this came in handy.

“But what about drush? The command line?,” you say.

Yep, you could do that too.

So far it seems to be working. Those that want the update receive it and those that don’t – don’t. Anyone out there make their own digest system? Anyone figure out how to do it with Message Notify? Let us know in the comments…

a small glimpse of my valuable notes.

It has taken me a few weeks to wrap my mind around the thought provoking and inspiring content served on a plate of awesomeness at the Technori Growth Summit conference last month.

The speakers laid out a gold mine of ideas—the best of which you’ll find in this blog post.

Here are the 7 takeaways that are still swirling around in my brain:

Emerson Spartz dropped out of school at the age of 12.

Yes, you read that correctly. Emerson, founder of Spartz Inc., really gets this internet thing. He presents at roughly 300 words a minute and each one is more valuable than the one before it. The genius behind MuggleNet’s presentation focused on virality. And get this: he can recognize a digital sensation in seconds. His people are behind sites like OMG FACTS, picstache, and six billion secrets. Together, these sites attract an astonishing 60 million monthly pageviews.

E-mail still matters. A lot.

Marketers have no shortage of channels to choose from when we want to engage with customers. Determining which outlet can be challenging. David Petrillo, co-founder of Coffee Joulies, reminded me that e-mail continues to be a powerful force of communication. When it came to starting Coffee Joulies, Petrillo didn’t use social media to engage customers. Instead, he kicked it old school and relied on direct e-mails to reach new customers and maintain communication with existing clients.

Growth hacking is more than a word that appears in my Twitter feed.

Aaron Ginn. If you don’t know who he is log on to Twitter right now and click “Follow”. His resume is impressive (former growth hacker for the Mitt Romney campaign, currently at StumbleUpon as head of growth) and his ideas, even more so.

My big takeaway: “Growth isn’t sexy.” It’s an equation. Understanding growth involves actionable metrics, consistent analysis, and someone to conduct it. Aaron stressed the importance of delegating the position to an individual and prioritizing growth within your organization’s strategy to see results.

If you don’t ask, you will never receive.

Neil Patel of KISSmetrics is data-driven and wants more.
If you’re looking to learn more about the people consuming your content it may be time to simply ask for it. E-mail opt-ins, banner ads, pop ups… Neil Patel uses, and advocates, for them all.
Don’t be afraid to ask people for valuable information that you want. If you’re giving them equally valuable content in return, it may surprise you to see how much information comes pouring in in the shape of content field collectors.

What do you want?

“What do I want my users to do?”

“What do I want my readers to know?”

Two direct quotes from my notes.

David, Neil, Emerson and Aaron all referenced that a key part of success is knowing what it looks like. Before beginning any marketing initiative, think about what it is that you want to happen. Without established guidelines, there’s no way to measure your achievements. Set your goals and check in frequently to make sure that your actions are taking you to the place where you are getting what you want.

You have to be flexible.

Remember the deluge that hovered over Chicagoland last month cancelling hundreds of flights? It stopped scheduled speaker Neil Patel from attending the event in person. No matter—He found a computer, logged into Skype, and presented like a boss. Neil and Technori were un-phased and had me convinced they’d planned for Neil to present this way all along. Flexibility is key. Confidence in the face of challenge doesn’t hurt either.

The folks at Technori can throw a party.

Technori’s party started at 1:00 pm. On a Thursday. They sure know how to pull off a seamless event. The location (Gensler – holy beautiful!), the refreshments (pineapple, pretzelcrisps, and solixir), the speakers (perfectly related yet each with their own twist)… Technori nailed it. I’d go back in a heartbeat.

They don’t – or at least they choose when they want to.

Content marketing would suggest that you want to put all your content out on the web for your consumers to view.  In some cases, such as blogs and white papers, this approach is fine.  People who have come to absorb your articles have specifically chosen to read your content because of your expertise.

Keep it simple.

You know the importance of perfecting an ‘elevator pitch’ and this skill is vital when presenting content on the web. More often than not, the cover of a book has to tell us a story engaging enough to get us to turn the first page. When presenting content use enticing headlines, imagery (that is additive to the story), and quick bullets of information.

Web users at most have the time to read little more than 20% of the words on a web page during an average visit. With percentages like this, it is imperative that you are giving your readers content in a succinct fashion.

You cannot control how your user is viewing your site.

Are they laying on the couch on their tablet?  Are they quickly trying to find information on their phone while walking down the street? Your reader’s attention span is most likely short. Help them skim.

When creating content that will be viewed through several channels (mobile, tablet, desktop) it is essential that you take the viewing area accessible to your user into consideration. A small paragraph on the desktop can fill the entire screen of a mobile device so write your content in a way that it can be consumed easily across multiple platforms.

Tips for helping your reader’s read your content:

A visualization of the F Pattern.

1. People generally follow the “F” pattern, they read left to right and top to bottom. Place your most important content in the upper left hand portion of the page.

2. People skim content. Avoid fluff content and superfluous adjectives that aren’t adding depth to your material.

3. Write short sentences and use bullet points when possible to capture the most important content in the shortest amount of space.

4. Clearly define headers for each section by differentiating them by font or font weight from the paragraph copy.

Duo COO Kelly Tetterton will moderate a panel at the 2013 CMSExpo

Non-profit executives and marketers attending the 2013 CMS Expo will want to attend the panel presentation “Why Non-Profit ‘The Cara Program’ Turned to Drupal” at 1 p.m., May 15, in the Bonbright Room. Panelists will include The Cara Program’s Director of Development and Communications, Sarah Mansberger and Steve Heye, Manager of Technology and will be moderated by Duo Consulting’s Chief Operating Officer Kelly Tetterton.

The panel will discuss how the Drupal CMS-based website Duo developed made it easier for The Cara Program — a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the cycle of homelessness and poverty — to accept donations, recruit volunteers, sign up for mailing lists, and attract sponsors and employment partners and update content on the site. The website also features a radically improved user experience and more intuitive navigation structure.

Says Duo’s Tetterton, “Drupal provides a significant business proposition for non-profit organizations because it provide the tools they need to boost program visibility, ease information sharing information, and improve public engagement and fundraising efforts – without the expense and limitations of most proprietary content management systems.”

The CMS Expo, an annual conference focused on content management system platforms, will be held at the Hilton Orrington Hotel in Evanston, Illinois from May 14-16. Attendees include executives, marketers, developers and content strategists across industries. For complete scheduling information, and to register, please visit cmsexpo.net.