Drupal Community Helpdesk at CoLab Orlando, First Fridays June 4, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Tech, CoLab, Coworking, Drupal, floridacreatives ; 3 comments12:00 – 1:30 PM, June 5th, July 3rd, August 7th, September 4th at CoLab Orlando
It might look something like this
A few months ago, I attended my first DrupalCon, and what an explosion of open source community awesomeness it was. As Mike and I are running a fledging Drupal shop, I was subconsciously looking for a shop I could use as a signpost, a group whose values and practices were in line with where I would like to be in a few years. I met the fine guys and gal from Advantage Labs in Minneapolis/St Paul, and was introduced to some of the awesome stuff they do.
One really great thing they offer in addition to web hosting, consulting and training is what they call Lab Hours. Twice a week, anyone experiencing a hang-up in their site, or just folks who are interested in helping, come by their offices for some roundtable support time. A goal is set to accomplish a certain task at the end of 2 hours, everyone pairs off and work commences.
There is no “expert” in the room doing all of the work. It’s roundtable style, and that’s how it should be.
This is pretty much a direct physical manifestation of the kind of help you get in #drupal-support in IRC. I have helped out there a bunch, and then having heard about this concept, I decided Orlando could use some community helpdesk time as well.
Starting with the first Friday of the month, I’ll start hosting Lab Hours of my own here in Orlando. If you’ve attended DrupalCamp Florida or a Drupal Meetup, if you’ve attended one of our DrupalEasy training days or webinars, or if you’re just curious about learning how to use this open source content management system, you’re welcome to come by and share.
If nobody shows up, I’m going to open up IRC and help people in other parts of the world. I also intend to show everyone where they can go and get more help outside of helpdesk time.
CoLab is Orlando’s first and only coworking space, on the 6th floor of the Angebuilt building, 37 N. Orange Ave. It’s right at the corner of Wall St and Orange Ave, above Subway. It’s the perfect place to host an event of this kind.
Training: Zero To Drupal, Orlando – May 15, 2009 April 24, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Local, Tech, Drupal, Events, Orlando, training ; 1 comment so farMy company, DrupalEasy, is holding our second monthly training course in Orlando. Our March event gave us some great feedback, and we’re excited to bring some Drupal love to Orlando.
Friday, May 15, 2009 9:00am – 5:00pm
Training Course(s): Zero To Drupal
Leu Gardens
1920 North Forest Avenue
Orlando, FL, 32803
See map: Google Maps
Join us for a full day beginner workshop at scenic Leu Gardens in Orlando to learn all you need to know about Drupal as an economical content management platform. If you manage, need, develop or design sites that require information posting and collection including blogs, forums, videos, photos, or other data, sign up now at our hometown rate of $175. Seats are limited.
Drupal offers time and cost savings without sacrificing amazing functionality because it allows for quick development turn-around, easy internal updates and virtually no limit to the number of users. Zero to Drupal includes an information-rich, no-frills session perfect for designers, website developers/administrators, and even marketing professionals looking into Drupal to keep quality while cutting costs.
We’ll provide coffee and carbs to start the venture into the who, what, why, and hows of Drupal, including how you can access the plethora of free resources available through this open-source software and its devoted developer community. You’ll learn about the building blocks, installation, updates and security, modules and themes, as well as get some hands on editing exercises to get you comfortable.
The workshop runs from 9 to 5, with a break midday so you can grab a quick bite at one of several nearby lunch spots, or take in the scenic grounds of Leu Gardens. Registration is limited, so sign up now.
DrupalCon DC, DrupalEasy Podcast February 21, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, Podcasts, Travel ; comments closedIn less than two weeks, I and a few of my geeky Drupal friends will be jetting up to DC for a massive gathering of Drupallers larger than the world has ever seen.
With well over 1,200 tickets sold, this will be almost one-half larger than any previous Drupal convention. I’m hoping to see some folks I met in New Orleans and make some new friends.
Mike, Andrew and I will be there promoting our Drupal Easy Training, one of the ventures of our new project. To date, we have released a bunch of blog posts and one podcast.
The podcast has already been mentioned in a poll about future DrupalCons and on Dries’ twitter.
Listen to DrupalEasy 01: “Dries for President”:
You can subscribe to it in iTunes (search for DrupalEasy) or you can get the latest episodes from the DrupalEasy website.
Also, if your going to be at DrupalCon DC and you want to be a guest on the podcast please contact Andrew so he can set up a time. I will have the N96, and Mike will have a Flip camera, so we’ll probably be doing some conference videos as well.
P.S. I’m still looking for a room in DC – if you know of anything, I’m game!
Chilling in New Orleans (literally) December 12, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, qik, Travel ; comments closedIn NOLA for Do it with Drupal this week and having a great time.
It’s so cold here that it snowed!
Letting go the Strings of Servitude October 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, BarCamp, Blogging, bloggingfringe, Career, CoLab, Coworking, Drupal, floridacreatives, Liberatr, Orlando, OrlandoScene, PopSci, Site News, Social Media Events, Teaching, Trends, Video ; comments closed
That’s right, folks, I quit my job at Bonnier. No more PopSci, no more corporate life.
Somehow I thought our friend Jonathan (above) working his VCRs and television sets helped get that message across. As Pandos, instead of fighting against modern technology, just letting a couple of simple magnetic tapes play serves as a more entertaining picture than a single curated stream.
My life working at Bonnier had become a lifestyle – long days (and nights), spending all day in the same place doing the same thing. I couldn’t even take 7 months of that.
So now what?
I’ve got a couple of freelance things lined up that should bring in the next month’s income alright, but I don’t want another hourly job. Here are some ways I plan on keeping myself distracted:
- Drupal Easy – this is the home for some (free) Drupal advice, and hopefully some (paid) screencasts, eBooks and tutorials. I will be doing a Drupal conference circuit in the next few months to connect with folks who are looking for training more than straight-up work. I hope I am a good provider.
- Orlando Scene TV – I still have yet to see a project emerge that achieves the goals of this videoblog. The more I think about it, the more it needs to be a one-on-one account of some fun stuff. We were trying to bring more of a TV correspondent feel to the show, but that takes work, and this is supposed to be about fun! Maintaining this channel gives a place for the Blogging Fringe videos and Orlando Puppet Festival content to go, and video is so engaging, measurable and portable — I really love doing this.
- Florida Creatives Podcast – I have been meeting some great people who need to get pulled in to this community, and one of the best ways to get them to care about you is by doing the completely selfless thing and asking them about themselves for half an hour, and sharing the conversation with the world on a well-trafficked web site. The happy hours will certainly continue.
- Florida Creative Summit – the idea here is to do something like BarCamp, but that covers more than just geekery – I am talking to some folks about how to pull this off right now, most of that goes down at Florida Creatives Happy Hour. This is the whole point of Florida Creatives coming to be in the first place.
- Coworking Orlando and our first coworking space in Orlando, CoLab – Coworking Teusdays are still going strong after some 8 months — also, I have already paid my $49 for use of a desk at CoLab in November — I’m not sure whether I will be full-time or part-time there in the future, but I know I want to be present for the birth of the formal coworking movement in Orlando. This is something I’ve been talking about for years, and now it’s downtown and affordable. Couple that with all the communities looking for useful consistent space, and the need for something like this is even greater. This probably deserves a separate blog post…
- Oh so many more things… like getting other Florida Creatives chapters going in other cities, like Brevard, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Tampa, South Florida — helping Petentials get to a happy place — doing a joint event with Doterati — creating a DIY community, a graphics hackers community, a podcasting community, a blogging community, an independent microblogging site, and lots of things I can’t think of just now.
To all my Bonnier peoples, I will keep in touch. Let’s do lunch! Blackwater BBQ?
To everyone else, it’s good to be back!
awk magic: renaming batch files August 13, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, Programming, Teaching ; comments closedHmm, somehow, files that should be jpegs have the extension “.null”… ugly!
ls -1 | \
awk -F\. '/.null/ { print "mv " $0, $1".jpg" }' \
| bash
Let’s say you have a bunch of files named “image.jpg.jpg”… ugh!
rprice@server$ ls -1 | \
awk -F\. '/.jpg.jpg/ { print "mv " $0, $1"." $2 }' \
| bash
Now they are renamed to just “image.jpg”, that’s pretty simple
Next challenge: you have several images which are named “image(1).jpg”… what do you do?
rprice@server$ ls -1 *\(1\)* | \
awk -F '\(1\)' '{ print "mv "$0 "(" $1 "" $2 "" $3 "" $4}' | \
awk -F\( '{ print $1 "\\(" $2 ")" $3 "" $4 "" $5}' | \
awk -F\) '{ print $1 "\\)" $2 " " $3 "" $4 "" $5}' \
| bash
Now they are also renamed to just “image.jpg” – you are a winner!
…and if you had anything named “image.jpg(1).jpg”, you will have to run both of these scripts. Lucky you!
For more awk tutorials, check out Drupal Easy.
P.S. if you also have a database that has the same nasty file names like this in it, example:
34,135887,image with spaces,image_with_spaces.jpg(1).jpg,image/jpeg,1
export the thing as a CSV and then apply the following script to the file before you drop all the rows and put them back in:
awk -F, 'BEGIN { OFS = "," } {
sub(/\([0-9]\)/, "", $4)
sub(/\.jpg\.jpg/, ".jpg", $4)
split($4, arr, "/")
print $1, $2, arr[2], "files/legacy/" $4, $5, $6
}' files.csv
Likemind.orl and Drupal June 19, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Coffee, Drupal, Events, floridacreatives, Likemind.orl, open source, Teaching ; comments closedIn about 10 hours a group of likeminded folks will get together for good coffee and conversations with friends and strangers. We do this once a month at the Lake Eola Panera Bread.
Likemind Orlando is part of a larger group of events which started in New York with two guys who were having good conversations online, and decided to move them to the coffee shop. Their friends in other cities liked the idea, and now, Likemind groups meet in more than 50 cities around the world on the same day every month.
Chris Scott will now be officiating over Likemind with me, since Alex left and got himself a house and a life on the East Coast (of Florida). Congrats and best of luck to Alex and Kathryn.
***********
Also coming up in the next few days is the 3rd installment of he Florida Drupal User’s Group. Myself and Mike Anello will be teaching classes on CCK and Views, respectively. You are all certainly invited to check out this event and ask tons of questions – we have left ourselves 4 hours to cover these topics, as each of them is kind of a big deal on its own.
You can get information and directions about how to get to the MindComet offices on groups.drupal.org/florida – the office is in Maitland.
Florida Drupal Group
Saturday, June 21st
1pm – 4pm
MindComet – Maitland
New Drupal Tutorials June 17, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Drupal, open source, Programming, Site News, Teaching ; comments closedYes, I have yet another blog: this one is all about Drupal. Right now there are exactly 4 posts, but two of them came this week, so there may be an upturn in the posting over there. If anybody out there wants to write some tutorials, I’d be open to that.
The first howto was sort of “scratching an itch”. I got really tired of manually downloading, unzipping, uploading and activating modules when it was time to install a new Drupal site or update an existing one, so I came up with a workflow that gets it all done in record time: Using AWK to Download and Unpack Drupal Modules
The second one was a question delivered to me via chat: How to create a “related pages” block in Drupal 6, but we can’t find any useful modules and my personal recommendation, Panels, is not ported to version 6 yet. Therefore, with some Arguments magic, I bring you (now, new and improved, with 15 screenshots!): Using Views 2 and Drupal 6 to Create a Related Pages Block
In other Drupal news, the Florida Drupal User’s Group is having our 3rd meeting this weekend, June 21st, at the behest of MindComet in Maitland. I’ll be giving a talk about CCK (the Content Construction Kit), specifically using it with Drupal 6, and Mr. Mike Anello will be giving a talk on Views. The whole thing lasts about 4 hours – from 1 to 5 PM. The first two meetings were absolutely worth it, so I highly recommend coming down to check it out, if only for a shorter portion of the marathon.
The next stage for this Drupal Easy project is to build out some wiki pages that outline key Drupal concepts and relate them to each other, wiki-style. It’s something folks have been asking me for ever since the move to Bonnier and the “Drupal Expert” label, so I’m going to see if I can deliver. If that all goes well, there just might be a print version up for sale at LuLu.com as well. No promises, but that’s the plan.
P.S. Not that I want to brag, but Angie and Nate from Lullabot are coming to Orlando this week to train the staff at Bonnier in the use of Drupal. This is the only public mention I’ve made in quite some time, but I’m pretty damn excited to meet the gurus.
Orlando PHP Tonight: Drupal May 27, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, Events, floridacreatives, Orlando, Programming, Teaching ; comments closedAt DeVry University near the Mall of Millenia, tonight at 7PM, I will be presenting at the 2nd ever Orlando PHP user group meeting. David and Derek asked me to come talk about Drupal after my peanut-gallery comments during last month’s framework shootout event.
Topics for discussion:
- What is Drupal? (origins, community, open source)
- Everything is a node, except the things that aren’t.
- What’s in a name? Drupal Taxonomy and Categories
- “Go ask your mother”: Drupal’s Access Control system.
- Modules, data types, and hooks, oh my!
- What’s on the menu? Everything!
- Flexible sidebars with blocks, regions, and visibility.
- Content vs. Layout – Drupal Themes
I will also be showing off some of the features we used to construct the OrlandoFringe.org, FloridaCreatives.com and Petentials.com websites.
For those curious to learn more Drupal, we have a whole slew of lectures planned into the fall through the Florida Drupal group on groups.drupal.org – our meetings are second? Saturdays of the month at the MindComet offices in Maitland, just off of 434.
In other PHP UG news, the Meetup.com PHP group, hosted first Thursday of the month at the Bonnier Corporate HQ in Winter Park Village (above Brio) will be coming up June 5th. 4 programmers representing Zend Framework, CodeIgniter, CakePHP and Symfony will be building a blog in 10 hours using the same database tables, then taking another 10 hours to extend the blog platform. Hopefully this will serve as a fun and informative hands-on introduction to the strengths and weaknesses of these 4 popular PHP frameworks.
P.S. See Eric’s Blog for a description of the Shootout rules.
May is a Kickass Month for Arts Events in Orlando May 15, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Arts, bloggingfringe, Drupal, Events, Film, floridacreatives, Fringe, Likemind.orl, Music, Orlando, OrlandoScene ; comments closedWhy is May such a great month for holding events? Sure, for our Northern friends, it means the end of bad weather, the opening of roller coaster parks, and a change in the scenery as the trees and flowers start to show their summer colors, but here in Florida, it’s more like the start of the summer’s hot, humid, rainy monotony, the arrival of the tourists, time-share owners, kids on summer vacation, religious zealots protesting Gay Days, and of course, bad drivers in rental cars.
The main reason I look forward to May every year is the arrival of the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival (Thursday the 15th through Monday the 26th). Every year, theatre companies, dancers, comedians, clowns, musicians, improv actors, writer/directors, solo acts and large ensembles, exuberant teenagers and road-hardened veterans alike grace Loch Haven Park with their creativity and energy, and Orlando gives every ounce of it (and more) back to them as many of the national and international acts begin their Canadian Fringe circuit, which brings them to a new city every two weeks. Show prices range from free (as in free software) to $10, and all shows require the one-time purchase of a $6 festival button – 100% of your ticket money goes to the artist. This is one of the only unjuried, uncensored events I know of in Orlando outside of a few open-mic nights, and even some of those are passing judgment on the performers (the other best example here is BarCamp).
18 months ago, I started gathering a group of my friends together every third Monday of the month for an event called Florida Creatives Happy Hour (Monday the 19th, 6PM @ Loch Haven Park). Now, those original 8 friends are hardly in the same room, but the group has grown to something resembling a small political party representing the creative professionals and hobbyists here in Central Florida (with a group getting started in Jacksonville as I write this). This month’s Florida Creatives falls during the Fringe Festival, so at 6PM on the 19th we will be descending upon their “Green Lawn of Fabulousness” to have a beer and some soul food and socialize. At 7:45, we will be attending American Squatter, starring Barry Smith, the creator of last year’s sell-out hit Jesus in Montana. Tickets are $10 plus your $6 Fringe button.
Despite the fact that Fringe starts on the same day every year, another festival seems to think they are better than the Fringe, by starting on the exact same day. Yes, the Florida Music Festival runs Thursday the 15th through Sunday the 18th this year, at pretty much every available venue downtown. In past years, you’ve been able to buy a one-time pass that gets you in to all the shows for the whole weekend, as well as nightly passes – buying a ticket to just one show will hardly do such an event justice. The festival also has a short film as well as an art contest, check these out too if you can find the time in between all of the other events happening at the exact same time.
What other events? How about that bizarre craft bazaar held semi-bi-anually at Stardust Video & Coffee, Grandma Party? (Saturday the 17th, 10AM to Sunset) For some reason they opted out of celebrating Earth Day in favor of overlapping with FMF and Fringe this year – the reason why is left as homework for the reader. Actually, if you find out, please try to explain this one to me too. At G-ma Party, you’ll not only find loads of handmade goods, like the cereal-and-eggs inspired work of the Breakfast Bunch, but trendy t-shirts, buckets of buttons, live music by some of Orlando’s best local bands (at least those who are friends with the festival organizers), a bal-looney community pool, and of course rummage piles and raffles.
Not as culturally significant, but still worth a mention, the second ever Florida Drupal User Group meeting will be held at the offices of MindComet in Maitland this Saturday (May 17th, 1PM). Check out the event and any follow-up at groups.drupal.org/florida.
Still more to come in this round-up of events, because I couldn’t write such a blog post without mentioning the Corazon Art and Music Festival being held at the Orlando Brewing Company (Sunday the 18th, starts 1PM, All Day). As I’m writing this I don’t have access to any listings, but I know tickets are $5, and I can give a serious recommendation, as this event is being thrown by Robert and Jonathan from Gamble Records, the folks who brought us the ELLA Music Festival in October. I expect you will see lots of singer-songwriter type acts, and you can trust Robert Johnson’s rolodex to bring you some great music (and art?).
There must be more happening during the next two weeks, but isn’t that enough? Of course, we can’t forget about this Friday (May 16th, 8AM-11AM) and the Likemind Orlando coffee meetup at the Lake Eola Panera Bread. This month there will be free coffee and hopefully a few free copies of a book called Murketing – I don’t have a lot of details about it, but I know the publishers of the book are sponsoring the coffee and snacks all over the US, so they get serious props.
If I’m missing anything here, please leave a shout-out, and I’ll try to include it in the next bulletin. Until next time, have a great May!
