Design Principles of HTML5: Jeremy Kieth Keynote Video September 2, 2010
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Tech, Video, Browsers, Design, Drupal, html5, presentations, Web Sites ; add a commentAre you curious about HTML5, and how it REALLY affects the future of the Internet? Long-time web design leader Jeremy Kieth recently gave a keynote presentation on HTML5 during the 2010 Drupalcon in Copenhagen, but don’t worry, this video will be useful even for non-Drupal web designers and developers.
Video from Drupal Radar, too bad there is no HTML5 video version. 
Jeremy goes into some universal Design Principles, like the 80/20 Rule and Postel’s Law. He even touches on the current and future state of web accessibility. This video is a must-watch for anyone who writes HTML or creates websites.
Yay Boston! January 22, 2010
Posted by Ryan in : Video, Arts, Drupal, Travel ; comments closedIt was prohibited to use a camera inside the museum, so I recorded this one in the parking lot.
I had a great time conducting training in Boston and met some great Drupal folks – @starshaped, @finkatronic, @himerus, and @susanmacphee. We hung out and had some good times, and I got a tour of the MIT Media Lab, which is on my short list of places to go if I ever feel insane enough to attempt graduate school. At the very least, that building houses some of the coolest projects that mankind has created in recent years. I’d like to go back, and I may get a shot when the next Desgin4Drupal event comes up.
While I was at the museum I also purchased a Diana F+ Camera by Lomography
I am finally getting to hang out at Proctors after having built them a new site last spring. It’s cool to actually see this space “IRL”.
Now I should get back to work fixing their Drupal TV displays. I only have a few minutes before I go meet everyone from the theatre.
Drupal and Interactive Marketing November 12, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, Markteting, PopSci, presentations ; comments closedCheck out this slideshow by Robert Douglass at a recent conference in Europe. Pretty heavy on the Acquia love, but a nice overview of some ways large companies are rolling out dozens of sites and micro-sites to as many different audiences with Drupal.
This was actually a large part of my daily responsibilities while working for Popular Science. We spent a lot of time working on a site for the annual Best of What’s New promotion (the email for this year’s BoWN just went out), as well as some micro-sites for a sports promotion, and the B2B part of BoWN.
Drupal’s multi-site capabilites, combined with things like Themes, Internationalization, Installation Profiles (or Features), and finally management products like Aegir, can really make rolling out a few dozen Drupal sites just as easy as rolling out just one site. We’ve actually had talks about this at some recent Florida Drupal User Group meetings.
What’s been going on in my life? November 8, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Podcast, Press, Tech, Amazon, Beer, cats, community, Design, Drupal, floridacreatives, house, Liberatr, photos, training, Travel, Web Services ; comments closed
Um… where has the time gone? So many things have been happening lately, I feel like if I were to tell them all here, I’d pass another 2 weeks just re-counting all of them.
After the New Media Think and Drink, (go listen to the audio, and the audio of the 2nd half), I was excited about Community Building and Social Media Consulting even more than I have been in a long time. Also, the Digital Media Banner Center asked me to contribute to their New and Emerging Industries Task Force, which is basically trying to find jobs for journalists who have been laid off recently. I was very excited and honored to be a part of something constructive and forward-thinking. Needless to say, they were able to (once again) gather a group of smart, talented and well-experienced people and get them to talk about changing the world. I love that kind of stuff.
We have been doing lots of awesome DrupalEasy stuff lately – we have great podcasts with book authors and our patented “bookaway” contests, where you get Drupal books just for listening and commenting. I also got the chance to FLY up do to some Drupal Training in North Carolina. It was the first time that someone (specifically, Tomas and Jerry) actually FLEW to come hear me speak. I was proud.
I had a great time and got to try some wonderful craft beers at the Flying Saucer in Raleigh. I also learned that Raleigh has a Drupal User Group, but a bit too late. They actually had their meeting the same night I was headed home. Maybe next time!
The new house is treating me very well, the cats, Mariah and I are all settling in just fine, but Fozzie (my cat) has to stay in his cage, because he’s still trying to heal his leg, and he gets in too many fights with Litmus and Loki (Mariah’s cats), who are much older and set in their ways. He really likes chasing them around the house and is constantly getting hit in the face while trying to mount the large cat tree in the living room.
It’s also really nice working here. I have been “working from home” for most of the past 6 years, but only in this house have I ever had a dedicated room as an office, and an atmosphere that was so conducive to working and collaborating with others. I think getting this house will be one of the things I look back on as being very good for my work and creative lives, in addition to the benefits everyone else gets from owning a house. We already had one big party here, back on Talk Like a Pirate Day, and a few weeks ago, we tested out the Party Patio, the BBQ grill, and the fire pit.
A large part of my last few months was actually dedicated to working with a friend of mine, Kyle, on teaching him Drupal, and updating the website for his podcast, the Student of the Game. That site and Florida Creatives are two of the ideas that have really stuck back from the days when I was doing Liberatr more full-time. Kyle was laid off, and I was trying to introduce him to web site building and freelancing. We got pretty far with the whole idea, but it’s not like you can just flip a switch and change someone’s life, so he’s taken a contract with some place crunching database rows and generating reports. We’ll keep working on it, just a bit slower. That’s fine, because I need to work too.
Speaking of Florida Creatives, we are inching up on the start of the 4th year of Orlando Happy Hours for creative people. Our regular meetup will take place on the 16th at Crooked Bayou, just like it always does. I’ve also been trying to delegate some of the responsibility, like website design. Erik Baldwin is a fantastic designer and a good friend, and he’s been coming up with some designs based on my rudimentary wireframes, and I’ve also been adding new features to the site, like the Communties and Meetups page. I’m not sure how this feature will ultimately present itself, but it’s already better than a flat wiki page with just text and links. There’s nothing stopping anyone from adding new ones, but we’re not exactly advertising the feature just yet.
Also this week, I have been having some problems with an old server I keep around for hosting personal sites and sites for friends, so I started the very large task of moving several gigabytes of files over to Amazon S3. Namely, all the podcasts I recorded a few years back, and everything Kyle produced for the Student of the game in the past 4 seasons of football. As far as I can tell, everything is happily hosted by “the cloud” now, and the end users don’t know the difference.
One more geeky update, and I’ll be through. It’s about Twitter, so feel free to tune out now.
Twitter finally added a feature… something useful, and something that would be hard for a 3rd party to add. It’s called Lists, and I started making some. They’re useful for me, as I’m following 1700 people and my attempts to make the list shorter are really just making me find more people I want to follow, but for a multitude of subjects. One is just plain old technology, which is what my RSS reader used to be for. The next is a collection of the other Twitter accounts I own or manage, and hopefully one day twitter will let me say WHY I made each list one day. The last and most complete right now is my list of Drupal people. I think I’m also going to start one for coworking, but I haven’t really done much with it yet.
I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out, but I feel pretty well vented right now. I really need to get to this blogging thing more often…
Drupal 7 will Rock so hard! October 24, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, community, Drupal, presentations, Programming ; comments closedWhere do I even begin?
First of all, I must preface that the Drupal Community is without a doubt one of the best open source communities. (meaning: most open, most likely to share code, experience and best practices, most innovative, most forward-thinking, least likely to “chase the bunny”, most likely to be the bunny, and most likely to create tons of venture-backed companies in the next few years)
I mean, the people involved are just amazing. The two DrupalCons I’ve attended were just amazing, and our local Florida DrupalCamp and Florida Drupal user groups are a big part of why I have not jumped ship to Python, Ruby, or other even other PHP-based platforms, and why I have no plans to any time soon.
We had a demo of the penumbrant Drupal 7 at our recent monthly Drupal user group. I am convinced it is THE CMS with more power under the hood (built-in, for free) than anything else… ever. The whole Job Queue API by itself is a reason to build web apps on top of this, and stop thinking of Drupal as a CMS – if you’ve got tons of processing that needs to happen, such as processing thousands of RSS feeds, or creating something very processing-intensive like Feedburner or Flickr, you will need to use multiple servers – a simple Cron job isn’t enough any more.
Then there is the database layer – not that it was the worst before, but there were certain kinds of configurations which used to require hacking core. Now, because of some pretty OOP (yes, Drupal has objects now!), you can override the database layer, and it uses PDO.
One huge change is the addition of a Fields API (AKA adding CCK to core, but it’s more than that). This means that instead of storing simple rows in a database, Drupal 7 exposes data storage to developers and end-users. At the most basic level, fields are used to store the title and body of nodes, categories/tags, images, dates, links, numbers or references to internal objects like nodes and users. This allows you to add extra fields to comments, user accounts and taxonomy terms as well.
Next, we’d have to talk about user interface and workflow improvements. The entire administrative interface now has a default skin – and there is now a compact administrative toolbar at the top of each page, plus a customizable bookmarks area and a configurable dashboard (unlike Wordpress, where you get to read Matt’s blog). The interface is a great sensible default, which is a bit of a departure from where Drupal has been in the last few years.
You’ll actually notice that there will now be a choice when you install Drupal – to use a “Basic” install, or strip everything down to the bare metal. In fact, you don’t even have to turn on node module any more – really. This is part of some hard work by folks who would like to use Drupal’s core as a PHP framework for building entirely custom apps (instead of smelly Zend Framework or the other unmentioned PHP tools that exist). If you look around for #smallcore, you’ll see what I mean.
There is so much more to say… In fact, this presentation by Steve Karsch says more. If you’re a big podcast listener, I’d highly recommend listening to Lullabot’s Drupal Voices. I’ll leave you with this, Drupal Planet and Google to find more.
(some) Drupal Theming: Slides July 16, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Tech, Browsers, Design, Drupal, presentations, themes, training ; comments closedFor a DrupalEasy workshop we taught today for NEFLIN, I put together some slides about learning good webpage design, which is mostly geared towards theming Drupal. All of the links in here are clickable, and I highly recommend you check them out.
(pass around a shortened URL to this slideshare with http://bit.ly/sAF6i)
I spent years making static pages and hand-coding stuff before I came to Drupal, and I feel as though I was able to reach the brains of some librarians today with a few of these links. It was good fun when I was showing off the article about Sprites. One guy said “…really small, fly around sprinkling magic dust”. Indeed.
Also, a quick reminder that we have a DrupalEasy CCK and Views Workshop coming up on July 23rd at Leu Gardens in Orlando. Use the coupon code “FLORIDA” to get $25 off registration.
Drupal Community Helpdesk at CoLab Orlando, First Fridays June 4, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Coworking, Local, Tech, CoLab, Drupal, floridacreatives ; comments closed12:00 – 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 ; comments closedMy 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!
