Hello Fellow Ventura Drupallers,

I've been very interested to help host an event for Drupal in our area for some time. I can see that this area has not seen much in the way of new events in a while so I wanted to see if there was interested in meeting for a simple get together here in April. I know of a few venues that might potentially want to sponsor our event but it all comes down to the response. I was thinking of having some lightning talks, perhaps some one-on-one Drupal help, or featured talks.

I don't mind giving a talk on Vagrant, or Behat if folks want but I would like to hear more about how we can restart AND invigorate this community.

Thanks!
General.Consensus

Last Nights Drupal Meetup

As you may know last night's Ventura Drupal Meetup was held at BJ's Restaurant in Westlake Village. There was a diversity of interest in the group ranging from beginner to advanced topics, all shared over drinks and cheesy appetizers. Thanks to Bill, Christo, Jeff, Kevin, Elliot and others for coming out to last night's meetup. Tons of laughs, lots of fun and great conversations.

Tonight's Topics of interest were:

   CiviCRM integration
   Installation Profiles
   Vagrant/Chef
   Git
   Beginning Drupal
   File Depot Module
   Drush
...and more!

An especially big thanks to Bill Kern from Pixelgate Networks who has graciously invited us to host future Ventura Drupal Meetups at Pixelgates Networks home office in Westlake Village.

   Ok, so what is the plan of attack? Glad you asked!

The group showed equal interest in both basic and advanced presentation topics. It was clear that a Git presentation and a yet to be determined advanced presentation topic would be slated for our first meetup on May 15, 2013. I will create a separate event thread with all the details here in Ventura Drupal.

   Tell us what you think!

Reply to this thread with your ideas on what kinds of advanced topics you would be interested to hear about on May 15 or if you would like to present. Obviously time is of the essence with 3 weeks to go so reply before May 8th if you want to present. You can contact either myself or Christefano on G.D.O. or D.O. directly if you want to present.

Again thanks to everyone who came out to last night's meetup -- it's really awesome to create a truly accessible and collaborative Drupal community in Ventura County.

Volunteer for the Bay Area Drupal Camp and learn how to design for Drupal community events. You will work with the current BADCamp team to assisting in making this BADCamp the most magical yet.

In its 7th year, BADCamp provides four days of training, summits, sprints, sessions, BoFs, jobs, networking opportunities and more!

As the BADCamp design volunteer you will have the opportunity to assist with the following design elements, including print production:
* Day of signage
* T-shirts
* BADCamp swag
* Website imagery
* Camp schedule
* Summit and training signage
* Other elements as they surface

To apply, please send an email to anne@badcamp.net with the following:
- An overview on your current experience in design
- Why you love Drupal
- Samples of your work
- Anything else that demonstrates your ability to make BADCamp magical!

Not local to the Bay Area? Apply anyway, travel scholarships are available!

I didn't want to create an event for this since it's not anything like an official LA Drupal thing. But folks have asked at various times to know when I'm playing a gig, so here goes. It's this Sunday at The Big Fish, a low-key divey bar in Glendale, and it's free!

Sunday 6/30, 8 PM - 12 AM (or so)
5230 San Fernando Rd
Glendale, CA 91209
http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-big-fish-glendale

The band is called The Shuffle Brothers, which hosts a couple weekly jams, playing blues, rock and roll, funky jazz, and whatnot. It's a lot of fun, and the house band is really good. Most of the people who come out to jam are also really good, professional players. If you play or sing, it's a good place to do it. If you don't, it's good just to sit and listen. The house band plays for the first hour or so, then the jammers come up and start sitting in.

If you'd like to come and see me do what I do when I'm not making web stuff, this is a chance to do that. Come early if you definitely want to see me play. If no other drummers show up, I'll be playing the whole night (this has happened before), but usually I expect to play for an hour and then hang out most of the rest of the night.

Hello all,

I hope everyone is looking forward to a nice sizzling July 4th!

In anticipation of the upcoming DCLA2013 next weekend, I wanted to announce that there are only 3 seats left for our Drupal/Vagrant/Chef free training, You'll Never Take My VMs Alive.

I'd also like to ask anyone who previously signed up for the training who will not attend to unpick themselves from the session, so we can get an accurate head count. This is a free thing so we are tracking the attendees block in the right column of the site.

We have a 24 seat room in the Engineering Hall, so if you see more than 24 avatars then we are full.

I will update this discussion with directions to the training when I have them.

The session will start on Friday July 12th at 9am with a quick opening, an hour of slides, and then some hands on server bootstrapping. We will have a base box for everyone running Mac OSX (sorry Windows and Linux folks). If you are not on our preferred OS you can still make a box yourself but I would recommend some before traning planning to download the base install from the instructions here:

http://www.vagrantbox.es/

We will be using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64 bit for the day.
http://files.vagrantup.com/precise64.box

Hi all,

With the upcoming Drupal Module Development Boot Camp series and Drupal Design Camp LA conference, our organizing time is stretched a bit thin and we will not be having the Frontend Drupal or Drupal Commerce meetups for a while.

If anyone wants to pick up these meetups and run with them, please feel free to post a comment here. Our organizers will be happy help with any assets and resources you need, including venues, video conferencing, projectors, and so on.

Thanks for reading!

This week Droplabs was recognized by Drupical as the top Drupal location for Drupal events around the world over the past 12 months. Thanks, Drupical! This level of activity has been made possible entirely by our community of event organizers, attendees and supporting sponsors.

Drupical is an awesome event listing service that aggregates and visualizes Drupal events around the world in a handy, attractive web app. It's especially useful while traveling and it's what we recommend to participating members of the California Drupal Travelers Program.

The next time you come to Droplabs, be sure to check out our "take a card, leave a card" table and pick up a few Drupical pins.

We Need Your Help!

In addition to all the Drupal meetups, job fairs and workshops that Droplabs hosts, we're offering a free, application-based Drupal Module Development Boot Camp program that begins July 22, 2013. This series of 10 sessions is designed to level up the skills of Drupal and PHP developers and train them with what they need to become more experienced (and marketable!) backend Drupal developers, and valuable contributors to the Drupal project itself by teaching our community's contribution process and toolchain (Git, issue queues, etc.).

We need help from sponsors to cover our training, food and venue rental costs. Contact Us to learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and sponsor perks, including entrance to our next Drupal job fair.

If your company is in the Los Angeles area and you can send an instructor to lead a few boot camp sessions, we'd like to talk with you about in-kind sponsorship. This will greatly reduce our training costs and make this program an even bigger success.

Droplabs, Present & Future

Our mission here at Droplabs has included Drupal coworking, mentoring and training services from the very beginning. While we've since expanded our mission to support other user groups and open source communities, we continue to offer low- to no-cost access to Drupal mentoring and training resources, free coworking days, office services and structured mentoring sessions with expert Drupal developers and business advisors.

We've been having a lot of fun with the synergy that happens when combining coworking values and open source values. To that end, we're exploring a "store-in-store" business model and are in talks with a number of businesses and organizations to open new Droplabs locations across the Los Angeles area. Stay tuned for a series of announcements about additional locations where we'll be offering more Droplabs coworking, training and mentoring services. And, of course, more Drupal meetups and workshops.

Hi all,

Droplabs has a huge surplus of new Drupal Watchdog magazines at our original Downtown Los Angeles location. If any organizers of Drupal meetups, conferences and workshops around Southern California want a stack to take back to their meetups, let us know!

   https://droplabs.net/contact

These are being offered free of charge. Droplabs doesn't have the resources to ship or deliver these, however, so the only catch is you'll need to come pick them up.

If you're going to a Greater Los Angeles Drupal meetup or workshop in Ventura, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Riverside, etc., just let the organizers know in advance so they can arrange to have extras on hand for you and your group.

Many thanks to Tag1 Consulting (the publishers of Drupal Watchdog) for making this possible, and to all the local area Drupal user groups for supporting Drupal across Southern California!

Are you a developer or designer of a mobile website or native app, but don't have access to the tablets, smartphones and other devices you need for cross-device and cross-platform testing and development? Now you do!

Open Device Lab is Droplabs' program designed to accommodate the needs of freelancers, independent contractors, remote workers and and indie developers. All equipment is available to use free of charge, although Droplabs' standard day passes or membership fees may apply.

Devices are being added on a regular basis and are listed on the Open Device Lab page. Our wishlist of devices we'd like to add to the program are on our Wishlist page. You can either donate your unused devices or make a long-term loan (we'll put your name on it and store it securely). Donations are preferred.

Open Device Lab Events

During a scheduled Open Device Lab meetup, you're encouraged to bring your devices to share with other attendees. When the meetup is over, just take your devices home with you. These "crowdtesting" events make it possible for everyone to get the most out of their time!

Help Us Grow!

Our goal is to be the premier open device testing lab in the Los Angeles area. If you'd like to lend or donate any unused iOS, Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone devices for use in this program, please Contact Us.

Calling all Drupallers!!!

it may be "Summer" in the Bay Area now (translation: 55 degrees and foggy), but we're dreaming of October - warm, golden sunshine, bay breezes, and of course, BADCamp! We hope you'll join us for the biggest and best free Drupal Event in the world this October 24-27, in and around the beautiful University of California at Berkeley campus.

We're back with a great lineup of world-class Drupal summits, sprints, trainings, and sessions - and all we need is YOU! Session Submissions are now open, so get registered and then submit your session.

Summits

Born at BADCamp and a fan favorite - Summits are back for TWO FULL DAYS with your favorites and some new faces. If you haven't attended one of these, think "Super-BOF" - everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask for YOUR corner of Drupal. Covering eCommerce, Non-Profits, DevOps, UI/UX, Higher Ed, Mobile, and Product (plus the Core Developer Summit on Sunday), there really is something for everyone. Sign-up early, get involved, and get ready to meet your new Drupal Besties.

Training classes

We're also thrilled to bring back FREE Drupal Training classes. Reserve your spot early to get your pick from our two days of world-class trainings from top experts. With excellent topics such as What's New in Drupal 8, Drupal Performance and Scalability, and Level up your Themer, these will fill up quickly!

Accommodations

You know you want to join us in October - make it easy on yourself and book early! This year, the Hotel Durant is hosting the 24/7 ChX coder lounge and we have a group discount rate available by using this link or call the Hotel Durant at (800) 238-7268 and tell them you're with BADCamp. Book now, at the Durant, or other nearby hotels - http://2013.badcamp.net/hotels.

Scholarships

Do you have the Drupal skills to share, but need some help getting to Berkeley? We have a limited number of scholarships available - apply at http://2013.badcamp.net/scholarship-applications. We want to see you there!

Sponsorships

How do we make this all possible for free? Our awesome Sponsors, of course! Whether you join us as a Core Sponsor as a company or an Individual Sponsor as your amazing, Drupal-loving self (http://2013.badcamp.net/individual-sponsor), you make this event possible. We have some great benefits at all levels. For more info, email anne@badcamp.net or matt@badcamp.net.

We'll wrap this up, but think warm thoughts for your 2013 BADCamp Organizing Team. We can't wait to see you here in October!

Hi everybody, I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that we have literally dozens and dozens of videos of presentations and lightning talks that were recorded at Drupal meetups and conferences throughout the Greater Los Angeles Area. Check them out:

   http://blip.tv/gladrupal 

This video collection has had tens of thousands of views. We also have another hundred or so videos of recorded videos from meetups over the past year that just haven't been uploaded yet. I'm pretty sure we have more videos than any other Drupal user group!

The bad news? Blip.tv just sent us a friendly email:

Over the past year, Blip has been conducting an ongoing review of our content library. Starting in March, 2013 we began closing accounts that don’t meet our criteria of being the best in original web series or are not compliant with our Terms of Service. As part of this effort, your account will be removed on November 7, 2013. New uploads to your account have been disabled, effective immediately.

So, is anyone interested in saving our videos by getting together at our first-ever video sprint? The plan is to get together, upload videos to our new Vimeo channel, add some fun descriptions, and share some good stories, food and drinks.

Please post a comment below and let everyone know what time and what part of town works for you. Once we know when and where we're getting together, a separate event announcement will go out.

I want to introduce you to a code generation tool we have been working on, it's a code generator scaffolding tool for Drupal8 based on Symfony Console component.

The idea of this project is to provide similar functionality as the Symfony console, providing a CLI scaffolding tool to automate the creation of modules using the terminal to automatically generate the directory structure for controllers, forms, services and required files.

Github repository
https://github.com/hechoendrupal/DrupalAppConsole

Watch a video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkHT2KctR-Y

So. Give it a try and don't be hesitate and post your feedback, feel free to fork & contribute

We are currently planning generate & edit twig files directly from Drupal 8 UI and generate Unit Test for Controllers.

Hello everyone:

SANDcamp 2014 is live for business. Thanks to Jason Savino for making the website work this year with some new twists and Rich Yumul for importing data from the old site. We have six weeks to generate some social media noise and get SANDcamp rocking.

We have great keynote speakers: Jeff Beeman and Josh Koenig. Jeff is the solutions architect for 8-figure Drupal projects and Josh is, well Josh (Co-Founder of Chapter 3 and Pantheon).

We have a full slate of trainings and we're ready to signup attendees and sessions! We need your help to invite and remind folks to register. We'll have 5-6 parallel tracks, hands-on session (2.5 hours) and way too much beer.

Saturday night is sponsored by Kwall and may be poolside at the beautiful and intimate Dana Hotel. Thanks to KWall for their Platinum Sponsorship!

Georgette K, Diana, Ben and Jake are heading up marketing officially -- a big thanks. The venue this year will be fun, cozy and compact. Great free parking, hotel within walking distance and Christoph is leading the charge for boosting the venue wifi.

T-shirts, Josh Koenig Limited Edition Hoodie, food trucks and coffee and sponsors– what more could we want? Attendees and sessions of course.

How can you help?

• --Invite companies to sponsor
• --Invite people to attend
• --Encourage everyone, including yourself to submit a session.
• --Volunteer

If you have time to volunteer:

• --Ask to be put on the SANDcamp Skype
• --Join the Basecamp group (just ask)
• --Tell us what you'd like to do

Have ideas for camp? Let us know!

Thanks everyone,
Susan

This year's GLADCamp conference will feature the first Extreme Drupal Games! This event will run throughout the conference, beginning on Friday, March 7th and ending when winners are announced at the closing of the conference on Sunday, March 9th.

We have a sponsor who will be donating 6 identical VMs (distro and stack TBD) for us to use during the conference. I've asked that each VM have a minimum of 2 cores and 4GB of RAM, but exact specs are still being worked out. These VMs are hosted at 1 Wilshire in Downtown Los Angeles, so there will be extremely low latency.

The plan right now is for up to 6 teams to compete over the course of the weekend, tuning both the stack and the Drupal application to get the best possible performance in the allotted time. The team with the fastest Drupal site at the end of the conference will be declared the winner.

Now that we have a date and time, the question is how we're going to load test and judge the teams. What are the rules? Do we test for both anonymous and logged in users? Will contestants be permitted to rip out pieces of the stack and install completely different ones? How about the use of premade scripts? Do we allow commercial software, or go 100% free and open source?

To be fair to all participants, I think each VM should have an identical stack and preloaded Drupal site (with a couple gigabytes of kitten photos, of course), each on their own subdomain or IP address whose location is only known to the judges and the team assigned that VM.

What do you all think? Can we do this in time? We were talking about the idea this week at the High Performance Drupal Meetup but need everyone's help and crazy ideas to make it happen. Please share your thoughts and suggestions!

All,

I setup the draft of the wiki page for SCALE for this year (Feb 22 and 23): https://groups.drupal.org/node/401543

Please note, this is a FIRST DRAFT, please feel free to add yourself to the list and edit any content that I may have messed up via copy/paste from last year.

We are going to need more volunteers than just me, so please sign up by editing the wiki page!

More information on SCALE can be found here: https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale12x

Cheers,
Chris
http://www.stauffer.com

Training day at GLADCamp 2014, this year's Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp, is on March 7th, 2014. We have room at our conference venue for 3 simultaneous trainings and are starting our call for trainings! Everyone is welcome to apply:

   https://gladcamp.org/2014/training

Space is limited and priority is given to experienced Drupal trainers and training companies. Don't let that discourage you, though. If you're a newcomer to the Drupal training scene and want to offer something no one has offered before, we'd love to hear from you!

If the training you'd like to provide is a paid training, please be sure to indicate that in your application. In order to create an even playing field for everyone, our preference is to either have all trainings be free or all trainings be paid.

Wait, what's GLADCamp again?

Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp is a free, 3-day conference on March 7th, 8th & 9th, 2014, at the Hilton Pasadena & Convention Center in Pasadena, California. This conference is packed with 3 full days of activities, including sessions, presentations, a Non-Profit Summit, trainings, a job fair, a website "barn raising" to benefit a local non-profit, and more!

GLADCamp is for All Things Drupal and is brought to you by the same team who organize countless Drupal events in the Greater Los Angeles Area, including Drupal Design Camp LA, the Drupal Job Fairs, the High Performance Drupal meetups, Drupal Sprint Weekends and Drupal Coworking Fridays.

Find out more and register at https://gladcamp.org 

Yes it is true! Drupal Camp Phoenix is just around the corner! Join us February 28-March 2, 2014.

Drupal Camp Phoenix is a conference organized by professional Drupal organizations to promote and advance the Drupal community in Arizona and the Southwest region. Drupal Camp Phoenix brings together Dru-Pals interested in learning about web content management and expanding his or her skills in web development.

This is where your help comes in! We are asking those who've put submitting a session topic in the back burner to do so ASAP! We are still accepting workshop proposals. You can select to speak on any topic revolving around Drupal, from advanced engineer to end-user, such as:

• web development
• business development
• marketing and
• end-user efficiencies of using Drupal

If interested, please feel free to contact us directly! Or, submit a session topic online!

Register: http://www.drupalcampphoenix.com/user/register?destination=group/node/94...

Submit a Session: http://www.drupalcampphoenix.com/user/login?destination=/node/add/sessio...

Today is our official call for barn raising applications at this year's GLADCamp, the Greater Los Angeles Drupal Camp!

On March 9, 2014, we'll be building a website from scratch to include much needed functionality, design, and other work required by a local 501c3 non-profit organization.

This event is "Drupal for Good in action" and is a teach-and-learn opportunity for our local Drupal community and is a win-win-win for everyone.

What's a Barn Raising?

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_raising

• A "barn raising" describes a collective action of a community, in which a barn for one of the members is built or rebuilt collectively by members of the community.
• Barn raising was particularly common in 18th- and 19th-century rural North America. A barn was a necessary structure for any farmer, for example for storage of cereals and hay and keeping of animals. Yet a barn was also a large and costly structure, the assembly of which required more labor than a typical family could provide.
• Barn raising addressed the need by enlisting members of the community, unpaid, to assist in the building of their neighbors' barns. Because each member was entitled to recruit others for help, the favor would eventually return to each participant.

Just replace the word "barn" in the description above with "website" and you'll see that we've adapted this "barn raising" model for the digital world.

Interested in Mentoring?

We need help from experienced Drupal developers, site builders, themers and project managers. Contact us!

Interested in Learning?

Stay tuned to this page for more information. Prepare to come to the barn raising event with your laptop, power cables, and anything else you may need.

Need a Website? Apply Now!

We're currently accepting applications from non-profit organizations. The official start of barn raising applications begin February 10, 2014, and end on February 21, 2014.

Space is limited and priority is given to non-profit organizations with active 501c3 status, are able attend 2-3 planning meetings, and can attend GLADCamp itself. Our official rules are as follows:

• All organizations who apply must be a registered 501c3 non-profit in order to be considered;
• A representative from the non-profit organization must be able to attend GLADCamp and the barn raising itself, as well as at least 2 project planning meetings in advance of the event;
• The GLADCamp barn raising application committee has the final decision of which non-profit organization is chosen for the barn raising;
• Any donations of food and drinks that the organization can coordinate for our volunteers during the barn raising is highly recommended and appreciated!

"Drupal for Good" in Action

Do you have any questions that aren't already answered here? Contact us or come to the session, Community Barn Raisings: Drupal for Good in Action, during the conference! The barn raising organizers will be describing how this type of "code sprint" event is accomplished.

We are preparing an English version of Forcontu's Drupal training program and we are looking for bilingual English/Spanish people interested in translating (from Spanish to English) part of the materials. In exchange you'll receive free online training (7 months & 420 certificated hours, valued at USD$ 1500) to become an Expert in Drupal 7. You can also give this training opportunity to another person of your choice (maybe a friend, employee or client).

If you are interested or know somebody that could be, please fill in or share the form to contact us. More information at this URL: http://www.forcontu.com/bilingual-volunteers

DrupalCon, our community's biggest conference for all things Drupal, is just around the corner. Who's going to Austin? Who's presenting? Where will our group photo be?

To help organize all our activities while in Austin, we have a "DrupalCon LA" group chat on GroupMe. To join the group chat, post a request here in this thread and I'll add you or join the open group at https://groupme.com/join_group/4464455/Xwc6FT 

This is the same "DrupalCon LA" group chat that we used last year at DrupalCon Portland and it was really helpful for organizing the group photo for folks from the Los Angeles area. The group chat still has 17 people signed up!

New to GroupMe? Here's what Wikipedia says:

GroupMe has a web client as well as mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Those who don’t want to use the app can still send and receive GroupMe messages through SMS Users begin by creating a “group” and adding contacts.

When someone sends a message, everyone in the group can see and respond to it. The app allows users to easily attach and send pictures as well. Users can also send private messages, but only to users who also have the GroupMe app.