Want to contact me by voice?
(720) 254-1546

DC09

Are Panels and Skinr the future of point-and-click Drupal theming? - Drupalcamp Colorado

Posted Sat, 2009-07-25 19:07 by matthew

I didn't catch the video for the Panels portion of this presentation, but I did manage to get the majority of the Skinr demo and discussion. Don't expect any panels information in this post or in the videos.

Thanks to Stephanie Pakrul, Chris Fassnacht, Jay Wolf, and Chris Bryant for presenting.

A podcast of the whole presentation is available on archive.org here:

http://www.archive.org/details/PanelsAndSkinr-StephaniePakrul-Drupalcolorado

The Skinr project can be found on Drupal at: drupal.org/project/skinr

Stump the Chumps (What Modules to Use) - Drupalcamp Colorado

Posted Sat, 2009-07-18 23:43 by matthew

Greg Knaddison (Greggles) and Brad Bowman (beeradb) gave a session on modules you might consider using when you build a Drupal site and how to select modules with a fair degree of confidence you are choosing quality.

These are my notes from their session - not much more than a couple of lists - and videos from the session.

Brad and Greg started by talking about how best to choose good modules.

First off, you can go to:

  • http://drupal.org/project/usage to see which modules are used the most.

Functional Interactive Design - Drupalcamp Colorado

Posted Fri, 2009-07-17 13:00 by matthew

On June 27th, Laura Scott - the President and Creative Director of pingVision did a presentation at Drupalcamp Colorado on Functional Interactive Design. I took a few notes and captured some video from the presentation which I'm offering in this blog post.

Laura started by talking about her early experience with computers that ranged from the movies and TV to punch cards. She talked a bit about pascal and IBM mainframes. She used both a Mac and DOS in grad school making heavy use of Windows 3.1, 95, and NT. In 2002 she adopted the Mac platform.

Laura stressed that the session would not be about theming. She also indicated that the session would not discuss "Beauty for Beauty's Sake." The session would review her thoughts, observations, and things that Laura has learned.

Agile is Not 'Cowboy' Spelled Backwards - More Drupalcamp Colorado

Posted Tue, 2009-07-07 21:59 by matthew

This presentation was made by co-founder and COO of pingVision, Katherine Lawrence. These are my rapidly typed notes from her remarks. I've also included video from her presentation at the bottom of the post.

Katherine shared the history of pingVision - from its roots as a two person company running from an apartment to the current company that is much larger in a newly occupied downtown Boulder office.

Increase ROI with a user-friendly, great looking Ubercart store - Drupalcamp Colorado

Posted Thu, 2009-07-02 06:56 by matthew

Stephanie Pakrul and Chris Fassnacht from Top Notch Themes discussed Return on Investment and Ubercart. These are my notes from the presentation. I also took video that is broken up into four pieces at the end of this post. I was at the back of the room, so the sound is a little quiet. Hopefully it is still helpful.

They started out by talking about the strongest feature of Ubercart is its automatic integration with Drupal. That makes things relatively easy for the developer.

75% of users make a judgement about your company based on the design of a site. Business metrics can improve drastically with a good design. Quite simply good design can improve your conversion rate and improving you conversion rate is the investment that keeps on giving.

Starting Your Own Drupal Business: What's It Take? - Drupalcamp Colorado

Posted Tue, 2009-06-30 23:05 by matthew

Jono Shuster, the ED of the Entrepreneurial Standards Forum (http://es2f.org) did a session on Entrepreneurs and Drupal. These are my notes from that session and the marginal video I took during the presentation.

Jono started his comments by making an observation about the Denver Boulder User Group (DBUG) - half of them are entrepreneurs. He made the connection that Drupal and entrepreneurship is a natural fit. That led him to propose this presentation.

Drupal 6 SEO - Drupalcamp Colorado

Posted Mon, 2009-06-29 13:11 by matthew

Ben Finklea from Volacci presented SEO optimization for Drupal 6. These are my notes from the presentation. Below that are several videos from his presentation.

Ben started out by underlining that anyone can do Drupal SEO. There are plenty of good modules that you can use to help. There are videos and books that can also help you create a rocking SEO plan.

10 reasons that Drupal is the best platform for SEO

1) Configurable
2) Flexible
3) Stays optimized
4) No duplicate content
5) Clean code
6) Easy to integrate with 3rd party SEO services
7) Fights Spam
8) Allows for landing pages
9) Community Features
10) Thriving Ecosystem

How Ubercart and Drupal make my boss think I'm a genius

Posted Sun, 2009-06-28 19:03 by matthew

A Case Study of http://shop.usafa.org, the theme, the modules used, and Some great customizations that allow us to do more than used to be possible with our previous e-commerce web application.

The best stuff is in a custom panel that integrates with the checkout process, and does some Magic with our proprietary "Raisers Edge" database.

These are my notes from the session-forgive the speed at which they were taken. At the bottom of the notes are four short YouTube videos that I took during the presentation. The sound isn't great, but you should still be able to hear the discussion.

Welcome to the Jungle! Basic Drupal Recipes and Best Practices for Beginners

Posted Sun, 2009-06-28 16:43 by matthew

Carl Wiedemann did a basic session on basic Drupal usage as a live demo. These are my notes from the presentation, such as they are. He had a drupal instance set up where he:

We'll explain how high-level user needs translate into Drupal concepts. We'll start building a simple Drupal site with common features such as news, events calendar, downloads, and contact forms.

Day 1 at Drupalcamp Colorado, 2009

Posted Sun, 2009-06-28 08:44 by matthew

Today was the first day of Drupalcamp Colorado. I attended several sessions including:

  • Welcome to the Jungle! Basic Drupal Recipes and Best Practices for Beginners
  • Functional Interactive Design
  • Starting Your Own Drupal Business: What's It Take?
  • Modules You Should Use On Every Site OR Stump the Chump
  • Increase ROI with a user-friendly, great looking Ubercart store
  • Getting the most out of Drupal's taxonomy system

The day began with the opening session. There were roughly 200 people in attendance.