[consulting] and they call it drupalcamp

[Zack Rosen]

As posted here:
http://www.zacker.org/drupal-camp

The CivicActions folks are starting to organize the first "Drupal  
Camp", a multi-day intensive Drupal developer training program.

Why?
Every Drupal shop I know of is in a crunch of Drupal development  
talent. The limit on their ability to take on more and bigger  
projects is not from lack of sales leads or lack of management  
capability, it is simply there are not enough seasoned developers on  
hand to pay to work on Drupal development projects. An experienced  
and talented web-application developer will take a bit of time to  
learn Drupal inside and out and get up to speed developing complex  
websites, so it is not simply a matter of bringing in fresh talent,  
we need fresh Drupal talent. The Drupal economy is rocketing skyward  
and this problem will only become more intense in the forseable  
future. This is an immediate and growing problem that we need to  
start solving now.

Who?

    1. Drupal newbies sponsored by their parent companies  
(CivicActions, Trellon, etc)
    2. Drupal engineering experts to lead the class. Anyone up for  
this? :) (Matt Westgate, Crunchywelch provided he doesn't drown?).
    3. Other Drupal folks in the neighborhood also might want to get  
together for a code sprint or to discuss Drupal projects.

When?
At Vancouver Josh and I floated out the idea of doing it in  
conjunction with the Personal Democracy Forum on May 15th. This dates  
works with me, does it sound reasonable to you?

Where?
If we do it in NYC in conjunction with PDF, I can think of two  
possiblities off the top of my head:

    1. The Tank
    2. EyeBeam

I will follow up with my contacts at both of these venues tomorrow.  
Does anyone know of another possible venue?

Curriculum

We should make sure that whatever is taugh and learned at "Drupal  
Camp" is recorded and synthesized for posterity. We want to have many  
more of these in the future so we should aim for publish-able  
curriculum that can be later posted on Drupal.org.

Next Steps?

    1. Gregory Heller is organizing a consultant conference call to  
talk about this and other issues shortly on the consultat mailinglist.
    2. David Geilhufe proposed we look into the former Ars Digita  
training camps. I'll sign up to follow up and do some research and  
try to talk to folks involved in organizing them.
    3. We need to figure out a data / location. Unless someone can  
come up with a better data / location than PDF on May 15th let's go  
with that. I will start looking seriously into venues tomorrow.
    4. We need to line up the teaching staff and get firm commitments  
from vendors to sponsor newbies. I can take this on starting Friday.

Thoughts?

-Zack

On Feb 22, 2006, at 5:59 PM, Gregory Heller wrote:

> Perhaps the problem sets could include things like:
> Port a contributed module from 4.6 to 4.7?
> Integrate bug fixes or patches for a module
>
> they could be submitted by the community, or culled from the forum
> http://drupal.org/forum/51
> any revenue generated could go to defray costs for space, food,
> trainer's and organizer's time, back to drupal, and maybe to the
> "student" in an amount no greater than the cost of the camp (if  
> there is
> a cost associated).
>
> Another option could be completing an entire website project for a non
> profit organization.
>
>
> David Geilhufe wrote:
>
>> Back in the dot com boom, a company called ARS Digita did "boot
>> camps."  I like the name "Drupal Camp"
>>
>> These basically were 2-5 day training sessions for developers. You
>> went the camp, learned some basics and then completed some "problem
>> sets" collaboratively with the folks at the boot camp. A problem set
>> would be something like creating a module. Perhaps the problems could
>> be something like:
>>
>> 1. Create a basic module.
>> 2. Create a module that exercises parts of the Drupal API thoroughly.
>> 3. Create a new theme
>> 4. ?
>>
>> This would also be a great addition to the handbook for folks to
>> self-study.
>>
>> If someone with more drupal skills were to work with me, we could  
>> come
>> up with a few problem sets to start putting together on the Handbook.
>> david
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> ----
> Gregory Heller
> http://www.CivicActions.com
> http://www.GregoryHeller.com
> AIM/SKYPE: GregoryHeller
>
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