Last week Cliff and I spoke with the Chicago Technology Cooperative, whom I mentioned in my previous post. They said they liked the sounds of our project and are interested in collaborating with us, so we talked about how that might happen. They indicated they would be able to come to Iowa City to conduct a Drupal training, and since they cater to nonprofits their rates are fairly reasonable, so we are pursuing that option. They may also consult with us remotely on development of the CIP portal. I'm glad we happened to stumble upon their website.
I also met with Jim Elmborg this week to discuss Drupal and getting SLIS involved in the training. He offered to help with planning, funding, and recruiting attendees from other departments, which will be a big help and gets us one step closer to getting the training off the ground.
Cliff and I have also been discussing driving to Chicago for Drupal Camp, which is a conference being held Oct. 24-25. I've emailed other staff at Widernet to see if we could get a group together and take a university van. It's a big maybe, but it would be a good way to learn about Drupal and network with the Drupal community (as well as meet the Chicago Tech people, who will be attending).
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Week 7: Workshop Planning
I'm a little late posting about last week's goings-on. During the beginning of the week, I spent a lot of time in Drupal configuring views and user permissions for the sample template. I presented this to Cliff in a meeting on Thursday and got feedback about what changes could be made. Overall I felt like I had made a lot of progress with that part of the project. I also started documenting what I'm learning about Drupal and how I've used it to create the template.
Following that meeting, we had another one with Tom Burns and Mark Hale from ITS. We talked about getting a Drupal training organized and agreed on next steps for accomplishing this. Tom was going to contact Matt Westgate from Lullabot to follow up on a potential training over Thanksgiving break. He also volunteered to send out a survey on the U of I developer's website he runs, to gauge interest. Mark offered to investigate room reservations and funding possibilities.
I felt like we really got the ball rolling on making the Drupal workshop a reality, and it was satisfying that our plans were starting to take shape. The meeting also led to a couple of breakthroughs. First, we stumbled upon a website for the Chicago Technology Cooperative, which conducts Drupal trainings for non-profits. I sent them an email afterward to inquire about the possibility of consulting with them on the project. Second, the meeting gave me the idea that SLIS could be involved with the training. I emailed Jim and Padmini proposing that SLIS students might want to attend, and received enthusiastic responses, including offers of funding to support the event.
The collaborations I've been working to foster for the last month or so are starting to come together, and I think we're gaining momentum. The important thing now will be to keep people interested/excited in the training.
Following that meeting, we had another one with Tom Burns and Mark Hale from ITS. We talked about getting a Drupal training organized and agreed on next steps for accomplishing this. Tom was going to contact Matt Westgate from Lullabot to follow up on a potential training over Thanksgiving break. He also volunteered to send out a survey on the U of I developer's website he runs, to gauge interest. Mark offered to investigate room reservations and funding possibilities.
I felt like we really got the ball rolling on making the Drupal workshop a reality, and it was satisfying that our plans were starting to take shape. The meeting also led to a couple of breakthroughs. First, we stumbled upon a website for the Chicago Technology Cooperative, which conducts Drupal trainings for non-profits. I sent them an email afterward to inquire about the possibility of consulting with them on the project. Second, the meeting gave me the idea that SLIS could be involved with the training. I emailed Jim and Padmini proposing that SLIS students might want to attend, and received enthusiastic responses, including offers of funding to support the event.
The collaborations I've been working to foster for the last month or so are starting to come together, and I think we're gaining momentum. The important thing now will be to keep people interested/excited in the training.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Week 6: Odds 'n Ends
Just a quick recap of last week: I sent out a few more emails to possible collaborators, but have gotten limited responses. That part of the project seems to have stalled. I'm still trying to set up a meeting with Tom Burns and Cliff to talk about organizing a Drupal training. I worked on project documentation, and spent more time online looking at design templates. I downloaded Elgg, the open-source social networking software, but was unsuccessful in completing the installation. I also worked on finalizing the list of fields to be included in the CIP templates.
My triumph for the week was finally figurung out how Views works in Drupal. This will let us create customized lists of content, so that each time a content provider adds a new entry to a directory, it will automatically be filtered for the list in that category. I still have some tweaking to do, but at least now I understand how it works.
This week, I'll be putting an ad up on the Rentacoder.com site so we can hopefully hire someone to create the user interface. Also will be continuing with the previously mentioned tasks, and whatever else happens to come up.
My triumph for the week was finally figurung out how Views works in Drupal. This will let us create customized lists of content, so that each time a content provider adds a new entry to a directory, it will automatically be filtered for the list in that category. I still have some tweaking to do, but at least now I understand how it works.
This week, I'll be putting an ad up on the Rentacoder.com site so we can hopefully hire someone to create the user interface. Also will be continuing with the previously mentioned tasks, and whatever else happens to come up.
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