May 2009

Geek Austin Aaron Stanush, of Four Kitchens, on things Drupal

Submitted by Lynn Bender on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 11:00pm
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<understatement>Four Kitchens is one of the premier Drupal consulting firms</understatement>. Fortunately, they call Austin home. In the last few months, I've had the opportunity to work with and get to know them. Aaron Stanush, one of Four Kitchen's co-founders, is also a member of the Drupal.org Redesign Team. I recently coerced him into meeting me for coffee and talking about Drupal.

Lynn Bender: Following your trip to Paris to work on the upgrade and redesign of the Drupal.org, you took the lead on the redesign effort. That's a massive site. How is the process going?

Aaron Stanush: One of the things that really helped focus the redesign effort was that we had an actual style guide to work off of. The Drupal Association hired Mark Boulton Design to rebrand the Drupal product as well as the drupal.org website. Even with a rich style guide, it's a massive site and it takes awhile for the community to decide the best way to re-engineer the content/layout or to remove elements all together.

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GeekAustin tidbits - Javascript, Agile, Nerd Nite, and too much Drupal

Submitted by Lynn Bender on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 11:00pm
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Last weeks Drinks and Drupal party, co-hosted by GeekAustin and Four Kitchens was a whole lot of fun. Expect more in the future. I promise I'll try to keep the Drupal posts to one a week. This post doesn't count toward that.

The Austin.Javascript LinkedIn group is continuing to grow. Kyle Simpson and Joe McCann are bringing in a range of speakers for the monthly meetings. If you want to get up to speed on the latest Javascript libraries, this is the group to meet.

The Agile Austin group is hosting Ask an Expert tomorrow at Mangia Pizza. Tomorrow's host will be Walter Bodwell, the CEO of Planigle. Planigle provides consulting, training and tools to help teams adopt and get the most out of agile development. To keep abreast of Agile Austin events -- and there are many -- join the Agile Austin Yahoo Group

If your looking for something closer to the Discovery Channel with beer, check out Nerd Nite Austin. To accommodate the crowd, they've moved the event to Buffalo Billiards. Att tomorrow's event, Dr. Jonas Moses will demonstrate how bio-medical innovation happens (or doesn't) in his presentation "The Accidental Innovator", JC Dwyer will explain how arcane politics become modern social policy in "From the Black Plague to the Bread Line", and Philip Wheat will ponder what happens when everything around you gets smart in "Bits & Atoms - the rise of Smart Environments." -- with beer.

An evening of Drinks and Drupal: co-hosted by Four Kitchens and GeekAustin

Submitted by Lynn Bender on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 11:00pm
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I'm happy to announce that David Timothy Strauss, of Four Kitchens, will be speaking on the following topic at the Drinks and Drupal Party:

Quick and maintainable site-building for charities and non-profits using Drupal and CiviCRM

We've reserved our home base, Union Park Austin, for Wednesday, May 20. We'll have drinks out front and presentations in back. We've been sending personal invites to Drupalistas throughout Texas. So, if you have any unanswered Drupal questions, this will be the place to find the answers.

-Lynn

Drinks and Drupal
Co-hosted by Four Kitchens and GeekAustin
Date: Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Time: 6:30pm - 10:30pm
Location: Union Park Austin
Street: 612 W Sixth St. Austin, Texas 78701
RSVP on Facebook

The Drupal Texas LinkedIn group:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1812268
The Austin Drupal Users facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=92094071680

Upcoming GeekAustin Free Classes and Workshops

Submitted by Lynn Bender on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 11:00pm

We just wrapped up the MySQL Associate Certification Prep a few weeks ago. It was a sharp bunch of folks, and a lot of fun.

Below are the upcoming classes which will be scheduled over the next 4 months.

1) Intermediate topics in SQL - This is a four session class covering intermediate to complicated joins, multi-level subqueries, and related mid-level topics.

2) The Apache Config File - Special Topics - This is a one session class focusing on three issues which frequently trip up webmasters: virtual hosts, aliases, and mod-rewrite.

To reserve a place in any of the above classes, send a note to linearb@gmail.com

The classes below are tentatively scheduled for the fall:

3) MySQL Developer Certification Prep
4) Basic Unix/Linux for DBAs

We have had offers from instructors to teach beginning C/C++ and Java classes. If you are interested in these let us know. If there is sufficient interest, we'll arrange a time and location. We had originally planned to host an Introduction to PL/SQL class and a MySQL Administrator Certification Prep class. We may do these in 2010.

We plan to open source the course materials and put them up on GeekAustin for folks to download. However, we are still converting the course notes into useful documentation.

If you have any questions regarding the classes, send a note to linearb@gmail.com

-Lynn Bender
GeekAustin