Events I am organizing this year

Getting the new year started off right!

In addition to a lively event calendar of Drupal User Group meetings and Drupal Happy Hour (which has recently been extended world wide, the Twin Cities now has started to have local in-person Drupal code sprints. (* Of course, these may well have happened in the past. I just don't happen to know about them! :P )

Twin Cities New Years Test Sprint: This was the first sprint of the year. I taught an introduction to writing tests, and then we ate pancakes, and then we helped Ronan Dowling and Allie Micka to write tests for Backup And Migrate and the Geo module. We all learned a lot, and I can happily say everyone in attendance has 1. jumped over the initial hurdle of writing tests 2. fulfilled a new year's resolution.

Little Drupal 7 Code Sprint: This was a tiny little sprint attended by Jake Bell and Joe Schindelar. Jake and I helped Joe to work on some issues with the Drupal 7 image module. We met in a coffee shop and geeked out for a few hours. I got to show off some drush and features, and Joe taught up how to use git for managing patches. I reviewed some patches for tests.

I am glad that these sort of collaborations are happening more frequently. Working with other people vastly accelerates learning. I am convinced that positive in-person contact is vastly superior to screencasts and reading online - though of course more rare. It makes a difference to be able to ask questions and watch developers use their work environments, and also to present and share your own knowledge.

I am thinking that the coffee shop mini-sprints will be repeated. Probably every 6 weeks, at a different coffee shop everytime, as so much is going on.

This Year

Coffee Shop Code Sprints

Definitely more mini code sprints at coffee shops. Anyone can organize them. Just put a posting on the groups.drupal.org Twin Cities group page, and say that you would like to get together with local Drupalings to work on Drupal projects. I started a page about where to meet in the Twin Cities, since meeting at coffee shops with good wifi is important.

Geek Girl Meetup

In March, 2010. Now that I know more geekly ladies of the cities twin, we can meet in a bar and talk. I am thinking of having 'ignite session mini-rehearsal' as part of this event, and then having...

Community web Ignite sessions

Something I am thinking about, partly in preparation, or perhaps just at the Drupalcamp. Basically, any passionate web developer, designer, project manager can present a 5 minute Ignite style talk about what they want to see happen in web that is not currently happening. Still fleshing it out in my head, but this will probably happen in or around April.

Twin Cities Drupal Camp

Maybe May-ish, but not definitely.

There is a little group of Drupal maniacs who are trying to organize a Twin Cities Drupal Camp. Ideally this will happen in conjunction with MinneBar. We want to focus on introductory and intermediate Drupal sessions. I want to focus on exploring how Drupal can be used to benefit community projects (neighborhoods, gardens, schools, for example.)