Hot and Dirty Drupal Developer Summer Garden Project

** New Website! http://garden.localbiology.org/

Project Description

We will create a special installation of Drupal which is designed for sharing information about gardens. This project will be like Open Atrium in that we would create an open source platform for the gardening project. The platform could be used by home gardeners, city or community gardens. The data will be designed in a way that it will be made accessible to other projects through geotagged RSS feeds.

Use case

For example, a group of enthusiastic gardeners plant native plants along a bike path. They can write up some notes about the plants they have selected. Gardeners who work on the garden can blog about the garden over the summer. Biologists and botanists can comment on changes that the plants go through as they grow. The plants can be mapped. This data can all be shared with RSS feeds, making the data available to other city web projects, bike mapping projects, or city parks websites.

A Special Feature

This garden blogging platform can also integrate with Neighborly's super-pre-alpha API. Neighborly is a tool for sharing information with the neighbors on your block, we will work on a Drupal module to integrate with the API. If there is time, we will work with with native plant gardeners in our neighborhoods to test out our platform.

What Students will Learn

A project like this would likely use git, drush, drush make, some module development, some custom themeing, features, open layers, user experience design and testing, good documentation, Javascript and more as necessary. We might try to make an amazon web service installation similar to Pantheon for Aegir. Students might not have time to learn all of these things, but we will break the project into bite-sized chunks so that everyone can have a part in helping.

What Mentors will Do

Meet with the students regularly to see how they are doing. Each mentor will help link the students with information about things they need to learn, and walk students through difficult processes (like setting up version control, or reviewing code that they write.) Ideally mentors will point students to screencasts that will help them, but should be prepared to spend some time helping the student in real-time to do something concrete like 'commit your code to the repository' or 'install a localhost.'

If there is interest, mentors may pick an area of the project to geek out on, and may research that and make a special lesson for the students. For example, if you wanted to learn how to make a cloud hosted Drupal installation, you could figure this out, and then teach the students. If so, mentors are asked to make screencasts/web articles that can be shared back with the Drupal community.

What Project Coordinators will Do

We will provide a clear specification for the project, and break the project into pieces that fit student interests, everyone's available time, and mentors skills. We will help schedule lessons as they are needed.

Logistics

When: July 1, 2010 - September 1, 2010
Where: Definitely Minneapolis, but if people in other cities have interest in collaborating, let me know. Working with 2-3 others cities might be OK. More than that would be too much for this summer.

Planning for this project will take place between now, March 12, 2010, and July 1, 2010.

City Teams

I am estimating having this many people in Minneapolis working on the project.
* 1 coordinator (4-8 hours per week, me!)
* 5 students (2-8 hours per week) (at least 3 local students)
* 4 mentors (2-4 hours per week) (at least 2 local mentors)

Project Coordinators in Other Cities

If you think this sounds fun and you want to do the project in your town this summer, by all means drop me a line ASAP.

Student Prerequisites

• At least 2 years experience making websites professionally (or similar experience)
• Familiar with configuring and using Drupal (especially Views, CCK)
• HTML, CSS, FTP

Mentor Prerequisites

• At least 6 months full time work with Drupal
• Active participation in Drupal community

At least 3 of the following skills:
*PHP programming
*jQuery/Javascript
*Documentation
*themeing
*module development
*knowing Drupal code standards
*have CVS account
*work with version control (git, svn or cvs)
*mapping (especially open layers or Geo)
*Other skills that might be of help to this project

To Apply

If you are interested in participating in this project, please apply on the project website.

** New Website! Drupal Open Garden Project

What we need to know! :)
* If you are interested in being a student or a mentor or project coordinator in another city
* A list of the skills that you currently have
* Where do you live
* Contact information
* Why you would like to participate
* Which aspects of this project interest you the most
* Time availability

Student Applications are due by midnight Saturday May 15, 2010. Participants will be notified by May 22, 2010.

Mentor Applications due by May 1, 2010
Mentors are encouraged to apply as early as possible. If you are available to chat about the project before July, that would be awesome.

I have no idea if people will be interested in this, or how many people might apply. If there is very little interest, then I would need to cancel the program. If there is too much interest, then I may need to adjust the program, turn people away, and the schedule might shift.

Please note: Project details are subject to change

This is a free, volunteer-run class. The Garden Project (name TBD) will be made publicly available with a GPL license. Other details to be worked out later.

Other Projects

Winter

I would like to offer another session in the winter, which will focus on garden planning, research, geeky species stuff and calendars. (Something better suited for bad weather!)

Botanical Inkscape

I want to learn and help improve Inkscape. I like to draw plants. I will be using this project as an excuse to draw vegetables. I probably will just draw the vegetables and plants in the summer, and then try to create vector drawings in another season, with Inkscape.
Inkscape was giving me troubles, so I would actually want to try to customize the interface and give feedback to the community. I won't have time for that this summer. But I am thinking about it.