Group 42

In a presentation at the September 2009 meeting of the Vancouver League of Drupaliers (Vancouver's Drupal user group) core Drupal Developer and Now Public Development Team Lead Károly "CHX" Négyesi spoke about the importance of APIs in Drupal 7. If you're serious about scalability APIs are no longer an optional convenience. For some this may not be an issue, for others this could be a mindset change. Károly also discussed some other Drupal 7 improvements like functional testing.

This is a video of his presentation.

Drupal 7 APIs: A Mindset Change for Scalability

This video can also be viewed directly at: Drupal 7 APIs: A Mindset Change for Scalability

Automation is key for efficiently maintaining multiple websites and the Drupal community is very fortunate to have the tools for doing it! The Ægir hosting system lets you create and manage a site by filling out a form and pressing submit. Is it really this easy?

In a presentation at the Vancouver League of Drupaliers (Vancouver's Drupal user group) April 2009 meeting, Robin Puga from Affinity Bridge stepped through the process of deploying Drupal sites using Ægir. This is a video of his presentation.

Automated Deployment with the Ægir Hosting System

This video can also be viewed directly at: Automated Deployment with the Ægir Hosting System by Robin Puga

Putting location data on maps, especially dynamically, used to be a dream. No longer. Thanks to open standards, APIs, Internet based map web services, and many hours of work in the Open Source community, a new wave of options are available for putting location based data on maps. And Drupal is surfing this wave!

In a presentation to the Vancouver League of Drupaliers (Vancouver's Drupal user group), Affinity Bridge founder Mack Hardy gave an overview of locative and geo-related modules in Drupal 6. Here is a video of that presentation.

Geo-Location in Drupal 6

This video can also be viewed directly at: Geo-Location in Drupal 6 by Mack Hardy

Jim DeLaHunt's presentation of International and Multilingual Drupal Sites at the November 2008 meeting of to the Vancouver League of Drupaliers.

Language and website usability are not as simple as you might think. Jim's depth of knowledge and experience in these areas define the issues you need to consider to do it right for your situation. The notes and slides from his presentation are available in his post: International and multilingual Drupal sites. Definitely worth a watch if you want more information in this area.

International and Multilingual Drupal Sites

This video can also be viewed directly at: Jim DeLaHunt on International and Multilingual Drupal sites

The October meeting of Vancouver Drupalers took a different direction this month, featuring a decidedly non-Drupal topic: Flex. Flex is a open-source tool set for creating Adobe Flash applications. Love it or hate it, there's no question Flash powers much of the web's rich media. And Drupal is no stranger to Flash applications with sites like The Zimmer Twins using it for creating an interesting and compelling user experience.

Presenting on PHP and Flex was Duane Nickull, Senior Technical Evangelist from Adobe. Duane is no stranger to the Drupal community. Some may remember his interview of Dries at Foo Camp, and Duane's former boss is Jeff Whatcott, now at Aquia. Duane's talk focuses mostly on Flex applications, with a bit of discussion around communicating with external applications.

Duane Nickull: PHP & Flex

Oliver (Olly) Walker shared four techniques he uses for making Drupal easier for his customers at the August 28th meeting of the Vancouver League of Drupalers. Olly, better known as baronmunchowsen on GDO, is a web developer who specializes in websites for small businesses. He's promised to post presentation slides and we were fortunate enough to catch him on tape. The video is available below or at blip.tv as Remembering the User - 4 Drupal Enhancements.

Update Sep 4/08: Slides are now available at Slideshare: Vancouver League of Drupallers - Remembering the User (August 2008)