Group 42

Simon Vreeswijk of North Studio presents Drupal SEO and Internet Marketing at Drupal Camp Victoria 2008. In this session Simon discusses optimizing and tailoring your Drupal site to rock the search engines, including things to avoid, things to do, and general SEO tips.

DCVic08: Drupal SEO

Nedjo Rogers presents Introduction to Module Development at Drupal Camp Victoria 2008. In this session Nedjo gives the basics of writing a module and some techniques to jump-start development.

DCVic08: Introduction to Module Development

The video can also be viewed directly: DCVic08 Introduction to Module Development at blip.tv

For a summary of Drupal Camp Victoria check out: Drupal Camp Victoria 2008.

Drupal Camp Victoria seems long past but it was only six week ago we descended on North Studio for some Drupal geekery and general fun. Ever the video nut, I caught a handful of sessions on camera. In this session, Indispensable Modules, Rene Hache of North Studio gives an excellent run down of the Drupal modules North Studio finds, well, indispensable. He also provided presentation notes: Modules We Can't Live Without.

DCVic08: Indispensable Modules

The video can also be viewed directly: DCVic08: Indispensable Modules at blip.tv

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

Last week I had the pleasure of attending and recording Paul Sullivan of Orato speaking on Citizen Journalism at the September meeting of the High-Tech Communicators' Exchange (HTCE). Sullivan is a passionate and articulate speaker with a background in both classic and citizen journalism. Not only has he held senior editor positions at major Canadian newspapers and the CBC, he's Editor-in-Chief of the citizen journalism website Orato, and recently appeared on a list of the 20 most visible Vancouverites on the web.

Sullivan begins with Andrew Keen, of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture fame, and goes on to compare and contrast citizen journalism with classic journalism, describing how citizen journalism has changed the business landscape, and makes the argument citizen journalism is ultimately good for society. Virtues and warts, he talks about both the good and the bad. Although his talk clocks in at just over an hour, with another 15 odd minutes of Q & A, I was engaged the entire time, and from my vantage point so was the rest of the audience.

Citizen Journalism - HTCE September 2008 (Part 1 of 2)

Drupal Camp Victoria (#DCVic) at North Studio was a joy. A great part of this joy was the freedom from having nothing what-so-ever to do with its organization! But it was more than that.

Last Folks Standing at Drupal Camp Victoria 2008
Photo by nicky Tu

Local Drupalers Amir and Ryan Dempsey stepped up and organized our very own Vancouver Drupal-mobile rental van. Although the van was squishy the company was great. The trip from Vancouver to and from Victoria passed quickly. During our ferry ride over I teamed up with Dave O. from Raincity and videoed Dave doing what he does best.

The folks at One Degree, whose tag line is "The inside scoop on digital marketing and social media for Canadian marketers", are having a book expo. For the full details check out this post: Announcing MiniBookExpo: Business Edition!

Here's the quick overview from their website:

• Each business day, for the next two weeks, we're going to post a selection of books (usually 3 different books, often with multiple copies).
• If you see a book that strikes your fancy, you claim it in the comments of the post.
• Once we confirm your claim, we'll arrange to have the book sent to you. This can take up to 4 weeks, depending on the publisher.
• Once you get it, read it.
• When you're finished, write a review and send it to us (either the full review or the URL of your post).

I've claimed The Codfathers. With a title like that, I couldn't resist!

Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com is a recipe for creating a blog and getting ad revenue from it. Unlike many books in the "make money" category this one contains specific and useful information both about blogging and ad/affiliate networks.

The core thesis of Make Money Online is you (the reader) can follow John Chow's example and get non-trivial ad revenue from a blog website with lots and lots of traffic. Like me, you might find it both suspect and ironically recursive that John Chow gets lots of traffic and makes money because he's telling people how to get lots of traffic and make money. Fortunately, his advice for generating blog traffic isn't to pay him a fee, emulate his site content, or even buy his e-book (it's free), it's general best practice for blogging.

Even if you aren't interesting in making money off your blog, the content specific advice is one of the more concise presentations I've seen. It's worth reading just those chapters, if nothing else. If you do want to make money from your blog I believe this book will help you, though I'm not sure how many people can copy John Chow's success.

I had two issues with Make Money Online. The biggest issue is the self-identified "evil" practices. A smaller issue is the mildly condescending attitude found in some chapters, especially the introduction. Both of these somewhat taint what is otherwise good information.

A detailed review of the book follows.

It's hard to find a conference dedicated to podcasting, especially in Canada. The best I've been able to find on the left coast are occasional presentations at venues like Northern Voice or Net Squared Tuesday. Back East, there's Podcasters Across Borders. I wanted to go this year, but couldn't justify the travel costs (and I think I made a mistake).

But there's good news, the presentations were taped and posted online:

And I'm having a blast listening to them!

Anyone that listens to the Canadian Podcast Buffet knows there's a strong podcasting community back East. The conference podcasts certainly can't reproduce the face-to-face goodness that conference goers experienced. But, as the saying goes, they're the next best thing and well worth a listen in their own right.

If you have any interest in podcasting I strongly recommend checking them out.

And props to organizers Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis. Awesome presentation choices, guys!

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)