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Dan left Agaric in 2011 to go forth on his own, leaving behind some famous quotations:
Like a nine-year-old in high school.
And:
That's why you'll be a small seller of custom drupal pretzels...
Interested in Public Trainings?
So far we have learned how to write basic Drupal migrations and use process plugins to transform data to meet the format expected by the destination. In the previous entry we learned one of many approaches to migrating images. In today’s example, we will change it a bit to introduce two new migration concepts: constants and pseudofields. Both can be used as data placeholders in the migration timeline. Along with other process plugins, they allow you to build dynamic values that can be used as part of the migrate process pipeline.
Setting and using constants
In the Migrate API, a constant is an arbitrary value that can be used later in the process pipeline. They are set as direct children of the source section. You write a constants key whose value is a list of name-value pairs. Even though they are defined in the source section, they are independent of the particular source plugin in use. The following code snippet shows a generalization for settings and using constants:
source:
constants:
MY_STRING: 'http://understanddrupal.com'
MY_INTEGER: 31
MY_DECIMAL: 3.1415927
MY_ARRAY:
- 'dinarcon'
- 'dinartecc'
plugin: source_plugin_name
source_plugin_config_1: source_config_value_1
source_plugin_config_2: source_config_value_2
process:
process_destination_1: constants/MY_INTEGER
process_destination_2:
plugin: concat
source: constants/MY_ARRAY
delimiter: ' 'You can set as many constants as you need. Although not required by the API, it is a common convention to write the constant names in all uppercase and using underscores (_) to separate words. The value can be set to anything you need to use later. In the example above, there are strings, integers, decimals, and arrays. To use a constant in the process section you type its name, just like any other column provided by the source plugin. Note that you use the constant you need to name the full hierarchy under the source section. That is, the word constant and the name itself separated by a slash (/) symbol. They can be used to copy their value directly to the destination or as part of any process plugin configuration.
Technical note: The word constants for storing the values in the source section is not special. You can use any word you want as long as it does not collide with another configuration key of your particular source plugin. A reason to use a different name is that your source actually contains a column named constants. In that case you could use defaults or something else. The one restriction is that whatever value you use, you have to use it in the process section to refer to any constant. For example:
source:
defaults:
MY_VALUE: 'http://understanddrupal.com'
plugin: source_plugin_name
source_plugin_config: source_config_value
process:
process_destination: defaults/MY_VALUESetting and using pseudofields
Similar to constants, pseudofields stores arbitrary values for use later in the process pipeline. There are some key differences. Pseudofields are set in the process section. The name is arbitrary as long as it does not conflict with a property name or field name of the destination. The value can be set to a verbatim copy from the source (a column or a constant) or they can use process plugins for data transformations. The following code snippet shows a generalization for settings and using pseudofields:
source:
constants:
MY_BASE_URL: 'http://understanddrupal.com'
plugin: source_plugin_name
source_plugin_config_1: source_config_value_1
source_plugin_config_2: source_config_value_2
process:
title: source_column_title
my_pseudofield_1:
plugin: concat
source:
- constants/MY_BASE_URL
- source_column_relative_url
delimiter: '/'
my_pseudofield_2:
plugin: urlencode
source: '@my_pseudofield_1'
field_link/uri: '@my_pseudofield_2'
field_link/title: '@title'In the above example, my_pseudofield_1 is set to the result of a concat process transformation that joins a constant and a column from the source section. The result value is later used as part of a urlencode process transformation. Note that to use the value from my_pseudofield_1 you have to enclose it in quotes (') and prepend an at sign (@) to the name. The new value obtained from URL encode operation is stored in my_pseudofield_2. This last pseudofield is used to set the value of the URI subfield for field_link. The example could be simplified, for example, by using a single pseudofield and chaining process plugins. It is presented that way to demonstrate that a pseudofield could be used as direct assignments or as part of process plugin configuration values.
Technical note: If the name of the subfield can be arbitrary, how can you prevent name clashes with destination property names and field names? You might have to look at the source for the entity and the configuration of the bundle. In the case of a node migration, look at the baseFieldDefinitions() method of the Node class for a list of property names. Be mindful of class inheritance and method overriding. For a list of fields and their machine names, look at the “Manage fields” section of the content type you are migrating into. The Field API prefixes any field created via the administration interface with the string field_. This reduces the likelihood of name clashes. Other than these two name restrictions, anything else can be used. In this case, the Migrate API will eventually perform an entity save operation which will discard the pseudofields.
Understanding Drupal Migrate API process pipeline
The migrate process pipeline is a mechanism by which the value of any destination property, field, or pseudofield that has been set can be used by anything defined later in the process section. The fact that using a pseudofield requires to enclose its name in quotes and prepend an at sign is actually a requirement of the process pipeline. Let’s see some examples using a node migration:
- To use the title property of the node entity, you would write @title
- To use the field_body field of the Basic page content type, you would write @field_body
- To use the my_temp_value pseudofield, you would write @my_temp_value
In the process pipeline, these values can be used just like constants and columns from the source. The only restriction is that they need to be set before being used. For those familiar with the rewrite results feature of Views, it follows the same idea. You have access to everything defined previously. Anytime you use enclose a name in quotes and prepend it with an at sign, you are telling the migrate API to look for that element in the process section instead of the source section.
Migrating images using the image_import plugin
Let’s practice the concepts of constants, pseudofields, and the migrate process pipeline by modifying the example of the previous entry. The Migrate Files module provides another process plugin named image_import that allows you to directly set all the subfield values in the plugin configuration itself.
As in previous examples, we will create a new module and write a migration definition file to perform the migration. It is assumed that Drupal was installed using the standard installation profile. The code snippets will be compact to focus on particular elements of the migration. The full code is available at https://github.com/dinarcon/ud_migrations The module name is UD Migration constants and pseudofields and its machine name is ud_migrations_constants_pseudofields. The id of the example migration is udm_constants_pseudofields. Refer to this article for instructions on how to enable the module and run the migration. Make sure to download and enable the Migrate Files module. Otherwise, you will get an error like: “In DiscoveryTrait.php line 53: The "file_import" plugin does not exist. Valid plugin IDs for Drupal\migrate\Plugin\MigratePluginManager are:...”. Let’s see part of the source definition:
source:
constants:
BASE_URL: 'https://agaric.coop'
PHOTO_DESCRIPTION_PREFIX: 'Photo of'
plugin: embedded_data
data_rows:
-
unique_id: 1
name: 'Michele Metts'
photo_url: 'sites/default/files/2018-12/micky-cropped.jpg'
photo_width: '587'
photo_height: '657'Only one record is presented to keep snippet short, but more exist. In addition to having a unique identifier, each record includes a name, a short profile, and details about the image. Note that this time, the photo_url does not provide an absolute URL. Instead, it is a relative path from the domain hosting the images. In this example, the domain is https://agaric.coop so that value is stored in the BASE_URL constant which is later used to assemble a valid absolute URL to the image. Also, there is no photo description, but one can be created by concatenating some strings. The PHOTO_DESCRIPTION_PREFIX constant stores the prefix to add to the name to create a photo description. Now, let’s see the process definition:
process:
title: name
psf_image_url:
plugin: concat
source:
- constants/BASE_URL
- photo_url
delimiter: '/'
psf_image_description:
plugin: concat
source:
- constants/PHOTO_DESCRIPTION_PREFIX
- name
delimiter: ' '
field_image:
plugin: image_import
source: '@psf_image_url'
reuse: TRUE
alt: '@psf_image_description'
title: '@title'
width: photo_width
height: photo_heightThe title node property is set directly to the value of the name column from the source. Then, two pseudofields. psf_image_url stores a valid absolute URL to the image using the BASE_URL constant and the photo_url column from the source. psf_image_description uses the PHOTO_DESCRIPTION_PREFIX constant and the name column from the source to store a description for the image.
For the field_image field, the image_import plugin is used. This time, the subfields are not set manually. Instead, they are assigned using plugin configuration keys. The absence of the id_only configuration allows for this. The URL to the image is set in the source key and uses the psf_image_url pseudofield. The alt key allows you to set the alternative attribute for the image and in this case the psf_image_description pseudofield is used. For the title subfield sets the text of a subfield with the same name and in this case it is assigned the value of the title node property which was set at the beginning of the process pipeline. Remember that not only psedufields are available. Finally, the width and height configuration uses the columns from the source to set the values of the corresponding subfields.
What did you learn in today’s blog post? Did you know you can define constants in your source as data placeholders for use in the process section? Were you aware that pseudofields can be created in the process section to store intermediary data for process definitions that come next? Have you ever wondered what is the migration process pipeline and how it works? Please share your answers in the comments. Also, I would be grateful if you shared this blog post with your colleagues.
Next: Tips for writing Drupal migrations and understanding their workflow
This blog post series, cross-posted at UnderstandDrupal.com as well as here on Agaric.coop, is made possible thanks to these generous sponsors. Contact Understand Drupal if your organization would like to support this documentation project, whether it is the migration series or other topics.
For community shared business, development, and training tools, Agaric throws a little sponsorship at modulecraft.com.
2019 update: Pronovix let the domain expire, but the Wayback machine still has the content.
Wow, that was fun. The very first event for the Boston/Cambridge Worker Ownership Meetup group on October 10th, 2014, was a great success. We met at The Industry Lab, Agaric's new co-working headquarters and event location. We had a great discussion that was led by our friend Gonzalo Chomon of EvoVelo, a cooperative located in Spain.
Gonzalo Chomon shared a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of cooperatives that engaged everyone from the start. About a dozen attendees talked about the different ways cooperative companies are structured, laws governing different types of companies in Spain and the US and about the different internal processes used to add or remove members from the group.
Attendees were very engaged in the discussion from the start. One member asked about the company structure, how does it work, are there contracts, bylaws? A cooperative company can be structured in any way the partners agree upon. Usually the company is formed as an LLC between the partners with equal shares, but that is not an absolute. An organization the size of Mondragon has an entirely different structure, it is a federation of cooperatives.
The pizza from The Just Crust rocked and was totally consumed by the end of the evening. Many thanks, to our friend Kay Van Valkenburg who brought some lush fruits and scrumptious chocolate chip and dark chocolate dipped cookies—oooooh. Thanks to everyone that came to the first Boston/Cambridge Worker Ownership Meetup at the Industry Lab in Cambridge, despite the brilliant New England weather.
We have already planned our next meetup for November 17th at the Industry Lab.
We will talk with Carolyn Edsell-Vetter, from A Yard & A Half Landscaping Cooperative, based right in Waltham, MA, about transitioning to a coop from another ownership/governance structure. Meet some local people that are currently working in successful worker cooperatives in any industry, doing what they love to do. Let's discuss how they started and how they continue to thrive in this economy. What are the benefits and what are the hurdles to overcome when forming a cooperative relationship with your partners?
Join us! Visit the Boston/Cambridge Worker Ownership Meetup, we have started to list some great coop resources and links, and if you are in the Boston area, let us know.
Originally published on the Nonprofit Technology Network's Connect Blog.
Most of us don’t look at our site analytics. At least, not often enough. We know we should, but life gets in the way. How do we make it easier for nonprofits to truly take a “data-driven” approach to their work?
I’ve found success with putting the analytics where people will see them. One of those places is the website itself.
Figure Out What Really Matters
There’s no shortage of data to review. So, it’s important to move beyond vanity metrics and get to the heart of why we do what we do. This means turning to the goals and key performance indicators you have for your website (or defining them for the first time!).
For my work at Agaric, those goals are:
1. Secure well-matched projects by communicating the value we provide to potential clients.
Key performance indicator: feedback on design and content from target audiences.
2. Diversify and expand free software communities by sharing relevant knowledge.
Key performance indicator: pageviews of blog posts.
Each goal should be accompanied by at least one key performance indicator. This is data that tells you how successful you are being at reaching your goal.
In our case, our first goal of feedback is best measured qualitatively by asking our current clients— and those who we like working with—what they think of the website. We conduct interviews to gather that feedback. For our second goal, we can get a good picture of content relevance by pageviews, a valuable data point to share with the team.
A different site might try to increase one-time donations, in which case seeing the number of donations made during a campaign would be helpful. Another group might focus on building a regular readership, therefore email list sign ups are the best indicator of success. Whatever it is, make sure you can link the analytics you are tracking back to a goal you have for your site. There’s no point in measuring something you won’t take action on.
Know Who Needs to See the Data and Where They Hang Out
After identifying your key performance indicators, decide who on your team should review that data.
For our six-person worker-owned cooperative, that answer was easy – all of us. We all blog and we all have a vested interest in helping our free software communities thrive. We want to know which posts are resonating the most.
After knowing your target audience, find out where they spend their time. In our case, it’s the website’s back-end content overview page. Our website admins go here to pull up a page we want to update and to see what posts are still in draft mode. So, we added a column for pageviews and made that column sortable.
This content overview page was customized to include each post's total pageview count.
For the independent news site Portside, the same was true. In addition to showing pageviews on their content overview page, they also include them directly on each post (visible only to content editors).
Showing the pageview count on the page itself makes it clear to content editors how popular it is.
For the online educator portal Teachers with Guts, the organization wanted to track several data points on their members’ use of the platform. So, they have a report page built into the site showing information such as the number of downloads made, comments left, and pages bookmarked.
Teachers With Guts began tracking user engagement to inform how they manage their online portal.
Other opportunities to share analytics include weekly email reports, a user dashboard upon logging in, or via mobile texting or apps. Don’t be shy about asking your team where they would most likely notice the data you’re sharing with them.
Meaningful, Informed Conversations
By showing key data in high traffic areas, you foster an informed team. From there you can have the conversations you want and need. We now know which posts are getting the most reach and are evaluating why that is. As a result, our best practices have evolved to make our writing more relevant with readers.
Websites powered by Find It connect people to all that their communities have to offer. Developed under the guidance of the Cambridge Kids' Council, Find It ensures that people from all backgrounds can easily find activities, services, and resources.
Find It's design was informed by hundreds of hours of research, including over 1,250 resident surveys and over 120 interviews with service providers. Six years of research and development and continuous improvements has resulted in the Find It approach and platform, ready to be implemented in cities and communities around the world.
The platform is Free and Open-source and flexible so that communities can customize it to their own needs. Whether you are city IT staff, a developer that works with cities, or are anyone that could use a Find It in your community, we would love to talk.
The Global Training Days is an initiative coordinated by the Drupal Association to introduce new people to the wonderful world of Drupal. The initiative is about providing free or low-cost training to facilitate people gaining familiarity with Drupal in just a day. Depending on the format, attendees can leave the workshop with a website already built. In this blog post, I will explain how to organize one and share experiences and lessons learned after organizing them in Nicaragua since 2014. It is my hope to inspire you to be part of the initiative and organize a workshop in your local community.
The basics
To get started, find out the next dates when the workshops would be given worldwide. They happen two days in a row (on Friday and Saturday) approximately every 3 months. Dates are set in the last quarter of the previous year and can be checked at https://www.drupal.org/global-training-days.
For the workshop itself there are two options to choose from in terms of time and curriculum. The first is a What is Drupal? half-day workshop where attendees learn the basics of Drupal. If you go this route it is recommended to spend most of the time explaining the different Drupal concepts, and how they relate to each other in order to build a site. Hands-on instructions where each attendee builds a site can be left out due to time constraints, but it is fine to have a demo where you show how to assemble a website using Drupal.
The second option is an Intro to Drupal full-day workshop where attendees learn the basic concepts and have the opportunity to build a simple yet functional Drupal site. For this type of workshop, you can spend the first half explaining concepts and the second half building the site. Remember the introductory nature of the workshop. Do not try to cover advanced site building concepts. Stick to Drupal core and build your site using using nodes, blocks, views, and core modules like Contact. In either version of the workshop, do not go over how to build themes or modules. If you try to cover too many topics, you might not develop them all appropriately. If you really want to cover these topics, it is better to organize a follow up workshop where they could be explained with more time.
Once you decide the date and type of workshop you want to present, sign up at this page. After doing so you will get an email from the Drupal Association. You will also be added to the list of organizers.
Plan ahead
The dates for the workshops are announced way ahead of time. Be an early bird and do not leave things to the last minute. Ask yourself these questions and plan accordingly:
- Am I participating the two days (Friday and Saturday) or only one day?
- Am I presenting a half-day or a full-day workshop?
- Am I providing computers to attendees or they are required to bring a laptop?
- Am I providing lunch for attendees or they are required to bring/buy their own food?
- How many people can attend based on the facility’s capacity?
- How many people can attend based on the number of speakers?
- Does each speaker know which section of the workshop they are going to present?
- If the workshop includes building a Drupal site, which tools will I use?
- Where should I advertise the workshop?
- What is the contingency plan in case the Internet service does not work?
Before the training
It may seem obvious, but make sure you have a place with the proper conditions to give a workshop. You will need:
- a projector
- a whiteboard or chalkboard, or flipchart and markers
- a decent Internet connection
- good room lighting
- comfortable room temperature
- zero sound pollution
The last item is very important as you do not want to yell to be heard. It happened to us once that the room next to the workshop laboratory was occupied by a group of loud children. This not only distracted the attendees, but also forced me to raise my voice to be heard. After speaking loudly for a couple of hours my voice had disappeared.
Even without noise pollution, giving back-to-back trainings two days in a row poses quite a challenge to keeping your voice audible. Make sure you have multiple speakers and take turns presenting. Use a microphone if available. It helps to preserve your voice, and helps participants who might not hear very well.
Once you have the venue figured out, be realistic about how many people you can effectively manage. Organizing a workshop takes lots of effort. It is fine to try to teach as many people as possible, but quality is preferred over quantity. In our experience, teaching small groups is more effective because you can dedicate more time to answer all questions each attendee might have and provide a personalized learning experience.
Make sure you get a confirmation of the venue at least 3 weeks before the training so you have time to promote the workshop. In Nicaragua, we always make the announcement in our official Drupal group and on the community’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. But experience has shown us that only a minority of the attendees find out about the event through these channels. In our case, about 90% of attendees discovered the event after seeing an invitation posted to a non-Drupal specific Facebook group of Nicaraguan developers. The 10% remaining is a combination of word of mouth (past participants recommending the workshop to others), people I meet in various tech meetups, and the channels mentioned before.
When deciding where to advertise the workshop, find the right pond and remember to fish where the fish are. If you have some spare dollars, feel free to invest in paid social media advertisement. No matter where you decide to promote the workshop, include the following information in the announcement:
- Date and times.
- Name of venue and address.
- A photo of the building where the workshop will take place! We have experienced people being unable to find the venue. So, play it safe, be verbose with directions, and add a photo of the venue.
- Whether or not it is required to bring a laptop.
- Whether or not lunch will be provided.
- If registration is required, the url where people can register.
- A note that no previous knowledge is required and that anyone (not only tech people) can join! :-D
Prepare the tools you will use in the training. In Nicaragua, we prefer to use Patrick Drotleff‘s amazing service https://simplytest.me This allows us to focus on building the Drupal site, instead of configuring the myriad of local environments that attendees may have. In our experience, configuring local environments on each attendee’s computer takes too much time. For example, most of the participants that come to our workshops use Windows. Trying to set up a LAMP environment could be surprisingly complicated in this operating system. Even out of the box solutions like XAMPP might not be able to start the web server due to port conflicts. Skype is a recurrent culprit. Starting a MySQL server might also fail. If that happens, skip it altogether and install using SQLite. More often than not, we go the fastest route and use disposable Drupal installations. Keep in mind that you are teaching Drupal site building, not server configuration.
"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
Murphy’s law will manifest more often than you would like. Be prepared and have a contingency plan for as much as you can. During one of our workshops, our favorite tool https://simplytest.me was down, but we were prepared with packages for local installation. In another instance, the venue was changing Internet provider and we had no Internet at all. Again, local installations came to the rescue. In such cases, save time by asking people to work in pairs or small groups so you do not have to configure a lot of computers. Bring a copy of your slide deck in a thumb drive so you can present offline in case it is needed. In Nicaragua, not only the tech is community vibrant. Volcanoes are too! With a handful of active volcanoes that produce tremors very often, we need to make sure to have clear instructions on how to leave the facility if necessary. Do your homework and be ready in case anything goes wrong.
On the day of the training
Take with you a laptop, a VGA/DVI/HDMI cable and adapter, and a back up projector if available. Have a copy of your slide deck for offline presenting and all the tools you might need in case the Internet decides to visit Saturn. Arrive early at the venue, set up your computer and projector for the presentation, and write the wi-fi password on the board. If you are providing computers, make sure any tool you intend to use is installed and working.
Take lots of photos (with participants' permission) and share them on social media. Be sure to record the training for posterity. This is not to show off, but to inspire others to organize workshops in their local communities. Make sure to use the official #DrupalGTD hashtag when sharing content. And please respect those who might not want to appear online! In our trainings, after finishing presenting theory and before starting to build sites we ask the attendees for a group photo which we later share on Facebook and Twitter.
We drupalers are fond of freebies. We enjoy stickers, T-shirts, trial online subscriptions, or anything that comes in an event as swag, right? Let’s share this passion with attendees. In our trainings, we use to have a table with lots of stickers for people to take from. In one occasion we also gave away T-shirts. And we have gotten in contact with online education providers to give attendees free trial access to their content. Chris Shattuck from Build a Module has been so kind in offering free access to his amazing library of content for 8 days to every attendee of our workshops. He also gave us some 1-month free memberships to raffle off. And the friendly folks from Knp University provided free access to Drupal-related material to attendees of the November 2015 edition of the workshop. When organizing a workshop make sure to have some treats for your attendees and partner with education providers so they can keep learning when the day is over. Also, show attendees how to stay connected with the broader community by helping them create a drupal.org profile and teaching them how to get involved.
A final comment for this section has to do with attendance. Do not feel bad if the number of people who show up is not the same that the number of people who registered. In fact, almost every time those numbers will not match. Sometimes you will have many attendees and in other occasions only a few. Do not let this disappoint you. Remember what motivated you in the first place to organize the event. Share your knowledge with others, no matter the number of attendees. Personally, I would present any workshop or session as long as at least one person shows up. Everyone’s time is valuable and each attendee sets aside time to listen to you. That is an honor I take with great responsibility, and you should too.
After the training
After you have enjoyed the Global Training Days experience, give thanks to everyone who made the workshop possible. This includes the attendees, co-presenters, venue providers, sponsors, and educational partners. In Nicaragua we post pictures and thank-you notes on Twitter and Facebook. And in those thank-you messages we also include the next dates of the workshop for those who missed it this time.
Of utmost importance is to perform an evaluation of the workshop. Meditate on things that went well, but also on things that went wrong and can be improved. At the end of our workshops we ask for feedback from the attendees. We also take time to improve the slide deck based on the concepts that attendees had difficulty understanding. This often translates to changing the copy, images, and examples used to explain the different concepts.
After all the hard work, give yourself a pat on the back, and share your story with others. You can write a blog post like this or simply post pictures of the workshop online. The Drupal Association is also interested in feedback from you and the attendees, so do not hesitate in providing it.
My wish list
The Drupal Association provides a lot of support and material to promote these events. Unfortunately, this content is only available in English at the moment. I would love to see this content translated to every language spoken by a member of our community. In Spanish for example, there is a great community that could help with the task of translating the content. The same can be said for communities which speak other languages. Eduardo Garcia is running for Director at Large within the Drupal Association and he has interesting ideas about making our community more inclusive for non-English speaking members.
Another wish of mine is collaboration in curriculum building. When the Nicaraguan community started to participate in the Global Trainings Days initiative back in 2014, we found little content that could be used in the workshop. The Drupal Association offers a curriculum in case you need it, but it is in English and our audience speaks Spanish. Because of this, we basically had to start creating a curriculum from scratch. The curriculum we use in Nicaragua is far from perfect, but the content has improved a lot over time. This has taken a lot of time and effort, yet there is no need to repeat the process again. Because of this, we have made our content available under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike license for anyone to use and adapt to their needs. So far we have available both a slide deck and a video recording of the theory part of one of the workshops. Unfortunately, some videos do not have audio, but we are planning on making another recording in a future edition. Also, I have started working on a written version of the workshop. This document is in a very early stage, but I will continue adding to it as time permits. It would be great if other communities would use this documentation and provide feedback to improve it. Collaborating in building a curriculum in different languages would be amazing. If you like this idea, start working on the curriculum in a new language and promote it to get feedback from others.
Measuring success
There are various parameters that you could use to measure the success of your workshops. For example, the number of attendees and the number of people who keep engaged with the local community thereafter. In Nicaragua, we have organized 10 workshops since 2014 and over 120 people have attended. Some keep engaged, while others do not. But numbers can be cold, so we measure success in non-quantitative ways. For example, seeing people smile when they understand the basic concepts of Drupal, or viewing their excitement after being able to build a website during the training.
Sometimes, we are able to make a more significant impact on the life of attendees. For instance, we are aware of people who could land a Drupal job after attending the workshop and continuing to learn on their own. The fact that we are making an impact on their lives is our best reward. Here are two testimonials of people who got a job after attending our workshops.
Ada Hernández - Translation and code contributor:
Hello everyone. My name is Ada Hernández Acosta and I am from León, Nicaragua. Attending a Drupal workshop presented by Lucas Hedding and Mauricio Dinarte set a milestone in my professional and personal life. At the workshop I learned the basic of Drupal: nodes, taxonomies, views, modules, themes, and more. I also learned the benefits of using Drupal including its security and no cost for usage. Moreover, a worldwide community is actively working on creating new modules, themes, and security updates. After attending the workshop I developed a strong interest in Drupal and decided let Drupal take part in my life. Today I work at MTech, LLC building websites on Drupal. Now I am also a member of this great community and I am able to make contributions to modules I use on the sites I work on. Thank you very much.
Edys Meza - Code contributor:
It was my first experience in something of this nature. I had just finished college and I wanted to learn new technologies. The Global Training Days workshop was a great opportunity for this. After attending the workshop I got an overview of Drupal that helped me a lot in the future. I learned basic concepts (nodes, taxonomies, users, blocks, etc.) each with real life examples; this was intuitive and easy to understand. That day I became part of the great Drupal community. Attending the workshop changed my life. After it I kept learning in the free classes presented by MTech, LLC where I currently work and continue learning everyday. I think these workshops are what make the Drupal community grow and help improve the lives of attendees.
Final comments
Be flexible. Nothing related to the Global Training Day is set in stone. For example, if for any reason you cannot give the training on the day suggested by the Drupal Association, pick another day. It can be in the same week or the week before or after. A good reason to do this is to let yourself rest and have enough time to recover your voice between multiple workshops in the same edition of the initiative.
Community first, companies later. Although the Drupal Association primarily has invited companies to give workshops to promote themselves, growing the Drupal community and sharing your knowledge should be the focus. In Nicaragua, we started to give the training as a local community initiative. It was Drupal Nicaragua, not a company who started giving the workshop in 2014. Later, both Agaric and MTech sponsored the events and education providers partnered with us. Of course, we are very grateful to them for their ongoing support!
Keep calm and enjoy the experience. Undoubtedly there will be mistakes, particularly the first few times you organize the workshop. In Nicaragua, we have given 10 workshops so far and none has been perfect. What is important is that you learn from the mistakes and improve for the next edition. Sometimes we face many difficulties, but we are able to work through them. At the end of the workshop, you will be rewarded by the smiles of people who have learned to build a simple yet functional website in a matter of hours. :-D
This is how the Nicaraguan Drupal community organizes Global Training Days. It is my hope that after reading through you feel inspired to give a training in your local community. When you are ready to take the challenge, pour your heart into it. Upload some photos of the workshop once it is finished, and share your experience, so that the entire Drupal community can benefit from it. If you have already participated in the Global Training Days, please share your story in the comments below. Have fun!
Special thanks to Alina Mackenzie and Lizz Trudeau for their thorough reviews and suggestions to this blog post. Also to Lucas Hedding who has helped move the Nicaraguan Drupal community forward by creating documentation and organizing events. His contributions to the local community are invaluable. And thanks to the amazing BADCamp organizers for providing me financial support to attend the camp the last two years. I have learned a lot during these events and the acquired knowledge has greatly improved the curriculum used at the Global Training Days workshop. The effort that you pour into the camp and keeping it free is inspiring and greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work! :-)
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Agaric is grateful to the Drupal community for all the effort poured into the amazing collaborative project. As part of giving back to it, we go to conferences to share with others what we have learned. These are some events where Agaric will be presenting this month.
Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy
This is a convergence of worker-owned cooperatives. Representatives come from all over the country to attend workshops and sessions on all things related to owning a cooperative. It will be help in New York City on weekend of June 9th -11th at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Benjamin and Micky will be hosting a workshop/discussion with Danny Spitzberg on Drutopia. They will cover how it can help cooperatives and smaller businesses have a we presence above and beyond the costs they can afford by consolidating the hosting and feature development into a group effort.
Montreal Drupal Camp
This event will take place on June 15-18 at John Molson School of Business de l'Université Concordia. Benjamin will be speaking on how Software as a Service can lead to long-term success in a software project.
Twin Cities Drupal Camp in Minneapolis
At Twin Cities Agaric will be presenting one workshop and two sessions.
On Thursday, June 22, Benjamin and Mauricio will be presenting the Getting Started with Drupal workshop. It is aimed to people who are just starting with Drupal and want to have a birds eye view of how the system works. As part of the workshop attendees will have the chance to create a simple yet functional website to put in practice their new knowledge. The organizers have gone above and beyond to make this training FREE for everyone! You do not even need a camp ticket to participate. You just need to register.
On Saturday, June 24, Mauricio will be presenting on Drupal 8 Twig recipes. This will be an overview of the theme system in Drupal 8 and will include practical example of modifying the default markup to your needs. The same day, Benjamin will present his Software as a Service.
Design4Drupal
This is THE yearly Camp for Drupal doers in Boston and it happens June 22nd-23rd. Micky will be hosting a workshop/discussion on Drutopia, an initiative within the Drupal project based in social justice values and focused on building collectively owned online tools. Current focuses include two Drupal distributions aimed at grassroots groups also offered as software as a service, ensuring that the latest technology is accessible to low-resourced communities.
Agaric will have a busy month attending and speaking at conferences. Please come to say hi and have fun with us.
Mauricio travels the world hosting Drupal trainings and presentations.
