Feedback from the Weekend!

Great weekend everyone!

Where can I possibly begin summing up the weekend, the conference, and my first impressions of Christchurch!

Really enjoyed the event! Venue worked out perfectly with some great variety of beer which is always nice haha

Highlights from the event would have to be:

1. Dave Lane trying to explain to the waitress downstairs what Drupal is, and watching her glaze over and look at me in the eyes, as if to say "Oh shit! What have I just got myself into, when is this guy going to stop"
2. Vintage Aviator Site overview with dman hearing how he was showcasing revision 7 of the theme to Peter Jackson with his custom 50 000 inch screen, to realize that things for some reason didn't render properly, and that he didnt want any whitespace in the site
3. Populating the google map with 50 000 nodes to test scalability and seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in the resulting map

Most memorable conversation:

Bevan: "Gold do you know any transvestites?"
Gold: "Yes I know two, would you like an introduction?"
Bevan: "Yes"

If I end up living in Christchurch we will definitely have to setup more meet ups! The majority of my drupal development has been on my own as my city did not have much of a drupal scene, so its great to be in a place with an active community locally! It would be great to be able to collaborate and bounce ideas back and forth on a regular basis!

The presentations I saw were great! I got some great insight through the discussion and walk thru demo's afterwards so great job on that... Interesting to see the scalability tests with gmap, and full screen technique details! I can just imagine Bevan burning the midnight oil trying to work out problems with those features haha

One of the most memorable was sitting down with dman with the Vintage Aviator site! Absolutely incredible the attention to detail and theming in the site, lots of little details you wouldn't realize until he explained them to me. Combined with his stories and pictures from working with Peter Jackson to build the site was hilarious. I really wish he would have done a session for the site would have made for a very captivating talk! Certainly raised the bar for my own development.

Food was good, especially the pizza! quite impressed with the menu, its always a bit hit or miss with bar food, so I didn't know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised!

I certainly don't have any complaints, but if I had to come up with suggestions for next time:

Don't schedule the seminar the day after halloween :P...

Friday night I was dressed as one of the 3 amigos, and later as the burger king, and decided to go down to the local base backpackers bar "Sinners and Saints" for A DRINK... As was obvious from the fact that I missed the majority of the talks saturday, and strolled into the conference at 1 pm with a red bull... one turned to many, and before I knew it I was doing "foxy brown" shots with a 6 ft 6 maori dressed like Beyonce Knowles

Long story short.. Next time please do not schedule the conference after any kind of international day of gathering or celebration where drinking may be involved, as I obviously have no self control.

Having come late on the first day, I might have just missed it, but talking to people it sounds like it never happened, and that was introductions. Go around individually, or have people split into groups or "tracks" based on background, skill level, or what they are trying to get out of the weekend. This would provide a sort of consensus of what the skill level of the room is, and goals for the weekend. Would have been great to know who exactly to go to for themers, etc. Perhaps on the nametags for next time we could have developer, themer, sales, advocate, whatever...

Would be good to organize and schedule breakout sessions at the start to have some time to get ideas together, and know exactly when, where, and who was interested.

I have also seen a sponsor/business card table at other conferences where people can place business cards, and advertising materials. I had a few people hand me business cards, but it would have been easier to go to a table and pick up everyones cards.

I think some great presentation topics/sessions for next time would be best practices for deployment, version control, repository, and development techniques. I found people doing things in a variety of different ways, it would be informative to find out who, what, and why people chose to do things the way they do, and use certain software...

For example:

* Do people use single or multiple codebases for projects?
* Download vs CVS checkouts for modules?
* Development Environment highlights, Textmate, Komodo, Eclipse, etc. personal pro's and cons each person had related to Drupal, to figure out if I should switch, etc.

Sessions like the Civicrm demo, and Bevans Hub were excellent, and would love to see more sessions highlighting integrations, innovative drupal uses, or modules. I think they are great for getting people to think outside the box, raising the energy and enthusiasm, and providing an insight into functionality people might not have known about, or time to learn about. Things like facebook integration, SMS, Asterisk, Panels, mailhandler, Organic Groups, Piclens, etc.

I was also asked, or heard questions along the lines of what is panels, give me your definition of a node/cck, views, etc. so I think it would be helpful to showcase some of the harder to get modules or concepts in drupal.

Great job on the photos Stein!

For anyone still lingering around! I am still touring around Christchurch if you would like to meet up get in touch! michael.dance --> gmail.com