Tickets for Florida DrupalCamp 2011, February 12-13 at Rollins College in Winter Park, are now available at the official site: FLDrupalCamp.org. This year's event promises to the be the largest Drupal event Florida has ever seen with more of what’s been growing crowds for the past few years - now at a bigger, more comfortable venue. Tickets are just $10 and include a t-shirt, and plenty of food and drinks.

We've partnered with two great organizations to pull this off. First, the Rollins College Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership Center is acting as our host organization. They are providing an enormous amount of support in providing a venue, helping with session selection, and getting the word out to local organizations. The Central Florida Computer Society is helping us for the second year in a row providing financial management and a bevy of volunteers.

Day 1: 5-track Learning Experience

Beginner Track - Enthusiasts, first-timers, non-programmers, webmasters, and marketing people, as well as anyone tasked with updating sites will benefit from these sessions to provide a practical overview of Drupal. You’ll learn the basics, get practical tips, tap into great resources and gain insight as a real site is built before your eyes.

Two dedicated Drupal Hands-On tracks for programmers, webmasters, themers and others seeking to get insight and best practices from the brightest Drupallers we know. These sessions are the heart of Florida DrupalCamp, and this year will also feature valuable sessions on new features in Drupal 7.

Two Business and Social Media tracks - Social Media Club of Orlando is contributing heavily to this first ever Business and Social Media track for non-technical people, decision makers and those who need to get a better understanding of what Drupal can do. You’ll learn the basic principals, benefits and challenges in using Drupal with popular social media tools, and the advantages of the platform and its dedicated developer community.

Also, Birds Of a Feather sessions presented in a dedicated room throughout the day where you can get help, get some work done, or create your own unconference.

Networking – After the last screen goes dark Florida DrupalCamp social scene lights up with an evening designed for fun and fellowship at the Shipyard Brewery in Winter Park. It’s a chance to get to know the experts, meet the newbies, and develop a few new friendships.

Day 2: Site building sprint for a cause

2nd Annual "Coding for a Cause".
This year, we will be building a site for the 501(c)3 Central Florida Computer Society, which will be celebrating its 30th birthday next year. Our annual community selection process chose CFCS as the beneficiary of Coding for a Cause based on their active participation and support of the local Drupal community.

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the amazing support we've received from our sponsors, led by our Platinum sponsor, MindComet, a leading interactive marketing and software development development company with a large presence in Altamonte Springs, Florida. Thanks to them and our other sponsors, including Trellon, BigCouch Media Group, Lullabot, Software Quality Engineering, and Veredus, we've been able to keep the ticket prices at just $10.

This year's event promises to be the largest Drupal event Florida has ever seen. Last year we were forced to cap attendance at a less than 200 people due to the venue, this year, the capacity is much higher. We hope to see everyone there!

The Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership Center at Rollins College's Crummer Graduate School of Business is having Ryan Price from DrupalEasy as a guest speaker at their Winter Park Campus. Here are details about the event.

Leaders Series: Free Software Tools for Nonprofits

Effective technology is absolutely essential to efficient and successful
nonprofits. Technology, software, and IT support are integral to back
office functions and engaging clients, donors, volunteers and the
community. Take advantage of technology that can reduce your operating
cost and increase engagement and outreach with clients and donors.

Take advantage of and learn tips about:

• Google and Google Docs
• Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
• RSS Feeds, Podcast Feeds, Blogs
• Drupal Content Management
• Popular Open Source Projects

Date: Friday, January 14, 2011

Time: 8:30 a.m. - Networking and Coffee
9:00 - 10:30 a.m. - Presentation

Tuition: Free for Members (limit 2 per member organization), $10 Non-members

Presenters: Ryan Price, Open Source Developer, DrupalEasy and Stephen Matheny, Special Projects Manager, Mystic Innovations Group

Ryan’s passion for technology is a means to unleash creative endeavors. He is an open source developer and trend spotter who harnesses his experience in project management, web applications, and interactive design to build markets for businesses, and users for websites. Ryan’s days are spent
developing products and designing creative solutions for clients using Drupal, teaching professional Drupal training classes, tutoring and running training programs for Drupal, PHP, Podcasting and Social Media, designing web pages and application back-ends, and sharing his knowledge of technology with businesses, nonprofits and individuals. Ryan has implemented and maintained high-traffic websites such as PopSci.com using Drupal, Wordpress, PHP, consulted on Drupal best practices, eCommerce and website administration. His expertise includes customizing and theming websites to specifications, including developing and maintaining custom code, overseeing security, social media, and search capabilities.

Stephen has over 25 years experience developing interactive solutions for Fortune 100's, education institutions and government agencies. His work in business process re-engineering has resulted in several domestic and international eCommerce patents. During his tenure at the University of Maryland he was responsible for creating several community outreach programs with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a successful web publisher and has produced instructional programs funded by the National Science Foundation and DOE. Recently, he has been assisting nonprofits to expand their reach through the use of the Internet and Social Media and helping to organize "Coding for a Cause" project with the Florida Drupal Users Group.

John Albin Wilkins (JohnAlbin on Drupal.org), co-author of Packt Publishing's new Drupal 7 Module Development as well as one of the main contributors of Drupal 7's theme layer, joined Ryan Price and Mike Anello to talk about theming in Drupal 7.

The discussion provides a nice overview of theming in Drupal 7 as well as what new features themers can expect when they dive in. Topics covered include the new "render elements" and hook_page_alter(). John also explained what themers can expect when upgrading a theme from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 as well as how enjoyable he finds working in Drupal 7.

"Drupal 7 Module Development" was written by six current and past Palintir.net employees, all very involved in core Drupal development (including past DrupalEasy podcast participants Matt Butcher and Larry Garfield). John worked mainly on the two theming chapters - both of them extremely impressive in their scope and depth. The chapter on module theming is especially comprehensive, covering everything from theme functions to the theme registry. Other chapters cover Drupal permissions, JavaScript, installation profiles, and even an appendix on the new database layer. Overall, it appears to be a very strong Drupal book. We received a copy of the book just hours before the interview, so while aren't able to provide a complete review, it was really impressive during our initial time with it.

In addition to all of his work on Drupal 7, John is also the maintainer of the Zen theme and is working towards an official Drupal 7 release for it. He has proposed a session for DrupalCon Chicago: Become an IA superstar: building essential navigation in Drupal - be sure to give it some fivestar-love if you'd like to see it.

Links from the podcast:

• Update a theme from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7
• John's future Drupal 7 theming and usability video podcast 
• Ryan's Beginning Drupal Theming pre-conference training at DrupalCon Chicago
• Mike's So you want to be a Drupal Rockstar? proposed session at DrupalCon Chicago

Twitter feeds:

• @drupaleasy
• @andrewmriley
• @liberatr
• @ultimike
• @webenabled
• @johnalbin

If you'd like to leave us a voicemail, call 321-441-3964. Please keep in mind that we might play your voicemail during one of our future podcasts. Feel free to call in with suggestions, rants, questions, or advice to Ryan on how to keep his cat quiet. If you'd rather just send us an email, please use our contact page at http://DrupalEasy.com/contact

Packt Publishing keeps churning out Drupal-related books - by my count they've published nine this year alone! One of their latest efforts is Drupal 7 by David Mercer. It's a basic "intro to Drupal" book based on Drupal 7 geared towards readers new to the platform.

There are a number of topics in the book that are a bit unique, starting with a nice discussion about the GPL and the rules governing its basic usage. It's not something that is seen very often in Drupal books, and it a great introduction to open-source licensing. There is also a short section on Open ID that provides the basics without trying to go into too much detail.

The author dives deep in the taxonomy chapter, covering the complex topic of "multiple hierarchies" - something that not too many sites utilize, probably due to the complexity in setting it up. It appears that Drupal 7 makes it a bit easier - combine that with the authors explanation, and it quickly becomes a much more approachable subject.

For people familiar with Drupal 6, this book provides a few instances where new features in Drupal 7 are highlighted. The "shortcuts" feature of Drupal 7 is given a nice section explaining how it can be leveraged for different types of administrative users. Drupal 7's much-improved handling of public and private files is also covered, as is the new functionality to update modules from within Drupal's administrative interface.

Sections on subtheming (with the Zen basetheme), Panels, deployment (even if it was heavy on cPanel), and jQuery (a pleasant surprise) were of adequate depth - enough to give the reader an incentive to learn more.

While the author does a nice job of covering most of the basics of using Drupal, he falls short in a number of areas that make it difficult for me to recommend this book. My biggest complaint is the fact that most sections jump right into Drupal's interface without giving the user any background as to what is coming. The Views chapter in particular, builds a sample view piece-by-piece but at no time provides a roadmap to the user as to where the process is leading. This makes it difficult for the user to follow if they don't know where the finish line it.

There are several instances in the book where explanations are non-existent (node and user references), diagrams are confusing (taxonomy), and discussions are hard to follow (Views arguments). It seems that with a some additional well-placed examples, screenshots, or diagrams, much of the confusion could be avoided.

A pet peeve of mine is finding things that are flat-out incorrect - I found three instances in this book, albeit all of them relatively minor. Explanations of search re-indexing, main link sources, and Internet Explorer .png support have issues that will leave readers confused.

Overall, this will be a hit-or-miss book for most readers. There are definite strong sections in this book that you won't find in any other printed book, but if you're looking for a general introduction into Drupal, I fear that some people will be disappointed with this effort.