OpenSourcery

Drupal Beyond the Web Justin Miller will treat us to a half-hour version of his DrupalCon DC Presentation, Drupal Beyond the Web.

Modules 101 Each meeting, we want to feature one or two brief presentations (no more than 15 minutes, including questions), highlighting an optional core or contributed module, what it's good for, and any special considerations or tricky configuration issues it has. The idea is to introduce people who are new to Drupal, as well as experienced Drupal users, to solid and useful drupal add-ons. If you're interested in presenting this month, let us know which module by replying on the Drupal PDX group page.

Workflow, Actions, and Triggers Melissa Anderson will present a brief summary of a site using Workflow, Workflow Required Fields, Actions, and Triggers to create complex electronic form routing. After that, she'll demonstrate how to build a simplified version of the use case.

The Drupal meetup will take place at the offices of OpenSourcery. As always, it's free and open to the public. We recommend biking, walking, or using public transportation. Please note: OpenSourcery developers will be working right up to meeting time, so please plan to arrive as close to event time as possible. We look forward to seeing you here.

The Portland Open Source Geospatial users group will /not/ meet on the fourth Wednesday of April, owing to a regional conference that many OS-GIS members will attend instead.

But May? Yes. May is in the books. The fourth Wednesday of the month, May 27th, to be exact.

There are several exciting demonstrations in the offing, but the May selection remains TBD. Please check back here later for more information. In order to help us prepare the space, please RSVP on the Upcoming page.

As always, the user group meeting is free and open. Please join us at OpenSourcery's office on NW Lovejoy between 16th and 17th streets. We strongly recommend biking, walking, or using public transportation.

*Please note* OpenSourcery's developers will be working right up to the meeting time, so please plan to arrive as close to meeting time as possible. Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you here.

This past weekend OpenSourcery hosted the launch party for Portland's Rose City Resource, online version. The Rose City Resource has long been a print booklet containing invaluable information on Portland's resources for persons experiencing homelessness and poverty. One can use the booklet to find hot meals, a place to stay, and other public resources.

Now the formerly print-only guide is available as a highly interactive, intuitive online resource. The project required the time and effort of countless people, but much of the thanks is due to Sarah Beecroft, Americorp volunteer and website project manager. Some of her words on the project, taken from their About Us page:

"The development of this website was an entirely volunteer-driven community effort; it didn't cost a physical dollar and was built with the intention of providing an existing organization with a sustainable tool to better do what they already work very hard to do well. The Rose City Resource website is a gift from the community to Street Roots to further enable them to carry out their mission of empowering individuals to find resources appropriate to their situation. This website began as my Americorps project with support from the City of Gresham, where I served a volunteer term with the Maps and Data Services Program, and was then adopted by the Portland Drupal Users Group (which I'm also a member of) as a community project. It was as near a barn-raising as I have ever seen in pixelated format."

The launch party was a blast, with much pinball, Spy Hunter, and general merrymaking. Please take a few moments and explore the amazing site that is the Rose City Resource.

Wednesday, March 25th marks the second monthly meeting of Portland's OS Geospatial users group at OpenSourcery. The first meeting focused primarily on logistical and scope issues, but now it's time to dig into and explore emerging technologies.

To learn more about the group and to follow their discussions, please visit the user group page. There you will find a thread about upcoming presentations. You can also help to shape the conversation.

The event is free and open to the public. Please visit the Upcoming event page and register so we know how many people to expect. Find our office here.

PLEASE NOTE: OpenSourcery's developers will be working right up to event time, so please plan to arrive no more than five minutes prior to the start. We tend to recommend this place for thirsty early-comers.

Thank you for reading.

This April, InnoTech Portland will light up the Oregon Convention Center with two days of speakers, a CIO summit, an eMarketing summit, and amazing exhibitors.

Over 2000 local, regional, and national technology professionals attend the event every year, so we're happy to support the cause. Among the feature speakers is Rahaf Harfoush, the New Media Strategist for President Obama's Social Media team. Of course, you can also find OpenSourcery CEO Brian Jamison speaking about the business case for open source software.

You can read more about the various events and sign up at the InnoTech website. We hope to see you there.

On April 22nd and 23rd, InnoTech will hold its sixth annual technology conference here in Portland, Oregon. OpenSourcery is proud to present at the 2009 conference for a number of reasons: InnoTech is local, it's run by good, smart people, and it provides an opportunity for us to demonstrate the value of open source software to a wider technology community.

To that end, OpenSourcery is teaming with partner Acquia to bring a truly professional approach to open source web publishing frameworks. As we've said here a few times, OpenSourcery is proud to be an original Acquia Drupal Gold Partner: together we provide world-class discovery, development, design, and support to our clients. In a space that has traditionally leaned toward proprietary solutions, this coordination between two of the country's premier open source development shops aims to disrupt old standards.

Attendees will find OpenSourcery and Acquia in the exhibit hall, but they can also find us speaking about the business case for open source software. The panel brings together four executive- and management-level professional who have successfully implemented open source software while improving their business' bottom line. We're very pleased to have Deborah Bryant, director of GOSCON and Public Sector Communities Director of Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (OSL), to moderate the panel.

Registration for the event is now open. If you are interested in being a guest of OpenSourcery, please contact thomas@opensourcery.com to enquire about complimentary registration passes.

Thank you for reading. We hope to see you at InnoTech.

I want to quickly thank everyone who showed up for OpenSourcery's version of Lunch 2.0 on Wednesday. It was a huge success, with delicious food from Pepino's (thanks, Andy!), good company, and pinball.

Much has already been said of the event, so I just want to add links to a few photos taken by our own Dan Mitu.

One more shameless plug: if you haven't seen Clove, which we demoed during lunch, you haven't given you clients the love they deserve. Curious? Just ask.

Thank you for reading.

Jonathan, Amye, Dylan, and Stacy are en route to DC as I write this, speeding toward the goodness that is DrupalCon DC. Immediately upon their return, OpenSourcery will host the March Drupal Meetup in order to squeeze every bit of smarts from the collective, exhausted, Drupal brains of PDX.

The Meetup begins with Tony Rasmussen, who will continue a discussion from the January meeting re. when to use Contemplate module vs. the Theme Layer.

We'll follow Tony's discussion with DrupalCon roundup, contemplation, and embellishment. AND IF YOU HAVE NOT HEARD, March is drewish's last Portland Drupal Meetup. That is, until he realizes that Portland is the greatest city on earth and that NYC, while it never sleeps, just doesn't stack up. So please join us and bid drewish a hearty adieu. Travel well, sir!

As always, we'll save plenty of time for questions and concerns. Bring your ideas and your thirst, because immediately following questions and answers we'll head to the Bridgeport Brew Pub for thoughtful libations. The Meetup is free and open to the public. OpenSourcery is located at 1636 NW Lovejoy between 16th and 17th streets. Contact thomas@opensourcery.com with questions.

Date: Wednesday, March 11
Time: 6pm - 8pm

Please note that OpenSourcery's developers work right up to meeting time, so please take care to arrive as close to 6pm as possible (5:55, perhaps?). We recommend public transportation and self propulsion; if you arrive a few minutes early, we can recommend a solid local bar where 30 minutes are easily passed.

Thank you for reading. We'll see you on March 11.

As you've probably guessed, we really like Portland. The tech community here is vibrant and very busy, with multiple events, networkings and general good things going on almost every night of the week, all year long. We've been fortunate enough to help arrange sponsorship for Ignite 4, and this time around for Ignite Portland 5, I'm helping out the Legion of Tech team by helping coordinating the day-of-volunteer efforts. If you're looking to get involved with Ignite 5 to help out with the showing, let me know at amye at opensourcery dot com.

We'll need help taking tickets, getting speakers in their places, and making sure that things go well.

Mark your calendars for February 19th, 2009, starting 7pm at the Baghdad Theatre.

See http://www.igniteportland.com for more information, submissions are due January 24th.