PANMA - Philadelphia Area New Media Association

Getting to know Drupal
“Come for the Code, Stay for the Community” is the newly adopted tagline for the Drupal project. At this session we’ll give you an introduction to both the code that is driving the extremely fast adoption of Drupal, as well as the community that makes, builds and supports this truly Free and Open Source Software project (meaning: unlike projects like WordPress, Alfresco, or MySQL, no company owns Drupal).

What we’ll cover:
Some of the main reasons that organizations and companies are adopting Drupal, including the module and theme systems, robust content creation and organization features, tight integration with most popular APIs, its user & role system, content permissions, flexible workflow, etc.

- What’s new in Drupal 7, including the Database Abstraction Layer that has opened the door for running Drupal on Oracle, MS SQL Server, Casandra, etc, to improved core media handling, the move from ‘nodes’ to ‘entities’, fields in core, and more.

- Acquia’s Drupal Gardens, a hosted ‘Software as a Service’ version of Drupal 7, meant to compete with WordPress.com and other hosted website options.

- The Drupal community. Drupal owes much of its growth to the early adoption of the platform by community/political organizers, and these same people use their online organizing skills to enable the Drupal community to scale faster and better than most other Open Source projects. We’ll look at where the community works/communicates, how it operates, and what makes it tick (hint: talk is silver, code/work is gold).

Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg is a Partner and Business Lead at Zivtech, LLC. Zivtech is an Open Source Web Development Shop located in Philadelphia, PA that specializes in building powerful and scalable Web Applications and Enterprise Content Management Systems

Drupal in the Real World
Following a look at the technology and community behind Drupal, we’ll share what it’s like to build a site with the platform today. We’ll look at how to plan a Drupal-based site, how to document the information architecture requirements, how to choose the right modules for the job, and how to solve common site-building challenges without hacking.

We’ll leave you with an amusing tour of 5 things you *can* do with Drupal, but *shouldn’t.* *Ever*.

Nathan Gasser is founder and president of Rock River Star, an internet consulting and development company focussed on implementing open source web and social media solutions for non-profit, higher education, and corporate clients.

Pizza & light refreshments will be provided by PANMA. Doors open at 5:30pm, event runs 6:00 – 8:00pm. The cost is free.

Are you looking for a easy way to build and launch new sites for clients and have them manage the content? Join us for the next PANMA educational event where we’ll have 3 new speakers discussing the WordPress platform and demonstrate how you can take advantage of it today for building your next generation site, whether for your own team or for your customers. We’ll also demonstrate and discuss the new 3.0 features that will launch soon.

What you’ll learn about:

Introduction to WordPress and Why to Use it for Your Next Site
David Hitt of Splat Productions

A Look at the new features in WordPress 3.0
Lew Goettner of Wharton

Case Study: TechnicallyPhilly.com
Technically Philly is a news site that covers tech, venture capital and startups in Philadelphia. Sean Blanda is one of the three co-founders of Technically Philly, lives in Fishtown and can beat you in poker.

Case Study: The Temple Fox MIS
David Schuff of Temple University
The Temple Fox MIS site applies WordPress MU and BudyPress to create an educational community in which close to a thousand members teach/take courses (as blogs), create personal e-portfolios (replacing student resumes), learn about and engage with each other (through BuddyPress), and aggregate their knowledge (through aggregated RSS feeds, e.g, of faculty research).

Details
Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Time: Doors: 5:30pm / Event Starts at: 6:00 – 8:00pm
Cost: FREE
Location: Jon M. Huntsman Hall, Room 240 on 2nd Floor, 3730 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Pizza & light refreshments will be provided by PANMA.

Many web developers think that if they’re not storing sensitive data, they don’t have to worry about security. Unfortunately, recent high-profile security failures, like Twitter’s breach in June, have made it exceedingly clear that this isn’t true. As malicious hackers get more and more creative, web developers have to find ways to keep up. We’ll discuss why web security is important for both your school blog and your bank, give examples of where you can go wrong, and cover best practices on how to keep your web applications secure (it’s not as hard as you think!).

We’ll be covering:

Details
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Time: Doors: 5:30pm / Event Starts at: 6:00 – 8:00pm
Cost: FREE
Location: Jon M. Huntsman Hall, Room JMHH F-90, 3730 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
(Please note, “F” is for FORUM, which is down the main stairs from the ground floor)

Presenting will be Justin C. Klein Keane and Dave Konopka.

Justin Klein Keane is a senior information security specialist with the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences. Justin earned his master’s degree in US colonial history from James Madison University and is currently pursuing his master’s in computers and information technology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science. Justin has worked in information security for nearly a decade, beginning his career as the editor in chief of the Hack in the Box e-zine. In addition to being a programmer and participant in several open source projects, Justin is an active security researcher and penetration tester. Justin is a regular contributor to the Full Disclosure mailing list, credited with dozens of vulnerability discoveries. Justin is also a member of OWASP Philadelphia, as well as Infragard, and presenter at local and national information security gatherings. Justin is a certified expert penetration tester and certified ethical hacker.

Dave Konopka is a Philly based software developer working for Bayside Technology (http://www.baysidetech.com), a software consulting firm. Dave’s worked for over 10 years on web and desktop software projects. He writes about tech on his web site I Make Web Junk (http://imakewebjunk.com). You can find him on Twitter @DaveKonopka (http://twitter.com/davekonopka).

Pizza & light refreshments will be provided by PANMA.

Register
All PANMA events are free and open to all unless otherwise indicated above. Please register, though, as it helps us plan for the appropriate number of attendees.