CivicActions

DrupalCamps help bring out creativity. This weekend I attended Vancouver's DrupalCamp, and I really enjoyed myself. On top of it, I am always amazed by talking with others at these types of events. Other developers who I think really know their stuff said to me, "The camps are great. They remind of how much more I need to learn." I thought they knew it all!

What is one of the best tips to get out of the creative slump? Need to find that extra juice for your Drupal theme?

It may be simple, but I love to use Flickr for my inspiration!

Flickr has millions of photos, and thousands of groups to showcase amazing work.

Vandelay Design has compiled a list of 99 Flickr groups to help get you unstuck, such as:

http://flickr.com/groups/webdesign-inspiration/
http://flickr.com/groups/illustrationnow/
http://flickr.com/groups/psdtuts/
http://flickr.com/groups/photoshop/
http://flickr.com/groups/designtype/
http://flickr.com/groups/yourvector/

Inspired! That's the way we work!

Hello!

Just a quick note to let people know on the planet and elsewhere that I've developed a short tutorial on setting up a workflow-ng event and using arguments / handlers based on the flag_content module.

It's available at:

Workflow NG tutorial and how-to

This is not for the faint of grey matter... sorry, no screencasts or tweets. Just a lot of code. I will be posting a screencast / some screenshots sometime soon, but for now, this one is for the geeks.

Enjoy!

Jacob

Have you ever wondered what a "themer" actually does? How are they different to a designer and a developer? In it's simplest sense a themere takes a flat static image, the design, provided by the designer, and a mostly-functional but ugly site, provided by a developer, and makes the ugly site look pretty like the designer wants it.

This timelapse by Matthew Buchanan of the theming of nzmusicmonth.co.nz sums up that process:

I had the joy of attending Linuxfest Northwest on April 26 in Bellingham, WA. The weather was great (just like last year), and the atmosphere relaxed and fun.

Linuxfest is a 2-day community event, run by volunteers and free to the public. It is such a cozy atmosphere, and it is easy to interact with the speakers and the exhibitors.

What originally began as one man’s blog showcasing his personal collection of non-profit ads, has in three years developed into a clearinghouse for social marketing campaigns from around the globe. I was first brought to this site through another rad source of socially conscious designers I’ve been affiliated with over the years, the Graphic Alliance.

Earlier this week I met Brent Schulkin at EcoTuesday who shared about his Carrotmob vision: organizing consumers (via Flash Mobs) to make massive group purchases at companies who make environmentally friendly choices.

After a bidding war between local businesses, K & D offered to use 22% of the day's gross profits to upgrade their store to be more environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient.

Below is a short video of today's action (sans after-party):

Surf Canyon, one of my favorite search add-ons to improve Google search, auto-updated today - reminding me that I've been meaning to share this for the Way We Work.

Basically, Surf Canyon helps you find information deep within the search results. As you search in Google (or Yahoo or MSN), the results you click go on to train Surf Canyon to find links more relevant to what you are looking for.

In the case of the example image below, searching for the Media Mover module in Google, I am able to quickly find the Drupal Video Group as well, pulled in from page 3.

Surf Canyon works with Firefox (and Internet Explorer, if you must).

The Way I Work

I work primarily as a project manager at CivicActions, though I do serve in other roles as well. Being a project manager means that I am managing the schedules, workplan and budget for a number of projects at once, and that I work on one project or another with a large percentage of the whole CA team. My job requires a lot of patience, flexibility, communication, and the ability to keep track of seemingly several million details at once. It also requires a sense of humor, the ability to educate people, and sometimes, an iron will.

Physical Space

One of my 3 DrupalCon Session Proposals got accepted and was scheduled last week: Scalable Theming: Theming for 100s of node types, CCK fields, and views.

Advanced theming tips, tricks and techniques for very large complex websites with many node types, CCK fields and views. This session is targeted at themers & developers wishing to learn how to manage complex theming requirements in a cost-saving, maintainable and scalable way.