Hotel Shattuck Plaza
2086 Allston Way
Berkeley, CA 94707
(510) 292-4353

Unlike traditional workshops, instead of spending the full day in lectures, each student will work at their own pace through a set of comprehensive, focused training videos covering one or more of three broad areas of Drupal skill sets: Site Building, Module Development and Theming. Experienced mentors will be available to help students answer questions on a one-on-one basis, work through sticky spots, or demonstrate additional examples to help clarify difficult concepts. By using video training instead of a live lecture model, students will be able to work at their own speed, pausing where they need to, replaying material they didn't get the first time around, and skipping material they're already familiar with. And instead of lecturing, the trainers will be free 100% of the time to help individuals through tricky spots or point them in the right direction.

If you've ever zoned out during a lecture and found yourself a little lost, or been frustrated that the short time available for questions gets taken up with discussion you're not interested in, this is the perfect environment for you. You can take breaks when you need, tackle exactly what you need to learn (or we'll help you figure out what that is) and get a lot of personal expert advice along the way.

When you arrive, we will get you oriented to the course material and give you a custom curriculum focused at your particular skill level, tackling the subjects you need to cover. We will be leveraging a set of communication tools to allow students to form small groups around a specific topic if they'd like to work with others, and allow us to address as many issues and questions as possible throughout the workshop day.

All levels of experience with Drupal will come out of this workshop having made a huge step up the Drupal learning curve, guaranteed. Students will get a full week of access to all the training videos so that they can continue to review and expand their knowledge following the training.

We will provide a tested curriculum where you will build a Drupal 7 site from scratch (no code required), learning some of the most important concepts and techniques around Drupal site-building throughout the process.

First and foremost, you will need a laptop and a set of comfortable earbuds or headphones. If you're easily distracted by noise, you might want a set that blocks out some sound, just in case there is a bit of discussion around you. Keep in mind that you will be watching sets of videos, and then applying what you learn throughout the day. You can also bring an iPad or tablet device to play the videos on while you follow along on your laptop.

Having a vanilla Drupal installation without any modifications ready will help you get started as quickly as possible. You can use the Acquia stack, or BitNami in order to quickly set up a Drupal site like a desktop application (see here for a tutorial for Windows http://is.gd/ah6VpT or for Mac: http://is.gd/bskLKZ). Or, feel free to come with another stack you prefer. If you don't know what a stack is, don't worry about it, we'll help you out.

Chris Shattuck - Chris is the creator of Build a Module.com and has recorded nearly 500 focused Drupal tutorials. He has also done extensive in-person Drupal training, including a full-day module building training at Drupalcon, and has spoken at numerous Drupal events. The structure of this workshop combines the best of his experience as an in-person and on-line trainer. You can learn more about Chris at http://chrisshattuck.com .

Joshua Brauer - Josh is a Senior Technical Account Manager at Acquia. After joining the Drupal community in 2003, he has done everything from evangelizing Drupal to implementing sites, coding and theming. Most recently he headed his own Drupal shop, Brauer Ranch Ltd. Before that he was director of Information Technology at William S. Boyd School of Law at University of Nevada Las Vegas, and was a senior business analyst at EDS. He has a dual degree in Technical Journalism from Colorado State University. When he's not Drupaling, he enjoys photography, skiing, reading, hiking, horseback riding, cycling and hanging out with his wife and daughters. You can learn more about Josh at http://joshuabrauer.com/ .

David Hunt - David first got involved with the Drupal community in 2006 by patching together a Drupal wiki site for a friend. Since 2008, he has been working exclusively in Drupal as an independent developer. He is down with OOP, pronounces Aegir like a Norse God, can walk an array in fifteen minutes flat, finds the phrase "a culmination of the brightest Drupal minds" quite funny, and hates writing bios. He codes from his home in the Columbia Gorge, where he lives together with his wife and surrounded by a growing menagerie of animals more unruly than the code of his first module. You can learn more about David at http://dnotes.net

Joshua Needham - Although a master at building computers dating back to the Iomega hay day era in the mid 90's when you dialed into bulletin boards from a phone, working with the web only came into play roughly 7 years ago. It all started with a bug for internet marketing for which he became completely engrossed in, which led to the need for websites, which led to a need for an easier way to build websites other than hand coding via Dreamweaver. He had a choice between Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal for which a great deal of time was spent working with each platform. Drupal won because of the community, ease of use, initial barrier to entry, and life as he knew it changed as he went out on a limb back in November of '08 and started offering web development services professionally. It's been a wonderful journey that gets better every day especially when he decided to help out Chapter Three and Jen Lampton with the free 'Drupal in a Day' training offered at BADCamp 2010, and SANDCamp 2011. I am also a resident site builder with http://eye580.com. Get more information about Joshua at http://JoshuaNeedham.com

Scott Reynen - The lead Developer at Aten Design Group. He works primarily with custom module development in Drupal, but also dabbles in site configuration, server configuration, database management, and theming. He has presented at several Drupal events and is currently helping plan DrupalCon Denver 2012. Learn more about Scott at http://atendesigngroup.com/about#scott

John Ferris - The founder of Pixel Whip Web Design, a Drupal development shop focusing on design and theming. John started Pixel Whip with more than 12 years of experience in web/graphic design and developing interactive content. He has been active in the Colorado Drupal community since he first dug into Drupal a few years ago. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Melissa, dog Rudy, and step-cat Faticus Max. When he’s not behind the computer, he likes to get his hands dirty in the vegetable garden and watch the grass grow with a frosty beverage. Learn more about John's exploits at http://pixel-whip.com

Please bring your own laptop computer, and earbuds or headphones.