Tag: Sprint Days

MidCamp 2018: Chicago in the bitter cold and warmth of community

Chicago has a special place in my heart. It is the ‘Mecca’ of improv theater. It is the heart of the Midwest, where I originate. But I thin I feel a special connection to the community there since it is where I gave my first ever talk back in 2016 at MidCamp and became a camp organizer for MidCamp 2017. I was happy to come back to the DePaul University campus for MidCamp 2018

This year I again stepped up and co-organized, taking on more responsibility, agreeing to help Avi with social media posting and emails. We scheduled an awful lot of these and it was a lot of work, but I learned a great deal along the way around social media automation, so personally it was well worth it. Also, the camp was a success! We gathered together to keep making Drupal happen! Lot to talk about so let’s get it moving!

Food And Fun

Thursday morning was load in for the event and trainings. We had some conference coffee and someone brought donuts. There was a lot to do, but we got people people set up, into their classes and we had an informal sprint day with about 10 people in the room.

Lunch was actually quite great, but no pictures exist that I can find. Instead of a catered boxed lunch or sad buffet line, we got $10 vouchers to use in the DePaul Student Center’s Cafeteria system, which had plenty of options for all. I had the best ‘hot and spicy tofu’ on top of a hearty salad and still came in well under budget. So good.

Opening Social

After a very full first day we had the chance to gather, right down the street at McGee’s Tavern. It was awesome to see my Drupal family gather for a drink and some food. Thanks to New Belgium for sponsoring with some free beer. I am not a big beer fan but their Juicy Haze is actually quite tasty and refreshing. It was a great social to officially kick off camp.

Friday

There is a line in “The Coffee Song” about ‘No tea or tomato juice, You’ll see no potato juice’ This was true of this camp. Though we did imbibe some fermented potato juice at some of the after events. Coffee and water were all that were served, but I was A-OK with that. Coffee is the fuel we turn into Drupal after all.

Lunch was again a $10 voucher for the cafeteria and again I feasted on tofu and salad. Others made different but just as valid choices.

Game Night

Friday night brought with it amazing tacos from a local food truck (Name to be filled in later when I remember it or someone comments on it) and board games! I got to play a modified version of Zombie Dice which eliminated the red dice, as we could not find them. This does not make for a good game. I also played Dixit for the first time. Very interesting rule set and just fantastic illustrations. I think anyone would have a good time just looking at the cards and not worrying about the gameplay. If you ever find a copy of this again, spend some time just looking at it. Totally worth it.

Saturday

More of the same coffee and lunch was the same thing.
Not exactly lunch, but here is a picture of Kevin Thull’s food form the same day

After Party

We traveled a few blocks in the cold at the end of Saturday to Derby Bar & Grill which had hummus and pretzels and mustard galore as well as alternatives for those who don’t want all plant based. Again the awesome New Belgium was there for the free beer and Platform.sh stepped up to sponsor this too. All in all, a great night.

A large percentage of us, lead by the amazing J.D. Flynn marched a few blocks to Shoes Pub to sing some DrupalKaraoke together. It was an amazing time and great way to end the camp celebrations. I witnessed while I was there the finest group rendition of Piano Man I have every seen in my life. The entire place for a few minutes was one voice, arm in arm. It was a perfect moment.

Sessions

Quick note: Due to scheduling issues, I am not doing a round of recaps on these sessions, just pushing raw notes. I do plan to revisit this in the future and recap each section. Thanks for the patience for now.

Keynote Session: What’s So Open About Open Source?
Chris Rooney

Raw Notes:
Tells us his rules, what to expect
Talk on Diversity
Last year a lot of people felt they were under attack
the community is suffering
trying to bridge divide
Used to hate Palantir
had bad feelings about thembut learned
1 Don’t ever ever judge someone presenting at a Drupal event
2 Drop your weapons
he was a boxer and football player, weaponized himself and throught of things in zero sum
your tools, twitter and facebook
inflict pain on others if used that way
powerful, so important to be aware of your own weapons
In a focus group at DrupalCon
someone felt it was not inclusive
he thought he was not welcome there
thought he was ostracized for conservative beliefs,
could be number of responses
3 We are all simultaneously victim and perpetrator
this is fundamentally part of the human condition
we should be more conscientious of ourselves and surroundings
Diversity creates value
lot of research into this, diverse teams perform better
87% of the time diverse teams make better decisions
diverse companies make more money and have better user satisfaction rates
better at recruiting talent
OK, but how are we doing and how did we get here?
How diverse is Drupal?
not very
Participants at DrupalCon
18% Female, 52% male, 30% other/unshared
SPeakers
21% female, 33% diverse (on teh big 8 social IDs)
Tech overall,
30% women
Drupal is a bit worse in these areas
overwhelmingly the tech industry is white and male
lot of stats on that
Blind Spots coming on the horizon for the tech giants
hegemony is bad but systemic of old system
Deepening wedge of dispossession
Customer Distrust
clients demand more diversity
So what is going on here?
Capability Issue vs Systemic Issue
people get up tight about these issues
if capability issue is false, which he believes, then systematic is heart of issue
He interviews a lot of people, especially right out of school
sees kids that are super good, across all lines, good people are good
Super Smart
Really nerdy
socially awkward
(asks us to stand if that described us in our younger days)
over half room stands up
raise hand if still true
almost all raise hand
these are our people
Barriers
Pipeline
Selection Bias
Mentorship/Role Models
stop and think how we each got into the spac
Lauren’s Law
(Lauren is a young engineer at Palantir)
I fell backwards into Drupal
didn’t have a CS degree
liked web stuff
that described most of room as well (we stood up again)
Career Risk Taking Prereqs
desire, interest, capability
a place tot learn/eperiment
mentorship
validation
community
a place to ‘land’
safety
4 Safety Nets
shows video of missing a trapeze move
falls into net
Safe place to land, he was upset
but the net was there to make sure he was OK and could try again
Minority populations and Risk taking
Dispossession opportunity and ris taking
First one to X syndrome – got to stay on a path to make people proud
performing with no net
high school -> College
and then something happens
financial aid lost, family crisis, hae to leave school to find a job
bounce job to job
if lucky then find a way to learn a skill
How do we put Open back in Opwn Source
5 Make it a safe space
be visible
Proactive inclusivity means continual calibration. “How did that sound to you?”
So what is next?
Atlassian survey
over half wanted to learn more about their colleagues backgrounds
5 accountability challenges

RFPs: How to get what you want
Allison Manley

Raw Notes:
At Higher Ed conference talked to person who didn’t know where to start
she talked he through it and thought others would benefit
Sales is like dating. Need tof ind the right partner
need to be excited about it
Stages of dating
If you don’t get a call back, she is sad
prevent that
Do you even need an RFP?
Avoid it if you can, talk to people instead
but if you have to, don’t be a bad date
10 things she hates about the process
Asking for copies
on a flash drive or (eww) CD
physical paper copies
spreadsheets with hundreds of boxes to fill
notary
wet signatures
objections in the proposal stage
no outline of goals
uploading a DB
40+ RFPs…
nightmare scenario
Phrases that mean nothing
like state of the art
best solution
Cutting Edge – not the same for everyone
dig into these adjectives
“Integrations”
Specific to region (“nothing in Northern Ireland”)
banning slavery funded businesses…holdever from very long time ever
Worst Date Ever story (sprocurement)
27 pages long
scope was only 1/2 page
zero info on goals
many questions
6 attachments and a flash drive
scope was very vague
Very!
26 pages on how to submit the RFP!!!!
214 questions were asked
Quotes ranged from $35K to $235K
they STILL have not picked a vendor after 2.5 years
So let’s build an RFP
1 BE SPECIFIC ABOUT YOUR GOALS!
avoid all generalities
BAD: I want more traffic
Good: We want more traffic on these pages because…(specific reasons).
2 be specific around constraints
key dates to hit
external forces
brand and ID guidelines
vacations
3. Please tell us your budget
for real, tell us!
seriously!, she means it
at least give a range
if you don’t have a number in mind, ask “Do you think it would be between X and Y?”
That will get some reaction
4 Tell us your exclusions
What is def not in scope
specify URLs
Who is in charge of content creation
Who is in charge of hosting
5 Give details about integrations
Bad: Integrate with LDAP
Good: integreate with Active Directory with LDAP to do x and for y reason
6 List external resources
by role
by skill
Are they interested in working in tandem with us?
7 outline the status of your content
Have you audited content?
Anything being archives?
help them nail down the specifics early
8 send it to the right people
in early days she looked at RFP database
she picked one
went through a ton of work
they went through 100 submissions took months for them to respond
avoid RFPs that are open call
random submissions are bad
9 Give time to respond
at least 10 business days
more like 3-4 weeks is better
10 allow for Q&A
most of the time this is present
can be via an organized conference call or ad-hoc
Send all answers to all vendors regardless of who asked
11 Don’t ask for spec work
we don’t work for free
work without a strategy is no good
see nospec.com
12 Streamline the paperwork
be mindfull of time
reduce formatting or paperwork requirements
keep it simple
13 Give a decisions matrix
how will we be judged?
what is weighted heaviest
geography? cost? clarity? etc.
14 realize you are buying a process, not a product
look for related experience
look ro effective problem solving
Responsive design example, no one every built one in 2011, we learned how
no one asked for one
KEEP IT SHORT
you can really do it in 3-5 pages
Lastly: Feedback please…call us back
cover page photo strategy

Managing Community Conflict in Drupal and Beyond
George DeMet

Raw Notes:
Defining conflict
can be positive or negative
benefits
cross pollination of ideas
can help people find creative solutions
can help clear the air around team members
something people are not saying- tension
sometimes just need to get it out in the open
ultimately if conflict is handled well, can build trust and improve relationships
confilce does not mean you can not engage in an respectful way
Consequenses of negative conflict
When conflict is out of self interest can derail the organization
can damage relationships and end up with toxicity
Unmet needs often lead o neg conflict
don’t feel heard
Feel contributions are not values
interests are not being represented
feel hurt by something someone did
One will prevail over the other
you end up feeling left out and conflict
How? does this happen?
Technical disagreements turn to personal attacks
frustrations with the amount of time it takes to review patches/project applications
people lashing out in issue queues
During the D8 release, saw a lot of conflict
many people declines in contributions
lost moral
has a real impact on diversity
Only 3% of OSS contributors are women
in drupal it is 6%
still terrible!
we literally have no idea how many people of color we have in the project
Code of conduct can help
it is not enough by itself and does not remove issues
just way to understand rules
a COC is worthless if there are no structures to suppport if ther are no structures to support it or mechanisms to enforce it
Enter the Community Working Group
help resolve conflicts between community members
Uphold the drupal COC
Recognize community leadership
Provide conflict resolution resources and guidance
whatever we can to help improve the overall health of the community
no funding, no direct Drupal Association connections other than Dries
Dries mandated they should exist
lot of conversations around what governance means in the community
blog post on D.O with bullet points
session at DrupalCon about the specifics is coming
values and principals need to be true from the top
things get stuck as these things are complex
Ultimately we need to take responsibility for our words and actions
compassion and forgiveness are intertwined

OOP – The Pokemon Journey
Fatima Khalid

This talk is amazing! If you have ever wondered “What is this OOP all about?” then stop wondering and go watch this talk!

Raw Notes:
Write a modular reusable and flexible codbase that is easily extended
Pokemon Journey
pick pikachu
electirc,
attack: thunderbolt
These are like classes, which are blueprints
properties
data points
methods
class-specific functions
creating a Pokemon Class
class Pokemon{
public $name;
public $type;

public function __construct($name, $tyep)
{
    $this->name = $name;
    $this->type = $type;
}

}
$pikachu = new Pokemon(‘Pi
$pickachu->attack;
Wild pokemon appears
how do we know the difference
Oddish
grass
Poison Fire
Inheritance is about sharing
parent class
child classes
overriding methods or properties
tree analogy with parnet class as trunk
Extending the Pokemon Class
class ElectricPokemon
class Picachu extends ElectircPokemon
Inheritance in Drupal
interface WidgetInterface extends WidgetBaseInterface
Gym Battle!
need to think about comparing and contrasting trengths for strategy
Pik
water (str)
Ground (wkn)
Getting data from our Pokemon
PHP magic methods: __get() and __set()
Getters and Setters in the child classes:
class RouteMatch implements RouteMatchInterface {
Using a Pokemon Ojbect
interfaces are like contracts
all methods are public
class ElectircPokemon implements PokemonInterface
Creating a Pokemon Evolution Trait
$nextEveloution = $this->evolutionsstate;
You win your first badge!
one looks like the Drupal Drop 🙂
functionlities on badges will change
plugins are like functional lego blocks
many types of plugins
different behaviors | common interface
Pokemon | plugins
abstract class PokeBadgePluginBase extends PluginBase
class DrupalBadge extends PokeBadgePluginBase {
To be the very best!
tournaments
needs stats of wins and losses
services are like swappable operations
-same function | swappable code
-global available
creating a PokeDataInterface
call the pokemon service
new Pokemon
$pokeDataHelper = \Drupal::service(‘pokemon.pokedataservice’)
$data = $pokeDataHelper->
Services in Drupal are swappable
email.validator good example
when possible, inject your services
Pokemon Dependency Injection
you need to lead it and a container to load it into
if you are in a custom block, do you have a constructor? It tells you if you need to write the service into the interface
bit.ly/oop-midcamp-2018

Too many cooks! Supporting augmented teams without getting salty
Stephanie El-Hajj

Raw Notes:
Defined: Salty – to be upset or bitter, often used to express feeling left out or frustration when things don’t go your way
Augmented teams are when 2 or more existing teams come together as one for a project
cultivating healthy teams going agile are other topics she talks about
Drupal has many companies with distributed teams like Amazee, which makes things a bit early
when do you augement?
Internal dev team?
Are you looking to hire?
Are you just looking for one project consulting?
Let’s talk about teams
scrum master, PO/PM, Devs
technical design review vs functional review
if you are in a run well kitchen, they don’t talk, works as a fine tuned machine
what you want your team to be like
when you bring in new parts of your team, they bring unique things
maybe using comments differently or chat differently
team dynamics can change
Each person can change team and the team needs to adapt to each streength,
if done wrong fights and such
we all start making assumptions
normal project they just lead and lay down how it works
with this they realized that would not work
added a single point of contact, made sense to them
problem is that they interpreted that request differently and assigned wrong person to this task
who’s driving, import to know
differnt than who is in charge
notes, repo, lot of organization logistic works
was not clear in their case who this was, too many people made too many suggestions
lot of time building RACI
Everything can not be a priority
if all are, none are
also different paths present to how to get to end result
like blindfolding carpenters
without the communication of this it ended up being very peicemeal
let’s check in!
during this time they had a lot fo spreadsheets
but also learning React at same time
realized they were doing too much and incorrectly
So we paused the project
got everyone in the same room
where it happens
turns out their side had never worked together as a team before
missing team dynamic
this got everyone on the bus
they enforced that building a website is NOT like building a house
once rescoped as a larger picture they got on track
building a website is like a road trip
only so much gas, so much money and so much time
start here, end there, but know there are a lot of options and directoins you can take
back to who’s driving
visionaries should be informed, but they were not being translated and communicated
Where are we NOT going
have to suss out what is out of scope for this project, make it to new project
want to see heads nodding
after every point asking “nodding head, we agree, we don’t agree? this is your chance”
changes calls because people realize they can’t just go back and add on later
getting into specifics
what the thing will be and what will be in it
planning is a group activity
Get everyone to know where they are
fail fast, fail often
when you get to the end, it is like a three legged race,
win the race with good teamwork

Hot JAMS(tack): Lessons from Building a Music Discovery App with Drupal and React
Brian Perry

Raw Notes:
was listening to a podcast
they had a spreadsheet with a lot of data
At the time decoupled was very stressed
he wanted to learn
the flavors
coupled – all Drupal all the time
progressively decoupled, Drupal still JS sprinked in
Fully Decoupled: JS framework communicating with an API to get data from Drupal
He went Fully Decoupled
limited editorial needs
wanted to go all-in and learn React
Options:
Reservoir
Contenta
Drupal8
Reservoir is the back end to your front end, maybe the easiest but simple
Contenta, better access to vocabularies, comments, media
a more Drupal oke approach to extending
D8: You can roll your own
he used reservoir
migrating the data
please hydrate, it is important
google sheet -> drupal8
creaed custom migrate module
pulls data directly from Google Sheets Plus JSON
if you publish file->publish to web .check. republish on update
real tme access to a public URL data
migrate, more like Mi-great!

My Talk

Nobody wants a website. They want results!

I always see room for improvement, but I got a great reaction from this talk and it turned into a group conversation as I was hoping. Thanks for all that came out!

Sprints Day

I am so happy to be part of the community that makes Drupal. Even though I have no pull requests for core or any other badges, helping others contribute has been amazing! Special thanks to the Drud team for leading the new contributor session. All in all about 40 people came out to sprint and make Drupal better.

Wrapping up

Lot of very awesome plant based options for meals and the wondrous Chicago area Drupal community made this trip amazing. I came back tired and glad ot get back some of my mental space, as I am sure the other organizers did as well. If you are reading this far and are all like “I want to help organize a camp” then I say Do It! It is very rewarding and you learn a lot in the process.
MidCamp will always have a special place in my heart and I can’t wait for next year!