On the eve of DrupalCon Portland, we're happy to be able to get another free community video out, Installing and Using Dreditor. What's more exciting though, is that this video is part of our Community Tools workshop, and in an effort to spread Drupal community involvement further than where we can show up to run this free workshop, we're putting all of our materials and notes online for everyone to use freely, with the Community Tools curriculum.
A Workshop is Born
The Community Tools workshop was born out our experience with the Drupal Ladder and the Core Mentoring program. The idea was to gather up the essential tools that people need to understand in order to fully engage with the community, and feel confident contributing back to it. We don't just talk about the tools or processes, but we actually walk through them; have people install software they need, make sure it works properly, and use it in a community context. We've given the Community Tools workshop at several DrupalCons and camps now, and we've been working hard to refine it so that it works well for multiple circumstances. The most successful use is as part of a larger sprint event, where people can get up to speed on tools, and then immediately go actively use them to contribute, so that is what the initial draft of the curriculum is focused on.
Sharing What We've Learned
We've learned a lot by teaching this workshop so many times, and we'd love to travel everywhere to provide it, but, well, that's just not realistic. We want to make it possible for others to present it in their local groups, regional events, or wherever it would be a help to onboard new contributors. We have a fair amount of the material available in video form as well, so that people can watch and learn on their own, or in any size group. We've created a new guide, the Drupal Community Tools and Core Mentoring guide to group all of the videos together in one easy-to-find place (and it includes the new Dreditor video too). They are also referenced throughout the curriculum itself. Not everyone is brave enough to stand up and teach, or even if they are, they'd like to see someone explain the topic first. We hope that by sharing the slides, videos, links, experiences, and tips, we can get more people running their own Community Tools workshops around the globe, and warmly welcome more people into the Drupal community.
Learn more at DrupalCon
The curriculum is in a draft state right now, but we have plans to improve the organization, and content, over the coming months. Ideally we want to truly open-source this by providing a good way for people to contribute back their own improvements to it. I'll be talking about this more at DrupalCon Portland, as well as running the workshop again on Friday's Get Involved with Core sprint. If you have ideas around this, I'd love to chat with you about it, either in Portland, or online. If you'd like to volunteer to help out with the workshop or the sprint (either in Portland, or sometime in the future), you should definitely come to the Running Coaches Wanted! session at Portland to get a great overview of how all of this works, and what things will be happening all next week to help people learn new tools, get involved, and become mentors and trainers themselves. (Note that the sessions are all going to be recorded and posted online fairly quickly, so even if you can't make it to Portland, you should check the session out online.)
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