Blog

<p align="left">The speaker line ups and topics keep getting better for the Melbourne geek nights and tonight is no expection.<p align="left"><strong>Ophelie Lechat from Flippa talking about &quot;Tackling the scary content marketing beast&quot;</strong><br />I&#39;ve been doing some of this myself recently, so it was interesting to hear some more in depth on te topic from a commercial perpective, here&rsquo;s what I got out of the session:<ul><li>Content isn&rsquo;t just a blog</li><li>Have edi...

There was a slightly strange feeling to this meet up, in some ways it felt a little insular (I guess those who are actively involved with BitCoin are a small and intriguing community), but it could also just be because it was for once a crowd of folks I didn't recognise. There was an underlying feeling of "Everything old is bad" and "Everything new is good", which isn't always completely true or as black and white as that. I find Bitcoin interesting technically and as a concept, if you think abo...

There seem to be more events not running free catering, is this due to a lack of sponsors or a change to methodology? A thought to ponder on… This was what Dave called an "unplugged event" that contained some home truths from teams and businesses, so with respect for Dave, I will leave them out. I like his rawness. What follows is basically a list of tips I collected throughout the presentation:<ul><li>How to convince a business to go agile without implying it just means cheaper and faster. </l...

<b>Drupal 8 won't kill your kittens - Lee Rowland</b><br />There have been a lot of discussions around changes in the Drupal core team and that many old names are leaving for a variety of reasons, however there have been many new people coming on board and any community should be able to move on from it's originators. I'm currently going through the same process myself right now with Green Renters and it can be a difficult but worthwhile process. This was a  great oversight of what is new in D8,...

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/MobileMondayMelbourne" target="_blank">Mobile Mondays Melbourne</a> has been running for 8 years, which in the tech event space makes it something of an elderly character and with the plethora of new events happening around town all the time, I have had the increasing feeling that some of these older events are wondering how to keep themselves relevant. One of MoMo's big advantages is it's international ubiquity, I met several people who knew the event from oth...

The Web Directions - <a href="https://wdyk-melb-sept13.eventbrite.com/" target="_blank">What do you know events</a> are always a fun night and tonight was no exception with many running 'jokes' about some of the appalling policy decisions just announced by the coalition that will affect our industry, one which has been a boom area for Australia, but largely unrecognised on the larger national scale. Anyway, enough of Politics, what were the talks? Bear in mind there were 10, so this will be very...

**Drupal for Education and elearning by James G Robertson and Bill Fitzgerald** One of the commonalities with packt's Drupal titles is that whilst covering a variety of themes, they often include a lot of basic material that is included in all titles. This makes the titles great for those looking to cover a particular theme or topic from start to finish, but for those looking for more depth (or reviewing titles) you will spend some time reading through familiar territory such as installing, modules...

One of the things that frustrates me the most in the non profit sector is the lack of collaboration between organisations and the duplication that often occurs instead. Sophie Bartho from <a href="https://www.1dollarday.org/" target="_blank">One dollar day</a> explained her idea for helping Fundraising by for one day encouraging people to give one dollar to charity (in this case, Save the children). The organisation got to a point where they couldn't do all the work they wanted to undertake and...

The <a href="https://www.ted.com/tedx" target="_blank">tedx</a> model is a slightly strange one, fraught with as many positives as negatives for organisers, however it does create a fascinating ecosystem around the world. Tonight had a packed room, but was unfortunately fraught with technical issues and joins several other local tedx events around Melbourne. **Viv Benjamin, Oaktree foundation** The nerd in me thought it was nice to hear a reference to the original meaning of '<a href="https://en....

Tuesday was a productive day capped by two intriguing events. A stupendously early breakfast session with <a href="https://www.graniteconsulting.com.au/" target="_blank">Granite consulting</a> at their networking breakfasts, with Dan Weis of <a href="https://kiandra.com.au/" target="_blank">Kiandra IT</a> covering 'Security and Real World Threats' and the <a href="https://uxmelbourne.org/category/movie-nights/" target="_blank">UX Melbourne movie night</a> covering 'Lean UX' with Jeff Gothelf. Des...

An event that can be as specific as an event for the use of Drupal within government demonstrates a growing interest in Drupal (and maybe openness generally) within government and its great that such an event can attract nearly 150 people. Myself, Martin Schwall and Chris Dubrow ran our own session on using CRMs within government which went pretty smoothly and well, <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/chrischinchilla/extend-drupal-with-a-crm-drupalgov-2013" target="_blank">you can see slides he...

I love pitch events, I love hearing ideas good and bad and watching people's passion in what they do… This will be the first I attempt to summarise and my first attempt at live blogging, of sorts. <a href="https://www.angelcube.com/" target="_blank">Angelcube</a> is a 'long' established Australian startup incubator offering mentorships, networks and funding for aspiring startups. It already feels a bit like the Australian (Melbourne?) startup scene  is on the verge of jumping the shark if it ha...

<p class="p1">Drupal has a plethora of ways to power your mobile apps and websites, including:<ol class="ol1"><li class="li1">Responsive design</li><li class="li1">Offline storage</li><li class="li1">Integration with frameworks such as PhoneGap and Titanium Appcelerator</li><li class="li1">Utilising services to feed apps data</li><li class="li1">And much more</li></ol><p class="p1">This session will touch upon these various options, looking at when they are relevant, their complexity, their adva...

I&#39;m working on a book/presentation/series of workshops/who knows what covering integrating lean and agile practices into a non-profit or social enterprise. As a sub set of that will also be &quot;What the non-profit world can learn from the tech world and vice versa&quot;. It&#39;s still taking shape, it&#39;s still to be completely defined, but that&#39;s the plan. Watch this space and leave any comments and thoughts in the comments below.

Developer says to designer &quot;blah blah blah&quot;</div>Client says to developer &quot;blah blah blah&quot;</div>Project manager says to developer and designer &quot;blah blah blah&quot;</div>&nbsp;</div>And so it goes.</div>&nbsp;</div>A lot of the time we don&#39;t understand each other in our projects due to a lack of clarity, explanations, context and assumptions on all sides that go continually unchecked.</div>&nbsp;</div>How can we all understand each other much better, reducing heart a...

&nbsp;<p class="p1">What can the non-profit sector learn from from the tech sector and vice versa?<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Two sectors that are traditionally diametrically diverse, one moves slowly and is resistant to change, the other moves quickly, keeping up with trends and developments, constantly evolving to meet new needs and requirements.<ul><li class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">However in the changing global landscape, both need to be more efficient,...

He must works nights as I rarely see him, we've never spent a night together, just watching TV or anything like that, but he must have a set in his room, and a penchant for cheesy old horror films, because sometimes in the middle of the night I hear odd muffled shrieks and yells coming from his room. I think he throws out meat or something in the bins at the front of the house, there's always foxes sniffing and lurking around since he moved in, well at least I think they're foxes, they're quite...

I am honoured, happy and excited to have been asked to speak at a Web Directions event, <a href="https://code13melb.webdirections.org/" target="_blank">Web Directions Code</a>, here in Melbourne on the 2nd and 3rd of May. I am talking on how to debug and test your mobile web apps, somehow squeezing all I know into 15 minutes, it&#39;s going to be fun!

Take your Drupal sites offline with HTML 5 AppCache and turn it into a webapp, perhaps with something like PhoneGap. <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="356" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" mozallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/17141240" style="border:1px solid #CCC;border-width:1px 1px 0;margin-bottom:5px" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="427"></iframe><div style="margin-bottom:5px"><strong><a href="https://www.slideshare.net/ch_...

Completing the tricefta of talking about <a href="https://civicrm.org" target="_blank">CiviCRM</a> at every user group for every platform it&#39;s available on in Melbourne, I&#39;m talking about CiviCRM and <a href="https://joomla.org" target="_blank">Joomla!</a> at this weekend&#39;s <a href="https://melbourne.joomladay.org.au/" target="_blank">Joomla!Day</a>. it will be a brief features overview on CiviCRM and how it integrates with Joomla!. I&#39;m talking on the 20th of January at 10am. See...