Tech: Blog

I am excited to be the track chair for site building at DrupalSouth in Wellington next year and it's time to get your session proposals in!

An ever growing miscellaneous list of travel tips and thoughts that occur to me. These are about travel itself, not my actual travels.<ul><li>After flying international, getting low cost flights for remainder of the journey isn&#39;t worth it.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Don&#39;t always go for the cheapest option for transfers etc, often not worth it the long run.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">British airports suck and so do most of the associated services, they have some of the worst customer service around.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Going off the beaten track is worthwhile.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Hotels are the past, airbnb is the future.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Being an English speaker is an amazing luxury when traveling.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">There is a gap in the market for a decent travelers sim card with good data. <a href="https://www.lebara.com.au/" target="_blank">Lebra</a>, and <a href="https://uros.com/" target="_blank">Uros</a> come close, but still not quite, please let me know if you know of anything better available in Australia.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Is it me or do airlines not want to give away add much alcohol as they used to?</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">One travel power adapter is rarely enough.&nbsp;</li></ul>

<p class="p1">I am travelling on a three stage international flight today, it has a few hours stopover in each transit location, but that&#39;s little enough time that on upset can throw the whole flight out of whack.<p class="p1">I woke up this morning to see Google Now telling me that my first flight from Melbourne to Sydney had been delayed (I love big data and personally don&#39;t rely mind what services now about me, as long as I am aware) by two hours, which would mean I would miss my second and longest flight leg. I checked my emails, nothing from Virgin, no SMSs either. I checked the flight statuses on their website, which confirmed that my flight had been delayed (I&#39;m intrigued to know how you know a flight is going to be delayed in advance, but that&#39;s another discussion), so rang their customer service line to see what was going on.<p class="p1">After a bit of fathing about, which I always seem to get with Virgin customer service, it often takes three explanations to make them understand what you&#39;re talking about, I was informed that I had been moved to a flight an hour earlier. Still no emails or SMS regarding this, so what if I hadn&#39;t had rung?<p class="p1">I was still a little unsure about the change, but I figured there&#39;s certainly no harm in getting to the airport early, so left aiming for the earlier flight anyway.<p class="p1">Finally at a little over 2.5 hours before my new (unconfirmed) flight I finally received a phone call telling me to call Virgin about a flight change, so after ringing their customer services line and more fathing about, it was confirmed again that I had had my flight changed.<p class="p1">I am lucky to live close to the airport and I am also lucky that I have technology telling me my every move before I even know it myself, but what if I had been living a fair way out and wasn&#39;t so connected? Is three hours notice really enough time to get to the airport and checkin to an international flight on time? I guess this is a sign of when automated internal systems can fail.

<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 editorial calendars</li><li>Content strategy and marketing are best friends as the discipline helps attract seo and web traffic, this in turn reduces demand on customer support and partnerships. good for engagement.</li><li>Assess what content you already have. If it&#39;s not content it may be existing skills or assets.</li><li>Writing for your site can be empowering for team members</li><li>Don&rsquo;t be afraid of ghost and hired writers.</li><li>Decide what will you talk about and don&#39;t just talk to and about yourself. Identify what others don&#39;t do or do badly.</li><li>ebooks of collections of posts are a great marketing idea.</li><li>What to write about - questions that need answering, searches on your site. What conversations are people having elsewhere? If you get stuck, write an outline first.</li><li>Keep your content as short as possible, focus, end with engagement, what do users/readers want?</li></ul>

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 about the history of money, then bitcoin is no different really, it's an agreement to trust that a concept has a mutual value between people. The money we use everyday is no different from BitCoin really, it's just decentralised. This could be an entire post in itself, so take a read of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money" target="_blank">Wikipedia's History of Money article</a>. Back to tonight, which contained several interesting discussions:<ul><li>BitCoin Point of sale units - These are emerging in a couple of places, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2013/jun/23/britains-first-bitcoin-pub" target="_blank">pubs in the UK</a>, but also soon to arrive here thanks to Mikey Nelson.</li><li>How useful BitCoin could be for foreign travel and exchange</li><li>A Bitcoin association is being founded in Australia</li><li>The BitCoin ATM, a <a href="https://lamassu.is/" target="_blank">Lamasu</a></li><li>If you want BitCoins to be accepted in certain stores, then ask for it, if more ask, the more chance it will happen.</li><li>Apparently Elsternwick high st may be attempting a street wide acceptance of BitCoin.</li></ul> Interested in knowing more, then join the Melbourne BitCoin meet up - <a href="https://www.meetup.com/BitcoinMelbourne" target="_blank">meetup.com/BitcoinMelbourne</a>

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…

<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, watch presentation<br />Remember Lee's final words… _"We will accept any help"_<br /><a href="https://previousnext.com.au/blog/drupal-8-wont-kill-your-kittens" target="_blank">See the presentation here</a>

<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.

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 brief...

Drupal for Education and elearning by James G Robertson and Bill Fitzgerald

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of the challenges of my new attempt to blog about all the events I attend is that some events are hard to write about there and then on the spot. Networking events being one of them, you can't keep whipping out a notebook/tablet to jot down conversations and, well, you may not find anything you want to write about.

Three presentations tonight, followed by usual natters at the lovely Last Jar afterwards.

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.

Over the past year I've been slowly building a list of gotchas, mistaken assumptions and potential slip ups that have hit projects I've been involved with several times, or seemed so blindingly obvious after the moment that they just had to be documented. This is one of the many articles I have that may grow over time as I discover more useful tidbits.

<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 advantages and disadvantages, arming you with a toolbox for the next time a client asks for a mobile site or app.

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;.

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 ache, money wasted, time spent, mental and physical violence?</div>&nbsp;</div>Let&#39;s figure it out and end the session much happier.</div>

CiviCRM like many open source tools is a blank canvas and a set of paints that different implementers will take in many different ways based on their myriad uses and requirements.

&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, different, offer extra value and change their ways of working.</li><li class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">What can each sector learn from the other? What are some work practices that could benefit each?</li><li class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">We look at some practical examples of each sector to lead a valuable discussion.</li></ul>

I've been having some thoughts recently on the paths that many open source projects seem to follow and who they are really designed for, the developer or the users?

A few weeks back I needed to create an ability for certain products in Ubercart to be available for 'price on application', there were a few modules floating around that pertained to do this, but none seemed to work in Drupal 7, so I racked my brain on how to accomplish this as simply as possible and came up with something quite tidy...

I decided to upgrade my Samsung S2 to a Nexus 4, there were several reasons for this...<ul><li>I dropped the S2 on a rock and it had a large hairline crack in the screen, not that bad but noticeable.</li><li>I rooted the phone and installed Cyanogen Mod, it ran really well until recently, and a stable version of 4.2 looks like it was never gong to happen.</li><li>I came into some money and thought I'd treat myself</li></ul>

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.

Take your Drupal sites offline with HTML 5 AppCache and turn it into a webapp, perhaps with something like PhoneGap.

That snazzy website your looking at took a while to make didn't it? What do you reckon? Maybe it took the developers a few months to make. Perhaps its taken them a few years of iterative development to create and perfect something more complex.

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>.