Backdrop CMS Outreach, 24 Jan 2019

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From YouTube: Backdrop Outreach - Jan 24

Description

Today’s outreach agenda: http://bit.ly/2VtYvvP

A

Hello Internet, it is January 24th 2019, and this is the fortnightly community outreach meeting or backdrop CMS. So we held this meeting every two weeks to talk about ways that we can spread. The word about backdrop with the objective for these meetings to be finding ways to get people talking about backdrop.

A

Let's see website world, so the first thing that we look at is trying to find ways that we keep our primary website backdrop CMS org to more effectively spread. The word about backdrop CMS. So you know. Let's see, we've got one issue, that's been open for quite a while 442 making it so that people can find and download modules themes and layouts more easily. That hasn't been any progress on that issue. In quite some time. I know.

A

Jen left him said that she was going to take it on, but we haven't seen any activity on issue 442 in quite some time.

A

442 in the backdrop CMS or gets you cute, or we talk about things that have to do with our primary website. So no updates there. We've got some great designs that could be implemented, but you know we're lacking some front-end efforts there.

A

Let's see, we've also got this suggestion here to change the way that the homepage demo functionality works right now on the homepage. There's a spin up on Pantheon button.

A

We've been thinking about replacing that with something that doesn't require a sign up, so something that an anonymous user can just click and easily create a sandbox with out well without creating a count or without entering in their personal information anywhere. That's actually seen some some progress here. Recently, I'm gonna pull up my.

A

Firefox wonder here and show you guys the current status of that, so the main discussion for tugboat is happening over in 440 to create the backdrop demo site. You can now try this out. It's actually up on backdrops. You must I've work right now, however, it's not linked from the home page. Yet so this functionality exists, but it's not it's not really publicized, so heading create a demo.

A

It takes a minute for it to create a sandbox and there coz visit your site right now. There's a lot of feedback around like how long we should last and what content we should put on these pages and then also what happens once you actually get dropped into.

B

A

Right now it's absolutely stock backdrop, including like it's not even installed yet, but it is already connected up to a database in the files directory and everything for you. So you don't need to enter in any of that information. But then, after you at this point you can, you know, create sandbox with you. Email address.

A

B

A

We go so this demo sandbox right now lasts for a week. Dr. Beth suggested that we shorten this lifetime down. I had been thinking, wouldn't put this together that it could potentially serve some purpose for for workshops like if you were doing like some kind of site, building workshop or introduction to backdrop like everybody in the room.

B

A

Setting up local hosts, you could just say everybody go, make a demo right and that would have the advantage over Pantheon in that what Pantheon, first of all, you're limited to two free accounts. So a lot of people I've run into already have the max or a number of sand boxes on Pantheon in the first place, but also you know promoting Pantheon, although we've got no problem with that, you know, there's not really any any strong reason why we should be pushing one platform over another one.

A

So anyway, this is a interesting approach in that it doesn't require any kind of login or credentials or anything like that could be a really great way to make it so that people can try out sandboxes like in a really quick and low-friction way.

A

You know shortening this lifetime down, maybe making it be like a day or two might be sufficient even for for basic work shopping, and it's it's also like right now. You know once you create contents or do things on the site, you really can't get it out. I mean you can do a config export, but there's no kind of content exporting, so that would probably leave people a little bit.

A

You know dismayed if they spent like a couple of days building out a backdrop website during a workshop and then had it. You know disappear into the ether after they were finished so I don't know. Maybe my workshop idea. Maybe this tool isn't the right thing for that. We should continue pushing permanent platforms like like a Pantheon for for doing workshops, but I, don't know different tools for different situations. It might be sufficient for more purposes than I had originally imagined or not I'm, not sure yeah.

B

I think it's not that that far off, if it, if, instead of being the the empty side, if it's populated with some sample content and with you, know one of a variety of methods to export they, it becomes pretty plausible yeah.

A

The original issue here actually was Tom grandi suggested that the demo site would have content and themes so that it would be a complete insight rather than a vanilla, download I may have corrupted his original purpose here, a little bit and turning this into the like. Let's make it so that we can have.

A

You know integration with tugboat, but that was the first suggestion from fear that you know we should probably make it so that everybody gets their own sandbox rather than rather than everybody logging into the same one, which were everybody logging into the same one could be potentially hectic but yeah. So now you know, according to the original suggestion here, we'll actually find you know sample content and functionality that we could put onto the site I'm slightly.

B

It seems like we lost Nate yep. Oh.

A

Yeah am I back yeah now you're back okay? Well, we might want to make an option or have multiple ways to create demos. I, don't know you know ones that have vanilla content, ones that don't there there's good reasons to go with both approaches. I think vanilla is great because it makes it so it's identical to what you get when you download backdrop right, it should really be different and Sam are filled with pre-populated content is great because it can demonstrate what it is.

A

You can actually do- and this sounds an awful lot like the umami situation for Drupal 8, but I really don't like having people being told to make a decision right before they do anything about like the final version of their websites. So but this is slightly different in that the stakes are really low.

A

You know it took me five seconds to make a sandbox and if I want to make another one, it would take me another five seconds, so I think it at least in this situation, there's a lot less potential for losing somebody right away because they spent a lot of effort and then screwed it up right away.

A

You know so screwed it up by making like one wrong step in this case, there's hardly any steps at all in the first place, so you're not very committed, at least to to your blank sandbox anyway, we're collecting more feedback for that issue. Under the bankruptcy mortgage, uq issued 422 there's a lot of great stuff already coming in on ways. We can improve that okay, so that's all we have for functional improvements to the website.

A

We also need to use backdrop CMS org, to promote things through creating content, mostly blog posts, the most recent blog post that we had was created by Tim, always here present with us. Thank you Tim for the release of backdrop 1.12, which this was posted the day after backdrops 1.12 release on January 15th. So, thank you Tim for doing this. This is really excellent.

A

Upcoming blog posts, you know, we've got a lot of things that we could potentially do, there's a couple that are on my plate, including working with the Conservancy, the software freedom Conservancy, which is our fiscal sponsor for backdrop. We haven't yet even officially announced that, but we do have our donation pages set up to go through the Conservancy right now.

A

So there's a lot of potential here, actually with the Conservancy to initiate some kind of fundraising campaign, we haven't done any kind of fundraising efforts and a long time actually I think we did the initial fundraiser for backdrop and then, let's see I, think we had another, like small request for donations around the time that the backdrop was released like four years ago and really kind of surprisingly like financially, we don't spend a lot of money.

A

We we basically spent it on hosting and on design actually so things like the illustrations of the dragon logo, our dragon mascot and the logo and the design of backdrop CMS work itself. Those are things that we've spent a more money on, and then things like the t-shirts and hoodies. You know all the other things that we've put money into, but the t-shirts and hoodies are kind of sustained self-sustaining because we don't lose any money on them.

A

Ultimately, once we clear on their inventory so anyway, writing about the Conservancy and how we work together with them would be a great topic and so with a larger effort of kicking off some kind of fundraising efforts, so that we can start pouring some more funds through the Conservancy in the new and exciting way, which is tax deductible for those of us living in the United States, so yeah, so that that's a thing that we've never had before you know being able to be tax deductible for donations.

A

So there's a good possibility there.

A

Let's see other topics, maintaining modules for backdrop, security. You know detailing how we work together with Drupal security teams relevant pretty much always went last week's security release. Yet again, like you know, we had to work from the drupal width, drupal security team to coordinate some kind of response at the same time integrations with third-party services.

A

Cd ends like fastly or potential community spotlight taking members of our community and giving some additional press coverage, maybe covering things about them that you might not know, we've only ever had one of them, and that was on cork emitter, Jeff, st. Pierre, which maybe you know we have a new cork emitter out. There. We've got herba dual now. He might be another good candidate for covering in a spotlight.

A

1.12, we don't need good cover, because we did that one 113 will be coming up. You know in quite a while and the log base they have a blog post for that also related to articles. We've been thinking for a while about setting up some kind of aggregator, that's similar to Drupal playing it on backdrop. Cms started work that pulls them content from a curated list of external blogs and then aggregates them all together to make a central play place to find the news about pack drop, that is from other websites.

A

It looks like issue 472 and the bankruptcy. My story shook you, we've kind of reached some kind of consensus that yeah you know. Let's do it, but I don't think. There's been any activity on that. If you're interested in making that functionality happen, you know we can file pull requests against bankruptcy, MS dork itself, aggregator module is you know what runs on drupal.org, it's no longer in court and backdrop, but it does exist as a contribute, be at least the most straightforward way of a person and to make that happen on a short timeline.

A

Videos, videos are a great tool for getting information out there about backdrop. We do have these weekly videos, of course, that we broadcast live on the Internet I've heard some people using these as like podcasts that they listen to them on their commute, even if they don't watch the video just keep tabs on backdrop through some kind of audio video video audio-visual mechanism. So you know it would be great if we had more videos that were more focused.

A

You know things that had topics and were more polished than these kind of on the fly was, although really kind of any kind of topical videos. Even if you're just going to sit down and fly by the seat of your pants, you know and make a make a video. Those would be great.

A

You know what we do with videos in general is that if you publish them to YouTube and then notify us of them either via get er or you can send an email to info at backdrop, CMS org, we put it into the backdrop, CMS org our backdrop, CMS YouTube channel. We collect and favorite like all of the external videos. There to make a playlist of like other videos that are on YouTube as well. So look.

B

Can I ask a question about this, so so, if somebody was to come want to make a video, what would be a good process for figuring out what topics have been covered already like is? Is there is there any aggregation where they can say? Okay, here's here's the existing topics, here's the the things that are covered to sort of see what the pool is, and you.

A

Know yeah, please say that you know taking a look at youtube.com, slash backdrop CMS. This covers you know here's all of our the videos that are happening right now, which you can see that we're getting a little bit of video Inception here. This is a video.

A

You know, but most of these are the weekly meetings yeah.

B

A

Happen all the time and very few of them, we've uploaded are our topical actually, but under the playlists here we go like featured presentations. These cover like presentations that are from camps or our conferences, instructional videos. This is probably more more. What it is that you're talking about, looks like yeah on the right hand, side so yeah right now, there's this fairly. You know small collection of them. You know layouts how to use the meant, like an overview of the menu, looks like installing and instruction the layouts yeah and how to install backdrop.

A

So if we get more topics like like the like right now, there's barely a few of them, but this is the place where you come to look to see what it is that we've got featured so far and where we can fill in holes. Iii.

B

Think that's the answer. The answer to my question is the instructional video corner of the YouTube channel, because somebody can can look at that and see like the existing existing curriculum, that's defined and usefully figure out how to increment it. You know what what you could add. It's not there already or possibly even you know, redo one of those that is outdated because a lot of those are older versions. At this point right, so the nothing else. The interfaces have changed a little bit yeah.

B

A

Yeah and likewise yeah, you can see like totally there's some ancient ones here. Like you know, these are sessions that have been presented. You know at various times, and so, if you, if anyone is out there that presents on backdrop at a conference, if there's a video recording, let us know of it and we'll put it into this presentations playlist as well.

A

And great questions and it's Luke.

A

Okay, that's it for for videos tweets, we've got a pretty active Twitter feed, courtesy of several of our community members. Tim thinks you've been doing a great job on our Twitter feed.

A

Let's see ongoing issue by tweets, I haven't looked at this recently.

A

Just generally some topics and things that we should do for for covering backdrop on Twitter. So, let's see let's skip on down to the events section latest event recap: we had a lot of fun. Actually on January 15th, there was the backdrop birthday parties around the world by around the world. At least. We know that we, there was a birthday party that happened in France, which is pretty exciting and hey they tweeted tweeted at us.

A

That was also fun because it was like, in the middle of the day, like we I, don't even think we'd released backdrop yet and they're like hey we're having a birthday party, oh good, because I guess it was party time in France in the middle of the day here on the west coast of the United States.

A

So we got some some tweaks from France folks in twin cities and here in the Bay Area. So here we go. Here's the our French party, our twin cities, backdrops, the MS party and our little party that we had here in the Bay Area and at Oakland, in which we had cake, which was pretty awesome.

A

Also Luke. Thanks for leveraging your meetup.com group for publicizing this event, we did actually have people that just showed up because they saw it on meetup.com, which is pretty pretty cool, even though they were here. They were there for the quadruple part of the Medway with a great time. Nonetheless, you know, as most people probably know, Drupal and backdrop share the same birthday, January 15th, which was not actually intentional when when it happened, but we delayed a month in the nose oops, we've got the same same birthday.

A

That's right, it kind of makes it better that way. Mm-Hmm.

A

Yeah Tim I think you wanted to talk about. You know kind of how this went like as far as our efforts to coordinates kind of some kind of global birthday parties and kind of. If we could learn this experience, I mean.

C

Really quickly, I think, after the release of 1.11, we had raised the issue of just doing something around the release. One point: twelve: what do you know whether it be some sort of sprinter or some sort of an event and I think Jen thought the birthday party was a good. That was a good opportunity for that, and we loved with that, and the idea was to keep it simple. You know, do I think our stated goal at the beginning was: if we could do five parties with five people at each. That would be great.

C

We did three with at least five people in each. We slightly didn't quite meet our goal, but I don't know I, just as terms of an art, repaid, I, think I'm, sure everybody that was at the the event. Events had a good time, but is there something to learn from that? It comes to future outreach right. Let's search is this something we should try again or do something for not necessarily the same thing right, I think I think that the backdrop community is are still awfully small to try and sustain in-person events.

C

On the other hand, you know it's a tool for growing that so it's like they were kind of in and I feel like we're in an area in between right, where it's hard within any geographic community. It's just not quite enough people to get a much going, but but you have to start somewhere so I don't know if anybody had any other thoughts.

A

Yeah I'm I'm right there with you that you know the I actually saw a couple of people. Posting things like hey I want to do a backdrop, birthday party or Meetup and Germany or made up in Australia, and they couldn't find anybody else.

A

They were like I'm down for it, you know, but then they didn't have anybody to coordinate with, and yeah I mean it speaks to, like. You say that it's hard to find physical locations where, where people can meet up currently, because there's still not a large number of people, but the ones that actually did manage to meet up at least I don't know I found like are one here in Auckland was really pretty fantastic.

A

Like you know, we only had seven eight people, but but it was totally worth the effort of making that small event happen and was so low-key. Actually, like I mean Jen got a cake, you know as Mendte, which I thought was a lot of work and I was like.

B

A

God I wonder if we have to like have a speech or anything like that, but no, it was just literally people just show up, and you know I'm a beer and eat some cake and I think that kind of low low investment, but it was low investment, but I had a high yield. I think everybody that was there like really appreciated the event in or was glad that it happened.

A

Good, yeah, so good.

B

So we were talking about the the people from around the world when when's the next virtual meetup scheduled for.

C

I was gonna, try and get that out. Alrighty I think we'll just do the same time like I think we did the first Tuesday in January. So let's just do the same, the first Tuesday in and the February, which is coming up pretty quick. Isn't it that's probably two weeks but I think it's probably enough time to announce that I can try and get an announcement today.

C

A

Great did we do we recap that virtual meetup blast outreach meeting, I, don't think I was here for that. One.

C

Yes, we did I think we had it. We had an outreach meeting right after that and I think yeah I, don't think you were on the call or came late. I, don't know web the big outcome from it was. We talked about a config management and Luca BOTS, a good feedback which has some, some of which has been documented in the issue, queue and I. You know, hopefully you guys talked about it at the birthday party. A little bit did that come up at all with a birthday party.

A

Too much actually, we we did talk a little bit about layouts. There was some questions about us just when about upgrading from Drupal seven like we got the as usual that panicked Drupal, 7 owner site owner that that's like what do I do, in which he was very, very interested in back job, but ultimately, Jen basically said you don't need to do anything and he was like. Oh thank goodness, that's what I really wanted.

A

Which may be wish you work on our sales pitch a little bit.

C

We're we're talking about doing layouts for the next one, the next virtual meetup, so okay, excellent.

A

Yeah, you know we don't. We haven't mentioned it on these hangouts, but the the forums they're still. You know, kickin as being like a really great place where activity is happening, I'm glad to see that tool continue to function pretty. Well, it's um it's! It's a low volume still, but you know, but it's, but it's real. You know like people are you get real responses there and helpful ones, and so that's been a really positive tool for our community as well. I.

C

Think so too, and I'll just raise another issue about that. There is there I, think, there's some usability things that could be done and there's some stuff in the issue. Queue I, think the forums for good reason- and you know we have a small pool of contributors right now with a limited time- and you know so, sort of fixing things on the forum is not always a top priority. Unless it's it's really urgent and I suggested.

C

You know at least for myself, maybe into taking a week or two where I just try to focus on a couple of key issues in the forum there were some things. Some things have come up recently, for example, about.

C

Subscribing to topics and discussions- and we have some real, inconsistent use of terminology I, don't remember exactly what the issues are, although I think I've listed some of them in the issue- queue where it's just it's kind of confusing like if you're subscribed to it the topic or if you're subscribed to us what are the section and how to unsubscribe.

C

You know: we've had people ask about that, and I went in to try and describe it to them and had a hard time figuring it out myself. So.

C

Anyways, the just of that is I've, been thinking about I had proposed like at the end of February January. Maybe what's the first week of February having kind of a week where I just sort of said, hey, I'm, gonna, focus on the four perform tasks and here's some things that people could help by that isn't gonna happen for me, the first week in February, it's gonna be too busy for me, but I think that's still doing something like that would would help the fall and I that the goal isn't it.

C

You know, pull people away from from core tasks, but more just a great a focal point for those who are interested and have some time to work on the form to to sort of do that so I'll shut up.

A

Okay, well, do we have any other topics that we want to cover for today's outreach meeting? Nope? Okay, okay, well, that's it! Then. You know I always feel like with that gem here, I'm or substitute outreach meeting. So this is.

C

A

But all right! Well, thanks again everybody you folks here in the meaning for joining in those that have watched online, we'll be meeting up again here in 20 minutes to go over development tasks for this week. So thanks guys and see you guys on the Internet.