But, if you’re thinking you won’t have any idea how to spend all that free time, we’ve got some suggestions for you from the good folks at O’Reilly. No matter if you’re a jQuery guru, PHP developer, MySQL ninja, or project manager rock star, you’ll find some good tips in the following online webinars.

All you need to do is register. Did I mention the webinars are free?

• Five jQuery Mistakes You’re Probably Making in Your Project, presented by Jonathan Sharp July 13 @ 10am PT
• Flexible Scaling with CouchDB Replication / Or how I learned to stop worrying and love Eventual Consistency, presented by J. Chris Anderson on July 14 @ 10am PT
• Cloud Independence with Dasein Cloud, presented by George Reese on July 16 @ 10am PT
• MySQL Upgrades With No Downtime, presented by Sean Hull on July 27 @ 10am PT
• The Upside of Downtime: How to Turn a Disaster into an Opportunity, presented by Lenny Rachitsky July 29 @ 10am PT

Check the O’Reilly Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events.

Brad Czerniak, Digital Resources Developer at Canton Public Library, started off with a lighthearted overview of what Drupal is… the answer to a lot of web problems including:

• Building powerful web sites
• Building sites that can have more features added later
• A solution that has technical support
• A site where different users are allowed to do different things

“It’s the flexibility and the ability to do complex things without code that sets Drupal apart from other solutions”, said Brad.

Brad discussed briefly how Drupal’s content types, nodes, Content Construction Kit and taxonomy work. Using over 5,000 available modules you can extend Drupal’s functionality even further. A powerful feature of Drupal is its built in user management. It has the ability to create users that have “roles” or permissions to make changes to specific parts of the site and do other things that other site users can’t do.

He then discussed themes, which allow you to define how you want your content to be displayed. Drupal’s powerful “views” feature lets you further refine how your want your content filtered and displayed.

Brad pointed out that are a lot of high profile Drupal web sites including the White House, Mensa, Beyoncé, Duke University, InfoWorld, Mattel and more.

The support community for Drupal is great. There’s good documentation online, a great forum, user groups, published books, firms you can hire to build or fix Drupal sites and more.

The slides from Brad’s presentation are available at http://bit.ly/refreshdrupal

Next up was Alex Fisher of Commercial Progression.  Alex has over 15 years experience in programming, web development, and business.  Alex started off saying “I do websites solely in Drupal.”

He then discussed Drupal’s Open Source GNU v2 license.  “Some people might equate it to communism or socialism… All open source is saying is that if you distribute a program or … website, whoever you distribute that to can access the code.”  That doesn’t mean everyone one in the world can access it, just the person or organization you created it for.  You aren’t giving away all your secrets or hard work.

Alex finds the main advantages of Drupal are its Flexibility, Simplicity and Utility.  It keeps things modular, extensible and maintainable. “If you’re a web designer it means you can probably do a lot more in less time….  If you’re the client or employer… you’re not locked in to some proprietary solution.” Drupal has been shown to work well on large sites like Lifetime Television. Its modular approach means it cutting edge features get added quickly.

Alex discussed the different ways you can leverage Drupal including:

• Creating websites for yourself or others
• Creating Drupal based web applications like Open Atrium and CiviCRM or applications that may not even run on the public Internet.
• Provide Drupal training
• Design themes and modules

Alex pointed out that one of the biggest challenges to developing with Drupal is its steep learning curve.  Fortunately, are a lot of ways you can learn more about Drupal and places to go for help.  “Drupal.org is really is the place to go to get Drupal, to meet the community, to get help, to learn about it.” There are also Drupal Cons and Drupal Camps where there are demos and presentations.   Alex stressed that “if you’re new don’t be intimidated.  There are people who will help you learn about it.”

The final presentation was by Steve Colson, a co-founder of a Switchback, a web development firm specializing in open source content management systems.  Steve’s impressive demonstration showed how Drupal can be used to solve problems that would take days to code with other solutions. These included:

• Editable images inside editable content
• A list of sales staff
• A product listing that dynamically updates
• Advanced page layouts where the above components can all be put on the same screen and yet updated by their independent sources

The audience asked some interesting questions during the meeting.

Most of the Drupal.org site seems to be focused on code and how to implement solutions. Is there a place to go to understand what the capabilities of Drupal is for a particular purpose?

One the hardest things to learn with Drupal is that there are over 5000 modules and its hard to know which is the best solution for a particular problem.  To find out which modules and themes to use for a particular purpose ask for help via the Drupal IRC chat (irc://irc.freenode.net/drupal-support), email lists, forums, and the different local user groups.

Is there an automatic method of updating Drupal? How does one get alerted that there are updates to Drupal?

“Drupal…out of the box will check Drupal.org for module updates or actual Drupal core updates.  That will happen automatically” answered Alex. There is no auto update feature yet but your web developer can usually do the updates.  Otherwise there are companies you can hire to support your Drupal website.

What are Drupal’s accessibility features?

Steve answered, “The beautiful thing about Drupal is that its content is completely separated from its programming, which is completely separated from its display layer”. For accessibility this means the themer can decide what tags are added to each element.   For example you can make it so all images must be output with an ALT tag or that a form’s HTML is structured in a way that’s accessible. Out of the box they’ve tried to make Drupal good for screen readers.  The White House web site must comply both on the front end and back end to accessibility standards, so that’s a testament to Drupal’s abilities in that respect.

Do you have to pay for some Drupal modules?

If a module is on Drupal.org , which every major module is, its free. There are some people selling modules but they are on off on their own doing it.  “One of the beautiful things about Drupal is that … web developers can pretty easily grab any module and know we’re not going to have to pay a ton in licensing costs” said Steve.

What type of hosting is required for Drupal?

Steve pointed out that while Drupal will run on some over subscribed web hosting services, if your need fast loading pages then quality hosting is required.  A2hosting.com and Nexcess.net were Michigan based web hosting companies that were recommended.

Why is Drupal being used for so many library web sites?

An audience member mentioned libraries like that it was free, its huge support system and that there are a lot of modules coming out that are library related.  Steve added that Drupal can connect and integrate very easily to a variety of data systems like a library’s book system or its event scheduling system. Also, Drupal has a fantastic taxonomy system for categorizing, which other CMS’s don’t have.

All three presenters did an excellent job of showing us the basics of how Drupal works, what its advantages are and where to go to get help.

To learn more about the presenters:

Brad Czerniak
http://twitter.com/ao5357
http://www.facebook.com/bradczerniak
http://hawidu.com

Alex  Fisher
http://twitter.com/AlexanderFisher
http://www.commercialprogression.com

Stephen Colson
http://www.switchbackcms.com

Photos by Jeff Mackey

If you have wanted to learn:

• more about Drupal
• what you can do with it
• about it’s cool features
• what skills you’ll need to develop a Drupal site

plan to attend our June 16 meeting! Details are below. If you plan to attend, be sure to RSVP online at Guestlist, our event registration website.

Presentation

Drupal: Good for Designers, Great for Developers
An overview of the Drupal content management system. Presentation will cover basic architecture, plus theming and module development basics. Build your web sites and apps in less time, and join a vibrant development community.

Speakers

Brad Czerniak is the Digital Resources Developer at Canton Public Library. Part librarian and part web developer, Brad is committed to user friendly information delivery. When not sitting at a computer, he enjoys frisbee, NASCAR, and cooking.

Brad can be found online at:
Twitter
Facebook
http://www.hawidu.com/

Brad will be joined by Alex Fisher of Commercial Progression and Stephen Colson of Switchback CMS.

Alex Fisher has over 15 years experience in programming, web development, and business. He created his first web site in 1994, and has worked on projects including:

• building a wearable computer in 1999 that was featured on NBC’s TODAY Show
• designing embedded video hardware in 2006
• architecting the largest webcast in the world in 2007 for Oprah

As co-founder of Switchback CMS, Steve Colson focuses on providing solutions that integrate into clients’ day-to-day business practices. Steve has been active in the Ann Arbor information technology field for years as IT/Systems Administrator for West Pole and Chief Technical Officer for Pure Visibility.

When he’s not at work, Steve enjoys hiking, kayaking, snowboarding, and tracking extreme weather. You can also find him watching his terrier-mutt run around a local dog park.

Where: Washtenaw Community College (map)
Morris Lawrence Building, Room 103
4800 East Huron River Drive
Ann Arbor MI 48105-4800

When: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public, but we ask that you register at Guestlist, our online event registration service, since the room has limited seating.

With photos, video clips and great stories David Murray took everyone at the May Refresh Detroit Meeting on his adventures with team #DETchevySXSW as they traveled to South by Southwest and won.  Team Detroit was one of 9 teams from around the country that competed in the first Chevy SXSW Road Trip Challenge this year.

David Murray is the Director of Social Web Communication for re:group. He is also a member of iDetroit. David founded the Social Media Club chapter of Detroit, and is one of the co-chairs for FutureMidwest. The other members of Team Detroit are Audrey Walker, Henry Balanon, and Brandon Chessnutt.

Each team in the GM sponsored competition traveled in new Chevy vehicles.  Along the way the teams were given up to 50 different challenges or stunts to complete.  Teams earned points based on the number of tweets, blog posts, Facebook “likes’ etc… that the team got from fans following them online.

With funny “audition” videos and giveaways donated by local businesses the team began to build buzz even before they hit the road. “When it comes to developing projects…developing some sort of movement…organizations…Even before the web site or whatever is out there, start talking about what your doing. Start speaking about your passion because it’s going to attract other people who are passionate about the very same thing.” David said. “ And maybe what you come out with at the end is a little different than what you had but its going to have a lot more people input and a lot more people are going to know about it.”

Frequently the team heard comments like “This is so fun.  This is so great for our area. “

“At least for our us…This was a lot more than just driving down in a car doing goofy stuff we’re actually representing something.  Regardless of what the project is, when its online all of a sudden something happens, you become a representation, regional icon thing, that people will look at and say ‘Yep, see that, that’s Detroit’…They’ll say that if its good and they’ll say that if its bad.  Right away we realized we needed to… make sure that we provide good content. Make sure people are laughing and having a good time. It paid off in the end.”

The challenges ranged from the serious to totally goofy.  They included helping kids read, running a bingo game at a senior citizen center, walking dogs for a human society, getting a pedicure (even the guys), collecting shoelaces, ordering food in a foreign language, leading an aerobic exercise, and arm wresting cooks.

“As we traveled though the States…Everyone that we talked to, regardless of where we were, again we got a sense that people were so ready for some sense of levity…ready to laugh” David explained.

Whether it was tweeting, video, content, blogging all the teams worked to do it well.  “Quality counts when it comes to producing content regardless of the situation or the audience” David said. Followers picked up on that and were more likely to talk about it.

As winners Team Detroit will get to hold a epic Tweetup Party.  The tweetup is coming at the end of August.

What did GM get out of this:

• 61.1 Million web impressions in just under 2 weeks.
• 13,440 Tweets
• 15,924 web mentions.
• 1,216 blog posts
• GM’s positivity ranking went up.

“What did it do for Detroit?  One ripple starts a movement.”  David discussed how the event  helped make people aware of Detroit in a positive way.  How well known bloggers and conference attendees asked him about what was happening in Detroit.

“Passion attracts passion.   When you do good things people will notice.  Keep doing good things.  People will turn their heads. “

To learn more about the team visit their site at: http://detroitsxsw.com.

Watch a video of the presentation here:

Video by Phill Tran

David’s Background

David Murray is the Director of Social Web Communication for re:group. He carries extensive experience in social media, online community management, product development, and any project that requires creative out of the box solutions.

A member of iDetroit, David founded the Social Media Club chapter of Detroit, and is one of the co-chairs for FutureMidwest, the region’s largest technology and knowledge conference. He has also been featured in David Meerman Scott’s blog, Web Ink Now; and his book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

David’s passion is in helping others. He enjoys sharing how businesses can learn the true value of the digital landscape, which is relationships; and how job seekers can use social media to find employment.

Living by the mantra, “leave no regrets”, David currently lives in Troy, Michigan with his wife Jenni and their two cats, Motley and Bree.

Meeting Details

Where: Wayne State University Law School
471 W. Palmer Street

Detroit, MI 48202 (directions)

Room 2261 (University map)

When: Wednesday, May 19th, 2010, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public, but we ask that you register at Guestlist, our online event registration service, since the room has limited seating.

Giveaway

Thanks to our user group partnership with Peachpit, we’ll be raffling off The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever book by Cliff Atkinson at the meeting.

• marketing and social media
• choosing meeting topics
• finding venues
• finding speakers

Interested? Send an email to refresh [at] lireo {dot} com.

If you’re interested in attending a great presentation on September 16, might I suggest Josh Holmes “The Lost Art of Simplicity” talk, hosted by the Michigan Usability Professionals’ Association and the Detroit Java User Group.

See you on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 when Ben Fraser and Michael Evans will be discussing the client/designer relationship at Wayne State University.

Demo night is a great opportunity to:

• share your work
• find out what others have been working on
• hear how something was built
• find out why it was built
• learn about new tools that can improve your work

Each person has five to ten minutes to demo and answer questions. Demo nights are a great way to get to know other Refresh Detroit members.

Where: Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan. We will be meeting in Room 101 at the Morris Lawrence Building (map). Plenty of free parking is available adjacent to the building.

When: Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public.

Interested in demoing your work? Confirm by commenting below with your name and application/design/tool/product, so we have an idea of how many people will be presenting.

For those who don’t want to demo this time (hopefully you will at the next demo night!), RSVP at Upcoming.org

Times are tough, and every visitor on your site counts. Too often, companies focus on driving more traffic to their website, and not enough time maximizing the visitors already there.

Increasing your conversion rate, even as little as 10%, can bring a significant increase to your sales, downloads, form completions, or whatever task it might be.

RSVP at Upcoming.org

Discussion Summary

Two customers come to your site, one buys and the other doesn’t, why? Why aren’t you able to generate more leads from your website? In this session we will present actionable items to consider on your site, through The Conversion Framework, in order to see significant increases in your conversion rates. We will also identify what role personas play in optimization from a lead gen to an ecommerce business via case studies.

Background

Ayat Shukairy is co-founder of Invesp Consulting, a landing page optimization company, and co-author of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide. Ayat Shukairy focuses deeply on website usability and has led over 30 conversion optimization projects for companies including ReMAX, HowStuff Works and Discovery. Ayat  Shukairy’s work has helped generate an average 20% improvement in conversion rates for Invesp’s clients.

Khalid Saleh is co-founder of Invesp Consulting, a landing page optimization company and co-author of, Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide. Khalid Saleh has over 12 years of experience in e-commerce architecture, design and implementation, managing campaigns for companies including Motorola, AMEX, Levelor, Citrix, WWT, Nabors. Khalid’s work has helped generated an average 20% improvement in conversion rates for Invesp’s clients.

Company Bio

Since 1995, Invesp founders have architected, designed and deployed 22 of the largest e-commerce websites in North America.  On average, Invesp generates an average 35% ROI on conversion for its clients on optimization work. A values driven company, Invesp focuses on providing measureable ecommerce results through client focused delivery, openness and creativity.

Where: Wayne State University Law School, 471 W. Palmer Street, Detroit, MI 48202 (directions) Room 2103, The Distance Learning Room. (University map)

When: Tuesday, May 19th, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public.

RSVP at Upcoming.org