Author: Tendenci Open Source Software

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SXSWi or Bust: The Schipulites Take Austin

The Schipulites are headed to  SXSW Interactive.  Five days. Nine Schipulites. Prepare for brains to explode.

SXSWi is jam-packed with information and conversations on the latest technologies. Attendees can learn how these technologies and the way we use them change the way we behave socially, as web developers, as journalists, health practitioners, political advocates, non-profit organizations, video gamers, students and more.

By day, March 11-15, we’ll be all over the place checking out panels, keynote presentations, and workshops we’ve been dying to see. By night, we’ll be partying hard, singing karaoke, or studiously preparing for the next day’s sessions.

Follow the Schipul blog for SXSWi updates from first-timers (me!) and SX veterans.

SXSW Tips for First-Timers

After speaking with SXSWi vets, I picked up a few tips to share with you:

  • If you haven’t already, check out the schedule and start selecting the panels you’re interested in attending.
  • Keep your badge (and your ID to prove you’re 21+) You’ll need them for parties.
  • RSVP for parties. It’s pretty late in the game for this, but Schipulite Will Hilliard shared  a great list of parties from the Republic of Austin.  It’s updated regularly.
  • The SXSW smartphone app can come in handy. Download it for Blackberry, iPhone and Android devices.
  • Pack at least two changes of clothes for each day. Conference clothes by day. Party clothes by night.
  • Print a hard copy of your itinerary. You may not go to all your dream panels, but in the midst of chaos, it’s good to have a plan.
  • Carry some cash. The shuttle service is pay-as-you-go.
  • Use a buddy system. C’monson. Beer abounds, so you’ll want to travel in packs. Someone’s gonna have to remember what you did for those recaps.
  • Pack a power strip. It’s easy to make friends when they can plug into your power strip to stay connected.
  • And of course: Make Friends! (I’ve selected a few for you below 🙂 You’re welcome!)

Schipulites to Befriend (or follow) @ SXSWi

Below is the Schipulite SXSWi face book. Should you see any of these individuals, be warned:  we are nerdy, we are freakishly friendly, we can’t help talking about our clients’ events and cool things they do,  and we may be armed with cameras.

Derek Key, Schipul Business DevelopmentDavid Stagg, Schipul Creative Director Ed Schipul, CEO of Schipul- The Web Marketing Company Katrina Esco - Schipul Communications Team Lyndia Makol - Schipul Web Designer Katrina Kakoska - Schipul Project Manager Melissa Lonchambon - Schipul Project Manager Iris McAlpine - Schipul-The Web Marketing Company Michael Coppens - Schipul Business Development

Enjoy your SXSWi experience!

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DrupalCon Day 1: The future of Drupal, HTML5, and the Media Module in D7

We’ve come to the end of Day 1 of DrupalCon in Chicago. Al Hughes and David Stagg are back at DrupalCon (big ups to San Francisco last year!), ready to share some more Drupal knowledge with you all.

Al Hughes, Kieran Lal, David Stagg, and Dries Buytaert at DrupalCon Chicago
Al Hughes (PM at Schipul), Kieran Lal (Drupal Community Adventure Guide from Acquia), David Stagg (Creative Director at Schipul), and Dries Buytaert (Drupal Founder and Lead) with our man Morten Heide taking the photo at DrupalCon Chicago

Day 0: Party!

Of course, at the end of Day 0, the Drupalers gather at the local hotel bar and go to town. We have to give mad love to all those we partied with: Kieran Lal, Morten Heide, Dries Buytaert, Liza Kindred, Jonathon DeLaigle, Marco Carbone, and more!

The Future of Drupal (8)

  1. For the most part of the keynote, Dries hammered home the fact that Drupal 8 must work for all devices (no longer the desktop); the number of smartphones in the past year has increased exponentially and it would be egregious to miss that market.
  2. Dries also wanted to note that if you have two platforms, Drupal and some other CMS, the one that always wins out is the one with the better “ecosystem.” For example, the reason the iPhone wins out over competitors (that might even have a better product or coverage), is due to the ecosystem they’ve created: the App Store, the Apps themselves, the culture, etc. Dries wants to ensure that the Drupal ecosystem is not just stable, but thrives moving into the next generation Web platform.
  3. When creating Drupal 7, Dries met with 20 major market CTOs (e.g. Time Magazine), and asked them what the biggest issues facing the then current state of Drupal was. He said two bubbled to the top: Configuration and Administration. These were added directly to the direction of D8.

HTML5

D.Stagg attended a session by the wonderful speaker Jen Simmons about the future of HTML5 specifically in regards to Drupal. Rockin’ HTML5 with Drupal provided a number of good insights:

Coming up: Nerd alert!

  1. You can use ARIA (short for Accessible Rich Internet Applications) roles for descriptions, e.g. <nav role=”main-nav”>, to target and separate your HTML structures.
  2. Rule of thumb: Use the new <section> tag to group similarly related items (e.g. footer link menus), and use <div> tags to group somewhat unrelated items (e.g. a main content area and a sidebar).
  3. Really cool tip: On <input> fields, add type=”url” or type=”email” to change the keyboard layout on smartphones.

Media Module for Drupal 7 only

Albert Hughes spent some of his time in a session that discussed the way Drupal 7 will handle and update media in the Drupal system:

  1. Media is now treated closer to what one would consider a “node”, e.g. you can add fields like “caption”.
  2. You can also now upload a file and reference it throughout the site, as opposed to have it attached to a custom content type node.
  3. “Uploads” or the “File Attachments” have been taken away to make things more clean and streamlined.
  4. However, one of the main reasons this was taken away isn’t because of the Media module, but because the FileField module in Drupal 6 was added to core.

“Monster (Drupal Remix)”

And of course, both A.Hughes and D.Stagg spent a lot of time throwing out moocards getting people to visit http://bit.ly/drupalmonster. And if you don’t want to click, we’ll provide the embed for you 😉

“Monster (Drupal Remix feat. A.Hughes and D.Stagg)” from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.

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Meet the Schipul “new guys”!

We are SO excited to be off to an amazing 2011 here at Schipul. Over the past few months we have hired some amazing new peeps. We’d love for you to meet the Schipul new guys! We’re thrilled to have these rock stars working with our fantastic clients!

Robyn Riley (twitter.com/robynelaneriley)
Alex Ragsdale (twitter.com/ala_alex)
Laura Martinez (twitter.com/djlawrasaurus)
Radames Ortiz (twitter.com/radameso)
Melissa Lonchambon (twitter.com/launchabomb)
Brian Potter (twitter.com/bpotter)
Tabitha Kokoska (twitter.com/tabithakokoska)

 

Meet the entire Schipul web marketing team at schipul.com/staff/ and check us out at blog.schipul.com!

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“Monster (Drupal Remix feat. A.Hughes and D.Stagg)” music video released

Last year, A.Hughes and QCait dropped a Drupal remix of Successful by Drake for Schipul’s bi-annual conference SchipulCon in 2010. We were lucky enough to have Dries himself link to the video.

This year, though, A.Hughes teamed up with writing partner D.Stagg (both Schipul employees), taking it up a notch, dropping “Monster (Drupal Remix feat. A.Hughes and D.Stagg)”, complete with video, for DrupalCon 2011.

“Monster (Drupal Remix feat. A.Hughes and D.Stagg)”

“Monster (Drupal Remix feat. A.Hughes and D.Stagg)” from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.

Mad love to Brian Potter for the editing and direction.

Lyrics

D.Stagg
CMS is a monster
Blue on ya monitor
site bombin on ya
Now look where Drupal poppin up
As look through ya pocketbook
Site need a new look
try a Drupal sample
Hughes’ll demo an example

Hook
Drupal Drupal gotta lotta users
I’m a need to see a lot sites on this movement
I’m a need to see more Drupal sites watch us prove it
I’m a need to see more Drupal sites watch us prove it

Drupal, Drupal, everybody Drupal (x3)

A.Hughes
took my first site live on Drupal 5
that was ’08 i was trying to survive
got my suit straight and bought 2 ties
the lord blessed me with a gig now we on the rise
html i knew css
dreamweaver jquery and a cms
on my resume and in my cover letter
everyday i’m goin in and i’m getting better
up all night i done learned php
I’m on that on lullabot for a phd
in the Drupal game i’m a do my thang
managing projects on my way to fame
and we don’t see the same i got better views
in different regions doing fields like some soccer shoes
yeah its a.hughes i’ll replace ya name like a token
and you better back up before your site is broken

Hook
Drupal Drupal gotta lotta users
I’m a need to see a lot sites on this movement
I’m a need to see more Drupal sites watch us prove it
I’m a need to see more Drupal sites watch us prove it

Drupal, Drupal, everybody Drupal (x3)

D.Stagg
Drupal Drupal got a lot of users
Gotta build a site that’ll scale like weight losers
Gotta load fast using solr and some views
Gotta look better like Bentleys over land cruisers
Weak CMS sites boy we be trashing them
Call EMS those sites Drupal bashin them
Like Perez Hilton talkin’ trash bout yo fashion
Gotta have a clean back end like kardashian
Source code on LSD all tabbed out
Using css3, I’m a brag about
The Drupal 7 drop, stagg’ll always be about
Killin these sites with some node templates maxxed out
Give me a fresh install and an IDE
Hooked on hooks, modulating like I’m Whitney
Hook_form-alter like I’m doin’ plastic surgery
Takin’ these sites to a level like you never seen

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Startup Weekend Houston

Houston Startup Weekend Sign

Start Starting Up!

Ever wonder how some business ventures get off the ground and get going?   Or maybe how you can go about getting your idea rolling?   Well, Startup Weekened does just that for developers, coders, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts who participate in several Startup Weekends world wide.

Houston Startup Weekend Group

“Build Community. Start Companies. No talk. All action.”

A great (and true) tag line for this growing non-profit organization that helps participating teams from all over the  world get their ideas from concept to launch.   Starting in 2007, the non-profit Startup Weekend has grown to provide about 120 volunteer based facilities for creative and entrepreneurial brainstorming sessions.

Houston Startup Weekend Presentation

Previous companies that have evolved from a Startup weekend include Cloudbot, Milton, iBuildApp and Pocket Tales.   In fact, there are tons of new businesses from all over the planet that have started at one of these 54 hour weekend community events.

Startup weekend is expanding and growing so fast for a reason.   First it’s an amazing non-profit that educates entrepreneurs and strengthens communities and all at an extremely affordable price.   Let’s face it, even the word “startup” is horrifying if you’re going it alone, but Startup Weekend provides a risk free, community environment to get things going and touch on what is and is not realistic. Basically, it’s help.   Help from great people who care.

Houston Startup Weekend Workshop

Startup in Houston!

What could be more awesome than Startup Weekends?   Oh, that there is a Startup Weekend Houston!   This past weekend represents the First Official Houston Startup Weekend not to be confused with the first  Houston Startup Weekend back in 2007 at Caroline Collective. The 2007 weekend was hosted by omnipresent Erica O’grady.

Houston Startup Weeked Sarah

The proud team of organizers of Startup Weekend Houston were the amazing   Sarah Worthy ,  Javid Jamae a fellow a developer; humble … the way all developers should be, Brian Cohen, Daniel Sommars, Katie Sunstrom and  Jerald Reichstein.  Jerald owns his business like most people own their notebooks.  He’s had at least one before, knows it’s powerful, but he spends more time enjoying it rather than being worried about it.  Or maybe I was most impressed with his personal rock climbing wall.  Either way, the mood at this event was inspiring.

Houston Startup Weekend

Along with Dozens of Houston’s creative and geeky go-getters, it was nothing less than a privilege that we  were able to be there.  Even more-so of an honor was being given the opportunity to contribute; our Creative Director David Stagg gave a small presentation on the important role a simple website plays in the discovery and positioning of your organization.

Houston Startup Weeked David Stagg

I look forward to next year’s event, I’m hoping to do more than just enjoy a Saturday morning. Be sure to check out photos from Startup Weekend Houston and David’s presentation.

Don’t Forget the Milk

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Come meet us in our new California office!

Schipul opens web design office in San Jose Bay Area

The Schipul and Tendenci support crew are pleased to announce the opening of our second office location in the San Jose Bay Area!

To celebrate, we are offering a discount on moving your website from the Tendenci platform to our great new T5 platform.  Find out more here and be sure to drop by and say hi to April as she works to serve our West Coast clients!

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Chookooloonks visits Blue Willow Bookshop

Blue Willow Books Houston | Karen Walrond reading The Beauty of Different

Maybe that one thing about you that you can’t stand is your different.

To that, Karen Walrond (@Chookooloonks) would say, “Your different is your beautiful.”

Karen Walrond, author of The Beauty of Different dropped by Schipul client,  Blue Willow Books for an intimate reading and book signing. Karen shared with visitors her different (she was a sensitive child) and said it’s probably what made her able to write the book.

Chookoolonks reads from The Beauty of Different at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston

The reading was like sharing a story with a good friend. It was share and share alike as visitors talked about their different, their experiences blogging and their journeys through photography. After the reading, Karen signed books with personal messages to each woman.

Karen signs copies of The Beauty of Different at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston

The Blue Willow staff f gifted Karen with a pen before she climbed the ladder to leave her mark on the wall. She wrote: Your Different is Your Beautiful.

Karen Walrond leaves her mark on the Blue Willow wall

The Beauty of Different features photos and stories of everyday people and the unique things about them. Through their faces and revelations, perhaps readers will discover their own special qualities.

For more about The Beauty of Different check out Karen’s Blog.  Also, our very own happykatie is featured in the book and writes about being part of the experience on her blog.

Be sure to check out Blue Willow Bookshop on Facebook to learn about more events like this. Each event brings a new guest, a new book and new friends.