Recently I read this post [http://drupal.org/node/46439] about the Drupal Bugfix Meetup in San Francisco, and something hit me: I am alone.
In the town I lived in for 9 years until this week, Gainesville, I have yet to meet anyone other than me who has even heard of Drupal. I've been designing websites for almost 10 years, and have been using php for almost 5, so I have quite a few webdev friends. I've been a Drupal fanatic for more than a year now, and except for my companions on the internet and my one friend who I've convinced to use drupal, I have no one to talk to about that fabulous Drop!
No more!
I realized that there is a really easy way to find out where Drupal developers reside, and possibly find groups of Drupal devs to meet up with.
It's called a Frappr map. www.Frappr.com is a google maps wrapper that lets users create their own maps, let's friends mark themselves on the map with a picture and a comment, and create user groups.
Check out www.frappr.com/drupaldevs to see the brand new DrupalDevs Frappr Map!
I hope a lot of you check this out and post. I think the benefits are obvious!
thanks,
gundalo
Comments
I think it would be great
I think it would be great for someone to start a DrupalUsers map on frappr. That way, people that just use drupal but don't develop it can meet each other as well.
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Jon Pugh
ThinkDrop Inc
https://devshop.support
https://thinkdrop.net
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DrupalUsers Frappr map created. Minimaps on Drupal front page?
As suggested, I went ahead and created DrupalUsers at http://www.frappr.com/drupalusers. If you use Drupal for a web site, this is the map for you! It is for ALL Drupal users.
Gundalo, would you mind deleting the word "users" from your "DrupalDevs is a map of Drupal developers and users locations from around the world." paragraph at http://www.frappr.com/drupaldevs site? That will, hopefully, make it clear to folks that one map is strictly for developers (http://www.frappr.com/drupaldevs) and the other map is for anyone that USES Drupal for a web site (http://www.frappr.com/drupalusers). Make sense? I don't want to step on your toes so if you want me to change anything, please let me know.
Also, since as far as I know we don't have a Drupal module with Frappr functionality, who can we talk to about "Put a Frappr minimap on your own website!" on drupal.org? As the creator of http://www.frappr.com/drupalusers, when I'm in my "Admin" account and under "Group Stickers," it asks:
"Want to put a sticker on your community site?
Use this one! Just copy and paste the code below!"
Basically, it's HTML code that creates a nice graphic of one's Frappr map. The map could be placed on the front page of drupal.org so that everyone could see it and, hopefully, add themselves to the respective Frappr maps. I think if we could have the two minimaps on the Drupal front page and actually encourage folks to sign in to Frappr, that would be great in terms of populating the two maps.
Also, if someone could actually develop a module that would allow folks to add a Frappr minimap to their Drupal-powered web site, that would be fantastic!
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Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA, Captain - U.S. Marine Corps (Veteran)
President, Wellness Corps, LLC
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Example of "Put a Frappr minimap on your own website!"
To see an example of "Put a Frappr minimap on your own website!" in action, please visit http://www.civicactions.com and scroll towards the bottom of the right-hand column to where a logo asks, "Where are we? Click here for our map. Powered by Frappr."
You'll then be taken to http://www.frappr.com/civicactions.
Pretty cool, huh?!
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Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA, Captain - U.S. Marine Corps (Veteran)
President, Wellness Corps, LLC
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Use Drupal for this
People are always wary of adding themselves to another site. I'm sure participation would be higher and the development could be used elsewhere if location info. was enabled in Drupal profiles and mapped from there. It would be very cool to map people by various profile fields, like "Show all users attending Drupal con" and a map pops us and one could find carpool candidates or whatever.
Is Drupal preferred for Frappr-like functionality? Absolutely!
I think yours is a great idea and I mentioned my thoughts above in http://drupal.org/node/46557#comment-87458.
However, until such time that someone develops the Frappr functionality by way of a Drupal module, we're left with trying to work with alternatives. I just learned about Frappr today and it seems like it does what we need for the time being.
I'm just trying to find an easy way to locate Drupal users in my local Austin, Texas community so that I can help with bug fixes in a non-developer way (I can coordinate meeting logistics, but I can't code!). I'd like to help out now and organize local users & developers in or near my hometown as opposed to some unknown future point in time when someone finally produces the Frappr-like module for Drupal. Make sense?
By the way, I had to come back and "edit" this post because I just came across the following VERY PROMISING post at http://drupal.org/node/46439#comment-87145. Basically, http://www.oscms-summit.org/ attendees will be talking about setting up a way for users to find each other, and hopefully, it will be something like what Frappr allows. Here's the post:
This is EXACTLY in line with what we're hoping for!
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Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA, Captain - U.S. Marine Corps (Veteran)
President, Wellness Corps, LLC
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