I don’t know how, but somehow I managed to hone in on Drupal Groups and, in particular, Drupal Dojo, from the very beginning. I count myself very lucky indeed, for this is where the action is if you want to learn the Drupal way. The group was created by Josh Koenig, co-founder of DeanSpace (remember the Dean campaign “internet phenonmena?”) for the express purpose of bringing everyone who is interested in and using Drupal to a higher level. A higher level of what you may ask? Just about everything Drupal, from module implementation and creation to coding best practices to theming. What gets me so excited is that all this is open and free for little ole’ me (which is just what Josh intends; reads his thoughts on this here).
I live in small town in the desert. More importantly, I am a stay at home mom with little kidlets and no budget for going to things like DrupalCon or Lullabot training sessions. The best I can do from where I am is search the forums endlessly (which is not helpful when you don’t even know what things are called) and tune into Lullabot podcasts (for which I am also deeply grateful). No, the screencasts in particular are very special, in that I can attend something that has previously been impossible for me, a meeting with professionals who are keen to answer questions from n00bs and more experienced alike. It has an organic, democratic and open quality that is just fantastic, and there is nothing like watching someone actually use the program and code to teach one many things that have, up to this point, been hidden due to inexperience.
The thing is that it is a little easier to understand everything going on having been on the mailing list and such from the beginning, as folks are very enthusiastic and projects, websites, and wikis are mulitplying like crazy. If you are just now coming to the Dojo, here are a couple of places to keep your eye on:
Dojo Portal – A bulleted list of the important posts and, more importantly, links to the screencasts which are available at this point primarily through Bittorent. It hasn’t been updated since the last couple of lessons, but I’m sure that will change shortly.
Drupaldojo.org – So far set up for documentation wikis but I think collaborative projects in general will be tracked here.
Drupaldojo.com – Another documentation tracker that is deeper than the Dojo Portal but easier to grasp than wading through all the Group conversation.
I would not be surprised to see all of this change and grow radically over the next few months, especially as folks look toward dojofying SoC, so stay tuned! I know I will. 
Update 3/7/2007: Lullabot interviews Josh about the Dojo! And Lullabot announced that they would be doing one of the upcoming workshops in Sunnyvale as a screencast! Too cool.
Drupal Dojo
I live in small town in the desert. More importantly, I am a stay at home mom with little kidlets and no budget for going to things like DrupalCon or Lullabot training sessions. The best I can do from where I am is search the forums endlessly (which is not helpful when you don’t even know what things are called) and tune into Lullabot podcasts (for which I am also deeply grateful). No, the screencasts in particular are very special, in that I can attend something that has previously been impossible for me, a meeting with professionals who are keen to answer questions from n00bs and more experienced alike. It has an organic, democratic and open quality that is just fantastic, and there is nothing like watching someone actually use the program and code to teach one many things that have, up to this point, been hidden due to inexperience.
The thing is that it is a little easier to understand everything going on having been on the mailing list and such from the beginning, as folks are very enthusiastic and projects, websites, and wikis are mulitplying like crazy. If you are just now coming to the Dojo, here are a couple of places to keep your eye on:
Dojo Portal – A bulleted list of the important posts and, more importantly, links to the screencasts which are available at this point primarily through Bittorent. It hasn’t been updated since the last couple of lessons, but I’m sure that will change shortly.
Drupaldojo.org – So far set up for documentation wikis but I think collaborative projects in general will be tracked here.
Drupaldojo.com – Another documentation tracker that is deeper than the Dojo Portal but easier to grasp than wading through all the Group conversation.
I would not be surprised to see all of this change and grow radically over the next few months, especially as folks look toward dojofying SoC, so stay tuned! I know I will.
Update 3/7/2007: Lullabot interviews Josh about the Dojo! And Lullabot announced that they would be doing one of the upcoming workshops in Sunnyvale as a screencast! Too cool.