amy cham :: bloggy goodness

Looking for Drupal theming questions, giving prizes

Tree House Agency is putting together a session for Do it with Drupal, and taking questions from the Drupal-using (or Drupal-considering) public at large.  To up the fun factor, we're giving away tshirt and whitepaper freebies to participants, as well as Drupal books to the five questions our devs choose to discuss in their presentation and whitepaper.

Head over to the Tree House blog for full details and to submit your questions!

Talkin' it up at the Web 2.0 Expo!

In two weeks, the Web 2.0 Expo will hit NYC, and Tree House Agency will be there with bells on!  If you've read any of my posts from last year's event in San Francisco, you know how much I got out of it and how psyched I was to be there.

This year, I am ecstatic to be on the speaker list.  I and Michael Caccavano, our CEO at Tree House, will be giving a session on theming best practices.  Whereas the Tree House talk at last March's DrupalCon was focused on enterprise-level Drupal and using its tools within a theming methodology, this session is less technical, platform-agnostic and includes a look at the different roles involved in a web project and how they impact site theming--and how your theming can affect your site.  Here's the full description.

Join us at 11:35 on Thursday, September 18 to see how you can improve your site's theming health!

PS - Follow Tree House on Twitter!  We'll follow you and watch for your questions and comments during our presentation.  If we can't answer your questions during the session, watch for the when and where of our post-session theming chat where we'll have members of our internal team on hand for an informal open discussion on the theming process.

Drupalcon summary: Designing for Drupal

Now that we've finished our session (thanks to everyone for the great feedback!), I get to go to sessions.  I'm going to do my best to post summaries of the sessions I visit.

The first of these is "Designing for Drupal," presented by Chris Fassnacht and Stephanie Pakrul, themers for CivicActions.com.  As Drupal reaches wider adoption, it is becoming more important to effectively bring together the functionality and structure developers create with the creativity and “wow” factor designers specialize in.  This session focused on the themer’s need to balance these two different perspectives and sets of priorities, along with techniques designers can employ to more effectively work on Drupal projects.

Drupalcon: How to find Tree House

The train leaves tomorrow, and Drupalcon is sold out!  So how do you find the folks from Tree House?  Well...

The easiest way to know where to find us is to follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/treehouseagency. We'll be sending updates throughout the week on what sessions and events we are attending, plus some live tweeting on interesting tidbits from sessions and people we meet.

On Monday, Tree House will deliver its session on theming -- What's in a Theme: The power of enterprise-level theming.  We're slotted for 2:30 as part of the Design and User Experience track.

AND, immediately after, you can see us at our table in the business and job fair.

AND, if none of these work for you, ping us an email at drupalcon@treehouseagency.com.  We'll be checking it regularly throughout the conference.

Want to talk shop about Drupal?  Look for Josh and Tom.  Want to talk jobs or business?  Look for Mike and Amy.

We are very excited to have this opportunity to introduce ourselves and get to know others in the Drupal community...if you see one of us, walk on up and say hi!  Just look for the white shirts with the Tree House logo.

See you soon!

We're in! Theming session at Drupalcon, next week!

The votes are in, and so are we!  Tree House Interactive Agency and Lifetime Networks are joining forces to present "What's in a Theme": The power of enterprise-level theming at next week's Drupalcon in Boston.  Josh Katris, Marque Staneluis, Mack Hardy, and Tom Wysocki will provide a 360 view of theming approaches in an enterprise-level Drupal implementation.

The session will examine the challenges of implementing and managing enterprise-level sites, and describe a methodology that can be used to address them, focusing on theming approaches as the secret sauce.  Examples from the recent launch of myLifetime.com will be used to illustrate how this plays out in the real-life launch and ongoing management of a large, community-oriented, enterprise-level Drupal website.

We are very excited to have this opportunity to share the combined client and agency experiences with the rest of the Drupal community, and illustrate just how powerful a tool Drupal theming can be for enterprise-level sites. 

Hope to see you there!!

Vote for Tree House! Theming @ DrupalCon Boston!

We (Tree House Interactive Agency) have posted our session proposal, What's in a Theme: The power of enterprise-level theming, and now we need votes!  We'll be looking in-depth at the challenges faced in planning, launching, and maintaining enterprise-level sites on the Drupal platform, and bringing along one of our big-name media clients to help us demonstrate how they can be overcome with smart theming practices.

What are the challenges?  Who is the big client?  You're just gonna have to read the proposal. ;-)

Going to DrupalCon?  Post here and we'll look for you!