Just over a year ago Josh Koenig started up a little group on groups.drupal.org called the Drupal Dojo. He thought mentoring a few folks in the Drupal way would be a good way to pay back some karma. Well that little group is now up to 1073 subscribers and has its own website at http://drupaldojo.com. Josh started a Really Big Thing that has turned out to be a Wonderful Thing in the Drupal world. Thanks to the Dojo I learned a lot, gained confidence and ended up with a dream job working for Lullabot. So Happy Birthday Dojo and thanks Josh!
So, now that we are in a new year, the Dojo is looking to regroup and take it up a notch. We have kicked off the push to make Dojo 2.0 and we need the whole Drupal community to help.
Why do you care?
Well even if you do not attend the Dojo because you have mad Drupal ninja skillz (riiight) there are a few good reasons that effect everyone in the Drupal community.
- Learning: Drupal is a powerful framework and the drop is always moving. There are always new things to learn. Even chx has attended Dojo sessions before! Not only can you learn from attending but teaching is a great way to learn to. I speak from experience on this one. Knowing how to do something is one thing but stepping back and breaking it down for others can be an eye-opening experience and really solidifies the information in your own mind. This makes you a better coder/site admin/project manager/whatever.
- Get hired: Being visible in the community by sharing knowledge and/or doing work that is publicly acknowledged is a great way to show people that you have the chops. Drupal shops and companies that depend on Drupal are scouring the community for new hires all the time. I owe my job to working in the Dojo. I learned, then turned around and tried to teach others as well as helped with Dojo admin and then launched into other community work. I ended up being hired by Lullabot due to that exposure, plain and simple.
- Hire good people: If you are looking to hire someone for freelance work or staff positions, the Dojo is a great hunting ground. Organizations that show involvement in the community are looked upon very favorably by potential hires and it gives everyone an opportunity to asses each other and find a good fit in a “working” environment. A little work in Dojo to get more people qualified for your jobs will be well worth the investment.
OK, so you care. Now…
How to help?
Name your offer and we’re likely to need it. 😉 From teaching to idling in IRC to helping with the website there are plenty of things to do for everyone at any skill level. What we *really* need right now is help focusing on and implementing Dojo 2.0.
We have lots of ideas. We need people to weigh in from all of the different corners of the Dojo-verse. Different people have different needs so we want to know what people are thinking and then help talk it all out so we can focus on the best solution. Join the meta discussion on the group page or weigh in by adding or discussing issues in our queue. We have our first project deadline on January 12 to get our website feature list in order so hop on in. We’ll be having what the Dojo refers to as a CoffeeTalk on January 13 to hammer that list out. Everyone in the Drupal community is encouraged to review the issues and take part in the CoffeeTalk.
Even more than the pie-in-the-sky stuff, we need people who are willing to step up and commit some time, no matter how small. We don’t have all of our tasks lined up yet but we’ll the full range of skills to do what we envision: project management, coding, documentation, research, video knowledge, sysadmin, you get the point. We can even use help to determine what needs to be done and how to harness our volunteers. So please, please, please (yeah, I’m gonna beg) share your ideas, thoughts, concerns and time with all of us and make the Dojo the awesome resource for the *whole* community that it truly can be.
OK, so why are you still here? Go, go, go!
RockTreeSky 