REALNEO / DRUPAL WEB POSTING and WEB ORIENTATION/HELP MONDAY 4:00PM January 14, 2008

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Wed, 01/09/2008 - 15:17.
01/14/2008 - 16:00
01/14/2008 - 18:00
Etc/GMT-5

REALNEO Drupal meeting at Old Brooklyn Cleveland Public Library 

On Monday, January 14, 2008 the public is invited to the 3706 Pearl Road Branch of the Cleveland Public Library for a two hour training session intended to provide help in posting text and images to Realneo.   Realneo  runs on Drupal, an open source software (which is used by corporations like Pfizer Pharma and libraries like CPL for their websites), so if you are interested in posting to any Drupal site you are welcome to come and learn what we know about Drupal.  

 

If you ( that anonymous expert out there)  know a lot about Drupal, we also encourage you to attend so that you can help build community web proficiency .  We appreciate all the education the public can offer.

 

You are welcome to attend - whether you have ever used a computer or a digital camera or not.  This meeting is intended as a "hands-on" session - teaching step by step moves to get a story posted on your own blog or adding comments and images to some else's blog.

 

Using the internet and digital camera/video to effectively and proficiently report on public meetings, news events, and civic issues will also be discussed.

 

The orientation is free and will be facilitated by Jeff Buster, Susan Miller,  and Norm Roulet.  Bring your laptop (if you have one) as there is wifi at the library.  

 

If anyone else would like to help, or has a companion topic to present, please email me on Realneo’s private email tab. 

 

See you there!
Will someone familiar with the RTA please post a comment with the best Rapid and bus stops near the library.  Tnxs.

 

 

Location

Cleveland Public Library Brooklyn Branch
3706 PEARL ROAD Parking across street
OH
United States
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BrooklynLibraryOutsidePanLogo.jpg39.95 KB

No problemo!

  The 51, 20, 35 and Tremont Circulator all run Pearl Rd. and can drop you off at the corner of Mapledale and Pearl.  The 50 and 79 drops off riders at the corner of Denison/Pearl and Brooklyn Branch library is two blocks north of this crossroad stop.   I look forward to this small world conference in Brooklyn Centre!

Great meeting at the library

Thanks Laura, Jeff and Susan for organizing this and to all for joining in - what fun to enjoy and use this great neighborhood library... and meet great Old Brooklyn neighbors. Let's do more of these sessions soon.

Disrupt IT

right in our side yard...

...and somehow we missed it. Curious.

 

We collect info using RSS feeds, Internet Explorer 7, and Outlook 2007. Is Drupal ever going to work with the RSS standard?

 

Hitting the XML button to the left here tells me Microsoft doesn't work with that standard.

Microsoft is bad

You really need to go open source... but RSS from Drupal shouldn't be a problem, Microsoft or not. The feed for the home page is http://www.realneo.us/node/feed

If you want to subscribe to a blog, like for you, that is http://www.realneo.us/blog/timferris/feed ... but would be boring, as you haven't been posting much :-)

If you just want Arts and Culture, that is http://www.realneo.us/interests-for-a-sustainable-neo/arts-and-culture-0...

Let me know if that helps or there is a problem with these feeds...

Disrupt IT

IE7 did not like being called bad;it thinks it's completely evil



 

 

 

 

Internet Explorer cannot display this feed

 

Internet Explorer does not support feeds with DTDs.

 

This is what I got when I tried clicking through to http://www.realneo.us/node/feed.

Many of us need to eschew open source because of business

compatibility issues. Drupal needs to become more

accommodating, if it can. Of course, having tried to run

an OS/2 shop for years, I understand how MSFT excludes

as a market strategy.

Don't blame Drupal - blame REALinks

Drupal has more plug ins than you can imagine and there are feed aggregators available... we will look further into this issue... your concerns are very valid. Note, in all cases where it seems the Drupal technology has a flaw or limitation it is because we are running such an old version and haven't been able to find a techie willing and able to upgrade the site. We will get there sooner than later, and try to make some baby steps along the way.

I bet you were running token ring too.

Disrupt IT

what is useful to me these days

Things I use these days to save time communicating and to try to stay on top of things are IE7 and Outlook 2007, which rely a lot on RSS feeds; co-Comment, which is new to me and shows up as an RSS feed; Outside.in, which has potential and shows up as an RSS feed; Feedblitz, which comes by email; the new comments function on Google's Blogger; the updates to the subscription threads on RealNEO, which sometimes get really aggravating when people edit and re-edit their content; popups from the Outlook calendar and from my own contact manager, Advisors Assistant from Client Marketing Systems; and email feeds from Google calendar, Linked-in, Upcoming.org, and perhaps a few others. Drupal does not mesh well, based on my experience with these few things--there's a Microsoft bias.

 

I can't recall what that token ring thing was--never did understand it.

Token Ring

Token Ring is a networking protocol, and the story of it vs. Ethernet will help you understand the economic dynamics of Free Open Source Software (FOSS). Back in the 1980s-90s, Token Ring was very common in corporate IT environments, but it was owned by IBM and came at a high cost. Ethernet, developed at Xerox Parc, in the 1970s, became a shared free and open standard promoted by one of the individual inventors, Robert Metcalfe. Metcalfe left Xerox and worked ndependently with DEC, Intel and Xerox to develop the standard for all, with Metcalfe founding 3com to profit from deployment of open standard Ethernet-related technologies. Enough large environments went Ethernet, allowing economies of scale to drive rapid innovation and lower costs for networking devices and networking in general, greatly accellerating penetration of the digital revolution and Internet into small businesses, government, education and the home, breaking Big Blue's back... 3com was acquired in 2007 for $2.2 billion... Metcalfe profitted greatly by giving his invention away but being a world leader with it, along with the rest of the world - lesson for Microsoft fans.

Disrupt IT

Multiple edits = mutliple RSS outputs = annoyance

Tim,

You are probably thinking about me when you said that multiple edits of a post - which is subscribed to by someone’s rss feed - create multiple notices on the feed. 

 

I often post something just to force myself to get it up on the net – and then go back later to dress the article up.   I hadn’t thought about the fact that repeated editing creates repeated rss outputs.  

 

I will take this into account in the future and try to finish up my editing before I post.

 

Thanks for your observation….

Live Writer

Live Writer is something that we use to write, finesse, and then finally publish, or upload. It's available free from the evil empire. I don't know if it will work here, either. I have it set up with Blogger/Google and with Gloria's Wordpress.

Guilty

I am the one who goes into my posts and edits incessantly.  Annoying people is what I do best!   And, Tim knows that better than anyone :)

Proof That Bill Gates Is Evil

A Windows Error Message

 

MS Word Helper

This is great

Microsoft also spies on us using a mapping program far better than  Google Earth. 
Population control via the internet...hmmm, why didn't I think of it?

Keep your eyes on the ball

  Thanks Bill for reminding us to keep our eyes on NEO.  Ed Hauser can't be the only one out there for us.  Ed--I would like to talk to you about the citizen watchdog process you have mastered.  A systems mind--I used to have it, but now it has been scrambled.  Props, of course, also to Susan, Jeff, Norm, Sudhir...

Ed Hauser's Citizen Action workshops

Ed needs to organize his papers and then launch a series of consultant workshops to teach Citizen Action in Northeast Ohio 101 - 1001. He has the know-how for anyone who has had it with the local opaque oligarchy. Ed can teach state and federal activism, too. He's an expert on the Cleveland Cuyahoga County Port Authority for sure. He may have attended more meetings than the long standing member John Carney!

Ed is the teacher and the inspiration. Yesterday someone in the produce area of Zagara's Marketplace said to me, "Hello, you activist!" They had apparently caught a glimpse of me on channel 3. I said, "Oh, you're welcome and there were many more than just me -- I just happened to be there when the camera came by". The gentleman then said, "It's good that someone was addressing the issue." I always add if possible, "keep you eyes open for Citizen Hauser, because he is the model and my personal inspiration. Be sure to thank him if you see him!"

Channel 3 Issue

Was this Breuer Tower sales footage?  The opening of the 35 million bid from K and D Group?

yes, Tom Beres

Jeff,
 He asked me if I was pleased that the Tower wouldn't be demolished, and I said yes. I don't know how it played on TV. I don't watch the TV news. He apparently recognized me from Put it in the Ballot -- remember the day he came to the Gypsy Beans meeting.

"HELP" taxonomy link

 

After the library meeting Ed Hauser suggested that the Realneo home page should have a "help" tab just under the header.   The help tab would link to a section where step by step directions were available for logging in to become a user, for inserting images, etc.

Also, both Ed and Susan suggested a more focused training session - where the first hour would be uninterrupted didactics presented by the “teacher” and the next 45 minutes would allow audience questions, comments, distractions. 

 

I have helped with two of these training sessions (Univ. Cir. Arabica and Brooklyn Lib.) and I have gotten the same complaint from both sessions – that instead of presenting one topic thoroughly – the session gets spun into chaos.   

 

So for the next session I will develop a little syllabus and not let any interruptions/people get me off topic.

RSS Feeds

It gets pretty tiresome to try and determine accurate, fair and worthwhile information.  I generally get some good stuff off these feeds.

We have sinned

Brooklyn Branch Cleveland Public Library REALNEO Header

My authentic introduction to the neighborhood around the Brooklyn Branch of the CPL was through Laura, on REALNEO, so I'm interested in that community. I spent some time, before this meeting, driving around the area, soaking in the sights that have been described so well. This is a really nice historic area... a celebration of the excellence of many forefathers... all now really fucked up by sprawl, freeways, and bad planning, design and development throughout our entire lifetimes, by our fathers, mothers and us... a condemnation of our less-than-great generations of leadership and followers, here. This header captures much of the result, from freeways to checkcashing stripmalls... and a solution... repent today.

Disrupt IT

Nomine patris

  We have definitely not lived up to our respective religious values here in Brooklyn Centre (not old brooklyn !!!)

But the library is a refuge and we try to adhere to high standards--sorry to say, Norm, but I would have to throw you out for the language!

Be holy in your thoughts and words, young man!  Repent today!  Let's hope some of the local power brokers heed the word!

drupal how to's

Great to hear about the drupal learning sessions.  GCBL is doing one on Jan 23 - will anyone be there?

Also, the (recently re-named) Clean Transportation Program at Earth Day Coalition has  launched our new Drupal based site @ www.earthdaycoalition.org/cleanfuels . I even had the opportunity to explain to our members a bit about the international and local history of Drupal in our quarterly newsletter.  If you are interested, you can read the bit about Drupal under the section entitled 'Northeast Ohio Clean Fuels Program.'  

Does anyone know how/why the Cleveland Public Library decided to move towards Drupal?
Obviously, an open-source CMS makes a lot of sense for a library, but why Drupal?

The fantastic West Side Market Cafe (good google-search-based marketing strategy by the Mambo folks here) recently created a website based on Mambo which is often mentioned in the same sentence as Drupal

Earthday Coalition

  We have a coffee klatch of adult wi-fi users and toddlers playing in the meeting room today.  Social networking at it's best.

John--post GCBL Drupal workshop in RealNEO events listing.  It will show up on the sidebar.  Why does CPL use Drupal?  Because the current web developer is versed in it, most likely.  She is leaving to work for OPLIN.  Personally,  I am very grateful that the web site does use Drupal.  It makes US look good.

Engaged citizenry

Councilman Cummins--you made a difference when you showed up at the Town Hall meeting for Cleveland Public Library. 

If you, Tim, Mike, Laurie, Anthony, Teresa, Tom, and our other neighbors had not shown up it, we might not have had the wi-fi that made a difference in a young mother's life yesterday.  The chain reaction of good karma might not have occurred.  She came in to update her resume with her tech-savvy, ten-year-old son after losing her job this past week.  She joined the other wi-fiers in the community room and her son explained wi-fi to her.  Our staffer saw an opportunity and brewed a pot of coffee for everyone.  The young mom smiled and said that it was the first time she had smiled in a week.  We were all happy for that moment.  Thanks to engaged citizenry. 

Now, you also know that it's not possible to be everywhere and to satisfy everyone.  Not every meeting triggers a great chain reaction.  We had a meeting of engaged citizenry last week at your office--it could have a similar outcome.  Some of the people attending that meeting, don't go to every meeting, because they know real from fantasy.  They knew that it was important to make their case to you face-to-face.  Engaged citizenry.  There is a red cape with your name on it, Brian--make a difference.