Drupal Dojo Video Session Focuses on DEMO Module

An old project in the Drupal community has begun to  shine again. Years ago the Drupal community enjoyed a regular offering of live broadcasts coupled with the lively interaction among people in the Dojo chat room. For reasons far too complicated to get into here, the Dojo quietly slipped away. But, thanks to the tireless efforts of Gus Austin, it is now rejuvenated.

Today, Duo Consulting sponsored the 5th Drupal-Dojo session. I took to the “airwaves” and did a very detailed presentation on the DEMO module. Video available here In short, the DEMO module allows the administrator of a Drupal site to create backups on the database then reload those backups at any time. The backups are stored within the Drupal files and an easy to use administration page shows all available backups.

At Duo Consulting I instituted a practice whereby developers would create backups each morning before they started working on the site. We would even create one in the middle of the day if we were about to do some rather heavy rework on content-types or major restructuring of VIEWS configurations. This way if we got unexpected results, we could either retrace our steps OR just revert back to the state of the site as it was before we made the dramatic changes. Pretty handy huh?

The Dojo sessions are weekly and open to any who want to present. This is actually a great opportunity for some of the “Silent Soldiers” to stand out and be heard. Landing a chance to present at a DrupalCamp or DrupalCon can be difficult and, for some, standing in front of an often huge audience can cause nerves to the point of nausea. The Drupal-Dojo is the chance to make a name for yourself and get some promotion for either the individual or the company for which they work.

The plan is to invite as many sponsoring organizations as possible to join the Drupal-Dojo initiative. Acknowledgment on the Dojo site at  as well as in tweets, and blogs will be among the many methods of exposure that the sponsors will receive. Those with an interest in sponsoring the Drupal-Dojo can contact Gus Austin (signin required to contact Gus).

So far, I’m already involved in a number of capacities to assist the Drupal-Dojo. Wrangling sponsors and presenters and being an all purpose Dojo-Evangelist are among my main duties. The Drupal-Dojo CoffeeTalks, ad-hoc Podcasts, are another one of my duties. Here we get some Drupalers together on a conference call and run through a short list of topics. New modules released, upcoming or recent events, and other news worthy items are discussed. This is going to be loads of fun! I look very forward to participating in this and presenting other sessions for the Drupal-Dojo.