Posts by Ariane

Session Picks for DrupalCon Denver Next Week!

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 16:27

It's that time of year again! Next week, DrupalCon descends on Denver so we Drupallers can teach each other cool things, and get some well needed face time with our friends and collaborators. I'll be representing AB solo this time round, so don't be shy if you want to come chat about what we've been up to lately.

It's hard to believe, but this will be my 7th DrupalCon since spring of 2008, and it'll be a pretty different one for me. Late last year I stepped down from my position as Drupal Documentation Co-Lead, and have been taking some time to reset priorities and goals for myself careerwise. I'm not giving any sessions, or hosting any sprints or BOFs - for the first time in a while, I'm going to be purely *gasp* an attendee. It will be a welcome change of pace to just be able to decompress and soak it all in.

Want to Join the Affinity Bridge Team?

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Fri, 02/03/2012 - 13:54

jobs

How can you not want to be part of this???

At the first PNW Summit in Seattle (2008) c/o our friend Steve from The Jibe

Okay, you got us. We're not really "rock stars", and there are no foosball tables here. We're a group of peers who enjoy being engaged in our work, and sharing our work lives with each other.

Affinity Bridge team at the PNW Drupal Summit

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 14:43

Most of the Affinity Bridge team will be heading south to this year's PNW Drupal Summit (which rotates between Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland, and is in Portland this year). There will be two official sessions that our team members will be presenting that you might want to check out if you're coming to the conference:

Best practices for running a Drupal-based business (Panel)

10:10am - Saturday, October 15, 2011

Mack is going to be part of a business panel that will be addressing various questions and ideas related to running a Drupal based company. Topics they'll be discussing include: how to find good clients, how to find and keep a good team, pricing, and best practices. More details on the session page.

Using Build Kit & the Kit specification to build Drupal distributions

2:30pm - Sunday, October 16, 2011

Boxes Abridged

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Mon, 05/30/2011 - 10:42

This post is part of our Abridged series, which aims to explain the basics of some of the more ominous yet awesome Drupal projects in simple and practical terms. We hope these posts will help demystify some of these projects for people who have been hesitant to try them out!

Here, we'll take a look at Boxes module, including a review of its history within the Drupal project, the current state of the module, how to start using it, how we use it at Affinity Bridge, and some resources. Special thanks to Tylor who recently did a sitdown (team discussion/learning session) on Boxes module, and wrote the technical sections of this post.

Background

Boxes module is a Drupal project that was originally built by Jeff Miccolis from Development Seed. It's been around for quite a while, but many people don't venture into using it, largely because it's not clear upfront what the benefits are over core Blocks.

Drupal 8: git + sprints = efficient + smooth

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Sun, 03/13/2011 - 11:37

At DrupalCon Chicago this past week, there was a "Core Conversations" session track, made up of sessions pitched by contributors to the core Drupal project. A wide range of topics were covered from the Butler project (a new system for context and blocks), to the built-in Help system, to Deployment strategies, to redesigning the issue queue. These sessions were shorter presentations followed by a discussion period for the attendees to give input on the topics.

Affinity Bridge at DrupalCon Chicago

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Wed, 03/02/2011 - 17:40

It's already that time again, DrupalCon Chicago is on next week! We've got three members of the Affinity Bridge team attending the conference, looking forward to learning, sprinting, and presenting a few sessions.

Dave Tarc, our newest team member Katherine Bailey (welcome!), and I (Ariane) will be at the conference, and we've got a few events/sessions that we're working on and would love to see you at:

Tuesday, Mar. 8, 3:15pm: "Help Needs Help!"

Drupal 7 launched this week!

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Fri, 01/07/2011 - 15:58

Drupal 7 is out!

Late Tuesday night was one of the most exciting Drupal events I've yet to be part of: the official release of Drupal 7. I've been working on the Drupal 7 documentation for over a year at this point, and crunching really hard the last few weeks on the Install and Upgrade guides, and core module documentation. I knew the day was coming, but it was even more inspiring than expected being a part of those last few days and hours leading up to the launch.

When Angie (aka. "webchick", Drupal 7's core maintainer) started rolling the release, it was quite obvious how excited everyone was on IRC, as this went on for about five minutes straight after she created the final release:

D7 Release IRC log

Excited to be a Drupal Documentation Co-Lead!

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Mon, 11/15/2010 - 17:35

Big news in Affinity Bridge offices today! The announcement went out on Drupal.org this morning that myself (arianek) and Jennifer Hodgdon (jhodgdon) from Seattle have been appointed by Dries Buytaert as the new Drupal Documentation Co-Leads!

This has been a long time in the making. It's really exciting to have the work I've been doing recognized, and also have the ability to leverage that work to improve documentation and help build a stronger Docs Team. On top of that, my community spotlight was also posted today, which is incredibly heartwarming.

Inspiring weekend at the PNW Drupal Summit

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Tue, 10/05/2010 - 14:40

It was an incredibly jam-packed weekend for Drupallers here in the Pacific Northwest, with the 2nd annual PNW Drupal Summit in Vancouver. The Summit is a weekend conference that is targeted towards people already working with Drupal (moderate to advanced level), and is done in a regional mini-DrupalCon style: pre-scheduled sessions/tracks, keynotes from Drupal 7 maintainer Angie Byron (aka. webchick) and Chapter 3's Josh Koenig (aka. joshk), and Drupal 7 code sprints (that resulted in bringing the Drupal 7 criticals count from 13 to 8 over the course of the weekend, HOOAH!)

Fantastic Time at DrupalCon Copenhagen!

Submitted by Ariane Khachatourians on Tue, 09/14/2010 - 11:44

A few weeks ago, I embarked on my first overseas trip to go to Copenhagen for this year's European DrupalCon. It was my 4th DrupalCon to date, but I've been wanting to attend one of the European ones for a while, as they have a reputation for having a different vibe than the North American ones (and of course so I could finally see some of Europe!)

The Core Dev Summit (+ Code Sprint Day)

Like the last conference in San Francisco, it was prefaced with the Core Developer Summit, which is a full day of presentations, discussions, and code sprinting on the core Drupal platform. The Core Dev Summit is the single day (twice a year at this point), where a good number of the people who work on Drupal core come together to take a step back and discuss in-depth any ideas or concerns. This often leads into some dedicated sprinting on core related issues (as well as some of the most crucial contributed modules).