I finally made it to my first Boston Drupal meetup last night. It was held on the MIT campus and attracted a fairly large group (20 or so). The format is simple:

1. A few announcements
2. Organize a list of people who want to share or ask questions
3. Share and ask questions
4. Go to the student union for some beer and pizza

I took notes and following the policy of reuse, jotted down my notes on a spare napkin. (Okay, I'm not normally this disorganized).

My questions to the group were 1) What should I implementation as a rotator / slider module on my Drupal site and 2) Can the core blog module be called News, because it won't be used very often and only by one or two people initially.

Carousel was recommended, but I was also given the drupal.org node reference number for a full comparison and breakdown of the various rotator / slider modules. And of course, I'll be evaluating each on their basis of their usability and accessibility. As for the blog question, I was told to just create a custom content type, which sounds like a very sensible suggestion.

Jeannie also pointed out that the fabulous DrupalCamp LA website uses a carousel. It looks fabulous, but it's not keyboard accessible. However, I will investigate to see if this can be made so. The DrupalCamp LA website was made by a small web design company called This by Them. I love the look of their own site!

It was great to see folks again, plus meet new people and re-meet people that I'd only met very briefly at the Boston D4D camp. Nice people, all of them. I'm also glad to know a few more people going to September's DrupalCon Paris conference that I'll also be attending as a scholarship recipient. Thanks Moshe, Susan and Ed for organizing last night's meetup!