The day after I learned from my former scriptwriting workshop classmate Risa Jopson that she's planning to create a website for the non-profit org she works for -- Kodao Productions -- it occured to me that their org could be the beneficiary or one of the beneficiaries of the Drupal Code Sprint Manila that software architect and Drupal user J. Knight of Hawaii was initiating (he was visiting the country to attend a cousin's wedding). Risa readily agreed, and to cut the story short, Kodao was one of the lucky couple of orgs chosen for the sprint.

Thus, last July 13, Sunday, I temporarily set aside my daily routine of waking up at lunch time or late afternoon, and woke up (or at least tried to wake up) early. Got a bit lost (took the V. Luna route instead of Kalayaan Avenue) while nearing the meeting place -- The Kubo, at the Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC) -- but was able to arrive, er, 30 minutes late. But fortunately, they haven't started yet. Risa was already there including the Drupal guys I've already met in the past particularly during the last Software Freedom Day at U.P. like Rick and DL (Noel), both from the Computer Professionals' Union which was one of the organizers, and then UP's Dr. Giovanni 'Ganni' Tapang of non-profit AGHAM, whom Risa already knew (later, Ganni's wife Lisa Ito of non-profit Kalikasan-Philippine Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE) would join us; the offices of AGHAM, Kalikasan and CEC all share the same building).

They then introduced me to J, who I found out to be a very amiable fellow. He was on his third visit to the Philippines, the mother country of his mom (who at that time I didn't know was with him and was shopping with his girlfriend, Fem). I had already corresponded with him via e-mail and it was nice to see him in person.

A little after I arrived, the event was formally started by J who introduced himself as a Filipino-American with an Ilokana mom (her parents migrated to Hawaii in the 40's) and an African-American father. The rest of us, including the reps from the two non-profit orgs, followed suit. There was Chris, JoRap or Jon, Marc Robinsone, who also helped organized the event, Joe, Risa, Ganni, Rick, DL, Roy and Sheryl of the Asian Peasant Coaltion (APC), the other non-profit beneficiary.

Then Risa and Sheryl did brief presentations of their respective orgs.

After J explained a bit how to use the Subversion client,  TortoiseSVN, we split into two groups to start the code sprint. The APC team was composed of DL, Rick, Joe, Roy, and Ganni while I joined the Kodao team with members Marc, Jon, and Chris. I don't own a laptop so I couldn't help with the coding but tried to contribute as best as I could, and then once in a while bothered them with questions . After consulting with Risa regarding Kodao's online needs, Marc was tasked with the theme while Jon and Chris took care of the code.

We eventually based the Kodao site's theme on their calling card which Risa gave us before she left (she had to be at Conspiracy Bar to set up an art exhibit with one of her orgs). Meanwhile Chris and Jon set up the site initially on Jon's laptop. There was a bit of an issue of how the image galleries were to be implemented -- Chris had done it for the Southern Tagalog Exposure site by creating and calling a function, while Marc opted to implement this feature in the sytle sheet. In the end, Marc's solution was used.

Since the guys were new to Subversion, they were I think hesitant to use it or thought that it would be better to complete a working site before committing to the repository. Thus, the joke was that the guys were all commitment-phobic -- all scared to commit . 

At the end of the day, everything worked well. Each group committed the finished site or at least its first version. DL presented for team APC, and Chris for Team Kodao. The final output for Kodao can be found here, and APC here.

Since I haven't been to an event like this before I really learned a lot during the event. For example, Marc uses InkScape to do his mock-up of the theme, and then the Firefox add-on Firebug to create the theme itself. Also learned what collaborative programming is all about.

Then it was DL who told me about XAMPP (X meaning cross platform, Apache MySQL, PHP, Perl) -- didn't know that there are already free packages available online so you can work on your localhost or on your computer before uploading your site (Marc uses Uniform Server). In the past, you had to install the aforementioned components one at a time and then configure them. 

Meanwhile, J uses Eclipse to debug while programming with PHP and/or Drupal. 

Marc also told me that porting a module is easy now because of port module and showed me a Lullabot video of  how to port a module.

That's about it. Thanks everyone! (And thanks, J for the many-flavored macadamia nuts hehe.) Till the next Drupal gathering. Really wish I had a laptop so I had a more concrete contribution, but since I am just a poor, struggling writer, that may still be well into the future . Meanwhile, will do what I can to support the group.

You may find photos of the event at my multiply site and at Photobucket.