UK Drupal Weekend - Taking on the challenge

Blogged by Steve Parks on Saturday, 6 January 2010

As you may have read in Kamila's previous post, we're part of a group of UK Drupal developers who have volunteered to spend the weekend developing a new website for the Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue team, in the Lake District.

In total there are 16 or so on the team, some from drupal web agencies and some who are freelance. One aspect of the project that I've been really pleased about is the chance to meet some of the real stars of the UK Drupal community such as Chris (Matason), Dan (Galooph), and more. These guys really know their stuff and build some great projects, so it's interesting to meet them and see them in action.

I'm taking two roles over the weekend. Firstly, being part of the project management team, supporting "the boss" (David Carpenter) by developing the user stories with the head of the mountain rescue team, prioritising these and then liaising with the team members to deliver them. Secondly, I'm supporting Kamila in recording the work that's being done. We're blogging, recording videos, and keeping notes. I may get stuck into some theming tonight too.

We've faced a number of problems so far which we're all having to overcome to get the project delivered. The biggest is the lack of internet connectivity. Ambleside is a small town in the heart of the Lakes, and the ADSL at the mountain rescue centre is shaky at best. Once 16 geeks all tried to connect it gave up completely. The youth hostel we're all staying at is about four miles out of town, in the middle of nowhere (the long winding track up the side of a big hill was particularly 'exciting' to try to get up in the snow and ice!) - and so there's no internet access there either. We even drew a blank with our mobile dongles, because there's no 3G coverage.

So a large part of the day has been spent with fingers crossed hoping the sysadmins on the team could get some kind of connection going. In the end they setup a local server on a laptop for developing the site on, with a local Git repository for managing the code. In order to upload some videos and do these blog entries, Kam and I have escaped to a nearby Cafe which has web access.

So that's the challenges - in my next post, I'll cover what's been achieved so far!

• STEVE PARKS, Captain
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