Ariane Khachatourians | West End Girl

Well, after being a little tough on Steven on the weekend, when he had a really runny nose and thought he was sick, apparently karma has come back to haunt me.  What I thought were just really bad allergies to the ick in the air seems to have turned into a little summer cold.  Luckily, he got over it in a couple days, and I’m hoping for the same for me.  But for now, it’s making me a little cranky, and so, methinks it be time for a list of happy things.

1. This awesome photo of Boris that I found while uploading photos today.
2. Having an amazing long weekend with my friends.
3. Being on vacation for the week and actually having some awesome weather.
4. Everyone I care about it okay.
5. Flirting with boys (still)!

ACHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

I know I promised a post on the Farmer’s Market a couple weeks ago, but then I broke SpendLocally.ca doing upgrades so I’m a little behind!  It’s still coming…just playing catch up!  Just put a new post up about my new favorite bike shop, the Denman Bike Shop.  Read it here!

I think I’m going to try and post happy things whenever I feel crappy, to help cheer myself up.

1. Skipping last weekend was fun (see above).
2. I got my hair cut (see below).
3. Martin was nice and let me whine to him about feeling crappy, which made me feel better.
4. Went to quirky little solstice performance at the beach tonight.
5. Tomorrow is a new day.

(Great hair courtesy of Martin at Red Square Salon in Gastown.)

Been having a crappy day, on top of a fairly stressful few weeks, so decided to take a cue from Rachel and focus on the positive:

1. I reorganized my hall closet, and it’s much better than before, allowing me to keep my entrance less cluttered, and access stuff, which makes me happy.
2. I’m getting my hair cut and coloured tomorrow, with Martin, which makes it fun rather than a chore.
3. The Jazz Festival starts tomorrow.
4. Four and a half more workdays till 10 glorious days off (including going to the cabin!!!)
5. Flirting with boys

What are your five things today?

This was by far one of the most fun weekends I’ve had in a long time. It was largely because I’m finally feeling a fair bit better, probably back to 80% or so after a few weeks of all my health crap flaring up. I forget how nice it is to actually have the energy to actually do all the stuff I want!

Friday was pretty low key, but highlights involved going swimming for the first time in a couple years. The funny part was there was a couple triathletes there (World Triathlon Championships were in town this weekend), just to contrast the two ends of the human swimming ability spectrum. Things I forgot about swimming: 1) how psyched I get when I throw on my jeans and a hoody over my swimsuit before heading out, 2) how fun it is, and how relaxing swimming under the water can be, and 3) how much I totally suck at it! Good times none the less, and I will definitely have to go more often now that I broke the seal! Friday night, headed over to Snootytown…I mean Yaletown, and watched House of Flying Daggers with some friends, which was actually an okay movie, very visually stunning even though the story line was a little iffy. Much goofiness and fun was had over the course of the evening.

Saturday was action packed! I didn’t even leave the West End, and it was one of the best days I’ve had in ages! The day started out with the first West End Farmer’s Market of the year, and boy was I ready for it. The Farmer’s Market is one of my favorite things about summer, and I love making the trip over there every Saturday once I’m up and at it. Stocking up on tasty food for the week is just as much fun as chatting with the farmers and vendors, and running into random friends and acquaintances from the neighbourhood. I’ll be writing a more detailed post about the first market of the season on Spend Locally.

I had kind of a loosely planned afternoon, because I wasn’t sure what the weather was going to be like, it’s been really off and on lately. If it was raining, I was going to go to pancake breakfast with some lovely peoples, and if it was sunny, well…have you heard about World Naked Bike Ride? It was indeed a sunny afternoon, and I almost chickened out, but I was like, “Hey, why the heck not?”, so I took my lovely bike and headed down to Sunset Beach. Admittedly, I did not go full buff, especially since there were SO many gawkers taking pictures, but I did ride around downtown in some cute undies and had a fabulous time! Not too many people I knew turned up, though there were probably a couple hundred people–but I did see more of one old friend and one new one than I had ever hoped I would! Hah. Fun times! It was a riot…until we rode up the hill on Robson, where I finally succumbed to my asthma and general lack of being in shape, and knew that it was my time to put my dress back on and coast back home. I can’t even explain to you how great a time I had, riding with all the free spirited great people, but suffice it to say it was a big win for project YES.

Leslie took some photos before the ride started, and they’re really wonderful. I know I’ve said it before, but she’s such a great photographer–if anyone in Vancouver is looking for a wedding photographer, you should definitely check out her site! She got a bunch of great shots that she made into the amazing (and tasteful!) montage above. She also took the shot of me in all my pale glory…

Then after a shower and throwing together a salad, I walked over to Alex’s for a BBQ which had a great mix of people (mostly who I didn’t know), including accountants and actuaries, a lawyer, a few techies, a few academics, old friends, and a guy from Austin, TX, who was couchsurfing for the night on one of her friends’ couch. Much chatting and eating was done, and then a rousing game of Catch Phrase, which was actually stupidly fun–we played boys against girls, and I have no idea who was winning, but it was hilarious! Eventually, the night rolled on and I started getting sleepy and strolled home.

This morning I tackled the pile of dishes that I made over the course of the last couple days before heading out for a quiet brunch/lunch over in Yaletown with my best buddies. I wasn’t going to go originally, but a little gentle arm twisting got out there, and I’m glad I went mostly due to the company, but an honourable mention goes to the tasty roasted chicken I got, which will last me a couple more meals yet.

The grey weather was just what I needed after a fun-filled weekend, to slow down and take care of many loads of laundry, tidying, sewing, and random computery stuff I needed to catch up on. All that’s left now is to make some food for tomorrow and the cozy up in my freshly washed bed.

Put up a new post last night on Spend Locally about this great little flower store, Pollination, and forgot to mention it here, so here it is!

Drupal Camp Vancouver was a big hit! After all of the planning, the weeks sped by, and next thing I knew, it was all over. I think the conference went fabulously, and have been getting great feedback from the attendees and presenters, which has been so satisfying! Big thanks to DaveO and Dale who were my partners in crime wrangling all the people, checking over the details, delegating tasks, and making sure everything went as smoothly as possible. Thanks too to Boris, who was a great conference planning mentor, letting me bug him with questions about how best to do stuff, and helping Dale and I choose and schedule the sessions. And ginormous thanks to the awesome presenters, volunteers, attendees, Workspace (for being awesome), and most of all sponsors who donated their time and cash to make this all happen!

People kept asking me things and talking to me as if I was one of the Drupal “rockstars” - ie. someone who knows the ins and outs of Drupal like the back of their hand. And although I’m not that advanced yet, it was nice to see that not even two years after going to Drupal Camp Seattle 06, where I first got sucked in, I have learned a lot and am actually able to answer a lot of questions from people who are now where I was then. I think several people were also surprised to see that someone who is not a big contributor code-wise, nor an employee of one of the big Drupal shops was helping organize such an event.

That is something I really took away from DrupalCon in March–both from talking to Angie Byron, who is a major contributor and currently on the Drupal Association board, and from Addison Berry’s talk on how everyone can contribute to Drupal. Both Angie and Addison work for Lullabot, and do a lot of community outreach, and I feel like they helped provide me some much needed direction as to how I could help and contribute even if it wasn’t by actually contributing code. So when I noticed that even though there had been some talk of doing a DrupalCamp here, nobody was really taking any initiative to get it going, it dawned on me that maybe if *I* really wanted this to happen, it was the opportunity for me to do my part. After chatting a bit with Dale at the monthly meetups, he was game to take it on, and everything kind of fell into place after that.

I’d never organized anything on this scale before, but was impressed at how much interest there was even early on–I don’t think that we had any expectations that it would become such a large event! We had people from here, from the Island, a bunch up from Seattle (who have a Drupal Camp coming up at the end of June, by the way), a presenter from Lethbridge (who nearly didn’t make it because of snow in Calgary), and even a couple guys from my hometown of Saskatoon! We also had a great mix of really experienced developers, intermediate users and novice developers, and then people brand new to this all (shout out to the librarians!).

Personal favorite sessions (some other great ones were repeats of previous presentations I’d seen, so I’ve left them off the list), which I may or may not elaborate on in future posts included:

• Lyal’s session on popular modules, which was a great way to start the day, and where I learned about a couple modules I haven’t been using but should, as well as rationale behind using certain combinations of modules for image handling.



• Gregory’s session on Panels 2, which was an awesome walk through a pretty complex but powerful new(ish) module.
• Scott’s Intro to SVN session, which gave me an actual understanding of what SVN does and how to use it, it was a total lightbulb moment for a lot of people!
• Boris‘ session on Install Profiles, which helped solidify some of the stuff on install profiles that I’d been reading up on and tinkering with in the last few weeks.
• Rob and Alex get special props for originality and fun :-)

I also have to mention the wrap up session in which Boris talked about where Drupal is going, and then opened up a discussion that covered a lot of ground from community to contributing, to business challenges. The conversation touched on how to foster learning and participation in the local community, which led to some good ideas about cooperative learning and also pointed out the likely need for formalizing some training and certification. Also, talked to a few people about client management and end user training, which may turn into a good project to take on.

Last but surely not least, I have to give some Drupalchix props to all the super smart and awesome women who attended and presented. Not only did we totally up the attendee ratio, but had five women lead or co-lead sessions. Go Vancouver and Seattle!

Whew, I think that does it!  Till next time!

I meant to write about this last week before the blogger plague took me down (I’m still in recovery…c’est terrible!) but better late than really late–did you know my bosses just published a book?! It’s true!

My bosses, Lauren and Emira wrote a book, called The Boss of You and it was released May 1st! You can get it on Amazon.com right now, as well as Sophia Books (450 West Hastings St., Vancouver, BC), and it should be in Chapters and other bookstores any day now.

It’s a guide on how to become your own boss on your own terms, geared towards women, but useful to anyone who wants to define their own vision of a successful business. And they should know, having run a successful web business for the last 8 years after deciding they could surely do it better! It’s a practical guide, and contains lots of great input from a variety of successful women entrepreneurs.

If you want to share in the excitement, be sure to head to Sophia Books this Wednesday, May 7th, at 7:00pm because they are doing a reading and Q&A session–be sure to bring some good questions for them! If the blogger plague releases me from it’s germy grips, I will see you there!

Just when you thought I’d never post again, a new post on Spend Locally about Smoking Lily!

I don’t know how the time went so fast either, but it’s true–only 2 weeks until Drupal Camp Vancouver is underway! Somehow, along with DaveO and Dale, I ended up being one of the wham-bam organizers for this, and boy has it crept up quickly…we’ve got our locations rented (SFU Wosk Centre and Workspace). We’ve got a good number of volunteers helping out (but we can always use more!!!), and a bunch of lovely sponsors making this possible for the low, low price to attendees of $20 (that includes a t-shirt and Saturday lunch)! Which reminds me–registration is filling up fast, so if you are planning on coming, don’t wait, REGISTER NOW!!!

There will be a good range of sessions for themers, developers, and users of different skill levels and interests, and it’s only $20, so don’t hesitate, just come check it out! I went to Drupal Camp Seattle two summers ago, as a total newbie, hardly knowing any HTML or CSS, and only being a beginner Drupal user/configurer, and I can pinpoint that as the event that sucked me into doing web and Drupal work. It was a great experience, and we’re hoping that DCV will be just as great for everyone who attends, actually to be frank, we’re hoping it’s an even better experience!

Aside from registering, the other thing we need is more speaker submissions! The deadline for speaker submissions is MAY 1st, that’s this Thursday! If you’re not totally sure what to pitch, feel free to submit a few different ideas, and if you’re super busy but committed to presenting, just submit something that we can follow up with, ie. “Hey, it’s me, I’m super busy and didn’t get a chance to properly flesh this pitch out, but I want to do an awesome session on install profiles, and I promise it will be SUPER AWESOME.” is better than nothing! There is also a list of possible topics to skim through on the speaker submissions page, so have a look, pick a topic on which you feel you have a bit of knowledge to share, and pitch us your session!

Can’t wait geek out on Drupal with everyone who makes it!

ps. Here’s the RSS feed for the DCV site so you can follow along on announcements.