Eric Goldhagen and I are leading a hands on preconference workshop (#W11) at Computers in Libraries. It's Sunday, April 11 1:30-4:30 (Thank dog they didn't schedule us for a morning session!) in Washington, DC.
Our original title which they truncated, not without cause, is "Drupal Kitchen: a Hands-on Workshop for Anything from Creating Blog Posts to Overwriting Theme Functions."
Here's the whole description:
When it comes to understanding technology, it is important to not only listen but also to actually touch and interact with the tools. Ridding people of the fear that if they touch it they might break it is an important part of empowering people to use technology. Drupal is a popular open source/free software content management system (CMS) that can be used to do everything from creating a simple informational site such as the Piscataway Public Library website to running a complex, customized site such as Radical Reference (a question-and-answer site where anyone can post a question and a team of librarians collaborates on providing authoritative answers) and can be integrated into many free and proprietary ILSs, as is being done by the Cleveland Public Library and the Darien Library.
In this workshop, attendees create accounts and content on a Drupal site, get help with particular problems, or collaborate on a specific project. Participants have the option of working on their own Drupal project or on the Radical Reference site, which accommodates a large number of user accounts and has an active to-do list. Come, bring your laptop, and try out Drupal in a safe learning environment.
A potential attendee on the beginner side asked me what to do to prepare for the workshop. I unhelpfully said I didn't know, but did she suggest she check out Karen Coombs's Drupal Done Right article in Library Journal. Let me know if you have any other ideas, for people anywhere on the spectrum of totally new to Drupalers to theme tweakers.