Democamp 11

21 Nov 2006

Last night, I attended DemoCampToronto11 and enjoyed the ... well... mixed bag of goodies presented. The selenium demo made me make a note to myself to revisit that as a testing framework.

I enjoyed Arnold's presentation - not because the demo was really a demo - but because it reminded me how powerful a tool like drupal could be when focused for and tailored to a target such as artists and artisans. Sounds like a great install profile. I also had to laugh when someone (besides me) asked why he didn't build his tool using drupal.

However, like several other attendees, I had to stop and wonder about firestoker. I've heard Tom Purves speak at a couple local events now, and in general they seem to be rather well versed in "Enterprise 2.0" concepts... but the bit of their application (either version) we saw last night made me wonder "why bother"? I certainly didn't see any features or functionality present that didn't exist in hundreds of other free tools (not to mention their app design looks a heck of a lot like basecamp). I don't understand why they would build their own, proprietary system... seems like a lot of development time and resources better spent elsewhere. But, I'm biased. Again, I was left wondering "Why not build it in Drupal"?

I found Sunir Shah's design bibliography demo to be entertaining and well presented. I know Sunir's a wiki guy and all... but the design bibliography should really have been built in drupal too.

I hereby propose a 5th standard question for DemoCamp demoers: "Why didn't you just use drupal?" No?

posted 11:17pm:

tags:

Why not Drupal?

by Sunir Shah (not verified)

November 22, 2006 - 11:47am

I think it was unfair to ask Arnold that because all he wanted to demonstrate was the intended workflow, not the product. He came to solicit developers such as yourself to build the actual application, presumably in whatever framework you choose.

In my case, Drupal doesn't do wikis. I know since I argued it out with Dries on the p2pj list when he was deciding on the framework of the Book feature. Also, the wiki underneath, InfiniteMonkey, has very useful purposes that I did not describe yet but perhaps will at a future date when I can make it shiny and demoable.

Thanks for the feedback, Sunir

by walkah

November 27, 2006 - 3:45pm

While it may not have been obvious, my post was intended largely tongue-in-cheek. I'd love to hear more about your underlying wiki technology sometime... I did think your demo was quite well done, and looked interesting.

And, yes, I think Arnold was quite clear that he was soliciting developer advice... but I did chuckle at the back of the room when he was asked "why not drupal".

And, yes, drupal should do wikis better.