walkah: bryght

File this one under things-i-should-have-blogged-weeks-ago, but it's been brought to my attention that perhaps I should say something "official":

I have left Bryght.

Yes, it's true... after three years with the company I co-founded - the first drupal company - I am moving on.

There is little gossip involved, I'm sorry to report. Bryght has a great team full of some of the smartest people in the drupal community... good friends and people I love and respect. They're also up to some very cool stuff. Sometimes, though, we all just need a change of scenery.

So to answer the common questions: yes, I'll still be (hopefully even more) actively involved in the Drupal community; yes, you did read/see/hear me involved in that; yes, I agree that's an interesting sounding project; no, I probably don't have time to help you with it right now.

Here's to what lies ahead.

In my usual you-heard-it-here-first-fashion, I'd like to be the last to announce the upcoming OSCMS Summit 2007 happening March 22-23rd in Sunnyvale, CA. This is actually the 2nd (annual?) event. While the conference last year was a success, it was *very* heavily Drupal-based. I'm actually hoping to see a bit more involvement from the other communities this year, and it's looking like that may well happen.

I'd also like to point out a couple of events that you should attend. The first is a session I have proposed on OpenID called: OpenID : In Drupal core and your CMS too. While I'll mostly be covering the implementation for Drupal, I think it has significant relevance for all content management systems. Now that Microsoft and AOL are behind OpenID, the project is definitely gaining momentum, but the more content management systems that support OpenID the better for the long term success of the protocol as a dominant force in the Identity 2.0 space. So, vote for the session, and come on out :)

The other event is actually not part of the conference itself, but Dries and I are teaming up with the Lullabots and Civicspace to present what should be a very informative session on Drupal Performance and Scalability. It's not a free event, but highly worth it for anyone running a large Drupal installation, and all the proceeds will go back to the Drupal project.

Get yourself signed up and see you there!

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but in a couple weeks I'm headed back to Vancouver to present at the Vancouver PHP Conference, February 12th and 13th. I'll actually be giving two talks (back to back even): the first will be a joint presentation with SXIP on OpenID going through background and explanation and also looking at PHP code for openid (maybe even some drupal code ;). The second presentation - just me, sorry - will be an introduction to drupal development. Not to give anything away, but there may just be pants involved.

I should also note that fellow bryght guy and drupal ninja, Steven Wittens, will be presenting. But, if that's not enough, there will also be some other PHP developers you may have heard of giving talks like Rasmus, Derick Rethans and more - check the schedule for the complete list. Now, go register.

Hot on the heels of the Drupal 5.0 release, we're pleased to announce that we're offering our Drupal 5 preview release over at Bryght. Not only that, but we've also cut the price in half (now $20/month) - plus you still get a 30 day free trial. How's that for a sales pitch? ;)

"Off the record" (since this is my personal blog), I'm feeling re-energized about our shared hosting offering. We've completely revamped our infrastructure which, along with our partnership with Firebright, takes a lot off my plate in terms of the server management and will make scaling much easier moving forward. We've also got some good plans for keeping things "fresh" moving forward. But, the biggest benefit is that Drupal 5 is just a much nicer product than Drupal 4.5 was (which is when we started) - plus we've got CCK and Views - what more could you ask for? :)

So... go on, sign up. You know you want it.

... only sort of sure how I got here. the last 4 or 6 weeks have been a bit personally chaotic - I'll leave it at that. all I know is I now find myself sitting at the illustrious take5 cafe (well, illustrious if you're vancouver-based bryght guy) with boris and adrian.

I'm in town principally for the Open Source CMS summit where I'm moderating a session on drupal's file api. Then, of course, I'm sticking around for the northern voice conference and moosecamp.

we also happen to have a thing or two going on at bryght...

so, i'm here for just over a week. if you're amongst the people languishing in my inbox, my apologies. i'm digging myself back out of the hole that was January, you will likely hear from me soon.