walkah: drupal association

The Drupal Association had it's first annual General Assembly yesterday. Over the course of the 3 hour IRC marathon, we managed to add 11 new permanent members - four of whom were elected to Board positions - from a pool of 60 applicants (full details).

I'd like to publicly congratulate fellow Lullabots Jeff Eaton and Addison Berry, long time Drupal User Group member Khalid Baheyeldin and all the new members: Larry Garfield, Greg Knaddison, Michael E. Meyers, Naryan Newton, David Norman, Jacob Redding, Nedjo Rogers and Laura Scott. It's a great group of new faces and I'm excited to see what we're able to do in our 2nd year.

Personally, I decided to not run for a board position this year (although I went back and forth roughly 8,000 times), but I am looking forward to an active year with the new team. There is plenty to be done, so it's nice to have some extra hands on deck!

430+ attendees. 5 sessions. 4 days. One hell of a time.

I have to say, I might be addicted. The post-drupal conference mixture of utter exhaustion (plus jetlag) and renewed energy and excitement is a feeling that I've really grown to look forward to twice a year. This is one great community full of great people. i love you all!

My personal highlights:

• Having my son, Andrew, along- definitely mitigated some of the usual homesickness and was hopefully an experience he'll cherish as long as I do.
• My socks! I love 'em - and they made chx jealous :)
• Seeing Dries, Gabor, Bert, Adrian, and all the other non-north american drupal folks that I feel like I never get to see enough of
• Hanging out with the amazing team from Lullabot: you're rockstars, each and every one.
• A great venue and superb planning - hats off to Robert Garrigos and crew!
• All the amazing energy behind image/file handling, OOP and other awesome stuff to come in Drupal 7

As promised, I gave 3 presentations... all of which went well (I thought):

• OpenID: it's in core... now what?. Another variation on my OpenID theme. Boris wanted more discussion on directions - but we're still educating, IMO. We'll get there, Boris, promise! (slides | pdf)
• Image handling in core... for real this time.: Possibly my favourite session. Lots of good energy and good discussion - and already some subsequent action. I'll definitely be posting more on this topic! (slides | pdf)
• Drupal and SimpleXML: This session was fun, and better received than I'd expected. I'm not the only one excited by PHP5! (slides | pdf)

In addition to those three, I also took part in a couple of panels: the live podcast was a lot of fun - go check it out!

I was also on the Drupal Association panel. This was interesting - it was clear that as a young organization - we still have a lot to learn and a lot to do. I was sympathetic to the concerns raised, but there has been a lot of discussion amongst association members since the panel and hopefully we'll see some positive changes forthcoming.

*phew* ok, that's enough for now... although I've left out a bunch. Jetlag calls... g'night planet drupal!