walkah: drupalcon

I'm back home from a truly spectacular DrupalCon DC and have been reflecting this morning on some of the feedback from my talk: Why I Hate Drupal.

See the slides and watch the video

I first got the idea for this talk several months ago watching the DjangoCon 2008 keynote Why I Hate Django by Cal Henderson. I had several ideas for things to address, but aside from the session description I intentionally said very little about my talk publicly. This, of course, lead to some interesting speculation and negative feedback. All part of the plan.

As it turned out, I was not lynched and nothing rotten was thrown.

What I was not expecting (and what the video doesn't capture), though, was all of the interesting discussion that followed. I was overwhelmed by the positive response and the number of people who agreed with several of the points I tried to make:

Drupal is not a product. To grow into a "movement", we should focus on becoming a better platform, adopt some better practices around development, be a better framework, and create more space for the creation of "products" (install profiles, etc) on top.

What do you think? How to we "fix" this project?

In just a few days, most of the drupal community will be headed to Washington, DC for DrupalCon. As the conference draws closer, I always get excited to see friends I don't get to see and share exciting ideas, but this time there is a lot of growing interest and activity around OpenID.

As has become a bit of a tradition, I'll be giving my 4th OpenID talk. This year, I'm hoping to focus a bit on the exciting new developments from the OpenID community and looking at some of the things being built on top of OpenID (like the OpenID/OAuth hybrid model and the DiSo project).

Also, Chris Messina will be one of the keynote presenters - also talking about online identity. We had Chris on the lullabot podcast this week - be sure to check it out!

Finally, for those of you coming to DC - I'm going to round up interested parties on Saturday for an OpenID code sprint. Hope to see you there!

Sadly, I won't be there... but you should be!

I have to sit this one out due to scheduling conflicts, but the posted schedule looks really good. Of course, the Lullabot team members going are all over the schedule. Everyone should attend webchick's intro to testing and be sure to attend the testing party - she has promised chocolate!

Scanning through the schedule, it's nice to see that fellow Toronto Drupal Users Group member, Emma Jane, will be giving a presentation on Drupal for small business networks.

So, while my socks and I will only be there in spirit, you should be there in person. Register now!

With almost a week gone by since I left Boston, it's high time to do a quick recap of DrupalCon Boston 2008. Despite spending most of the week battling a nasty stomach flu, making two trips to the Apple Store in Cambridge, and being without my laptop (which suffered a failed keyboard and trackpad), I had a great time and want to offer my congrats to the organizing team for a solid event!

Although I took part in 6 sessions, I only presented one of them on my own: OpenID and Identity in Drupal. I was pleased with how the session went - packed room with lots of great feedback and discussion. For those interested, check out the slides on slideshare.

Otherwise, it was really great to see all the old faces and meet some new ones. For anyone who missed it, the Acquia party was a blast (Orbit rocks!). Looking forward to the next!

Good Morning, Boston! We're just an hour away from getting this thing rolling - it's gonna be a crazy week. Here's the sessions where you'll be able to find me:

• Drupal Multimedia
• OpenID and Identity in Drupal: the future of user.module
• Drupal Security - Best Practices and Process Discussion
• Zen and the Art of Drupal
• Fast Company Case Study
• The Drupal Association Panel
• Drupal Podcast Live

I'll be doing updates here and from twitter. Don't forget to follow walkah :)

Here we go again! One week from today, DrupalCon Boston 2008 will get underway. For the 3rd straight conference, I'll be doing a session on OpenID in Drupal:

OpenID and Identity in Drupal: the future of user.module

Those of you who have attended my OpenID talks at previous DrupalCons should definitely come out to this one, as I would like to dive a bit deeper into roadmapping future changes, additions and directions for the code as well as touching on rolling out OpenID support across the Drupal.org infrastructure itself. I'd also like to discuss additions and changes to user.module that will better accommodate alternate authentication mechanisms.

Can't wait to see you there! Oh, and yes, I'll bring my socks ;-)

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I case you hadn't heard, Drupal 6.0 has finally been released! It's been just over a year since our last major release and, while it feels sort of like an eternity, there is a ton of great stuff in this new release.

I'm really proud to have helped contribute OpenID support (relying party) to this release - the first step in a larger plan to put (keep?) Drupal at the front of the digital identity curve. Those interested in hearing more, check out my OpenID session at DrupalCon.

There's a ton of other great new stuff in 6: Update module (if you haven't used update status in Drupal 5 - you should), revamped i18n support, and Drag 'n' Drop everywhere (Nate, you're a rockstar)!

Drupal, be mine. :-*

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!