MontenaSoft on DrupalCon 2008 – stay tuned to blog!

Submitted by zeljko on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 09:20

DrupalCon is the most important event of Drupal Community, it happens once a year in Europe and this year it is taking place in Szeged, Hungary, from 27.Aug until 31 Aug. We are expecting to find a lot of very interesting people there, and to get some insider information about the future development of Drupal, which is, after all, one of the most powerful content management system on the world and also our preferred platform for Web developing.

Stay tuned and check this blog entry on a daily basis! We will keep you up to speed about the most important events of DrupalCon2008 through our comments.

UPDATE: I have promised you some links about the videos: most of the sessions are already in archive.org. You can try to download it directly from archive.org search: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Drupalcon%202008%20Szeged%20AND%... or you can search through the Schedule, most of the taped session have already a link http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/schedule, just pick something what you like - and prepare for looong download time.

I want to express my gratitude to all the people involved in the organization of DrupalCon in Szeged; there were lot of work behind the scene to make everything moves swiftly, and the stuff that supported the conference was brilliant, every crazy question that I (or the other people) had was responded in a matter of minute (if they did not know the answer, they've found someone in couple of minutes, I mean). Last but not least, food was fantastic, too. Can next DrupalCon be better? That will be hard, Szeged has set new standards. Szeged, Thanx a lot once more. See you all in next DrupalCon!

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Comments

DAY 1

Submitted by zeljko on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 10:00.

Hi people,

this was an exciting day for me and Ivica on DrupalCon in Szeged.
Unfortunately we do not have time to tell you about all events on the conference, but at least we can give you a couple of hints:

there was a nice swift through "State of Drupal" from Dries Buytaert, http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/state-drupal.html which gives a lot of clues where the Drupal is going with new version 7:
Usability has been asked from all over the world, so some things will move here, although perhaps not all that community has expected. Interesting Usability Study from the University of Boston was presented, that shows clearly why and how Drupal- newcomers are puzzled with Drupal Admin Windows: no doubt about it, something must be changed, if the Drupal Community would like to have better acceptance and growth: learning curve (although better then it was a year before) it is still a problem to a lot of people around the globe.
Note about WYSIWYG editor - although everyone is crying for that in Drupal Core, well, for the moment out of scope: there is a clear no-go from Dries for Drupal 7. Well, although WYSIWYG editor is very useful for our clients, usability is still not vary well managed, perhaps he is right.
For the moment, FCKEditor is clear leader, at least if you want to judge by community voting. OK all editor implementations lack at this particular moment copy/paste stability with MS Office tools - which is what most people use for check spelling. On my opinion, there is no clear leader in WYSIWYG editor arena, so it is probably better to postpone this decision to Drupal 8.

There were also several very interesting presentation:
http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/open-small-business by Emma Jane Hogbin:
about Drupal in small rural communities in Canada, and what should you do people do to make a sustainable biz model out of the situation where there are no clients around capable of giving away 10,000$ for their web presence.
Also lot of tips for PHP optimizers on the server side from Rasmus Lerdorf, father of PHP, and so on... mixed input on various aspects of using Drupal (http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/rasmus-lerdorf-keynote-...).

So if you intend to learn about the edge of technology and bring some added value for your clients, try to schedule your calendar to visit this - or next DrupalCon.
Tomorrow, new things about Drupal Map and GIS are on my schedule, so stay tuned!

DAY 2

Submitted by zeljko on Sun, 08/31/2008 - 23:29.

Wow! There was a very nice party of Drupalistas last evening, check here http://flickr.com/photos/tags/drupalconszeged2008/ for the fotos.

For a lot of people that I’ve spoke on the second day of DrupalCon, the presentation of Mark Boulton http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/redesign-drupalorg-desi... was the most interesting between 20 different things going on today.

So, what is going on? Drupal.org, and groups.drupal.org is going to re-shape their web presence (among other Drupal.org sites). Why? Some serious investigation on usability of Drupal sites have shown that the Drupal insiders can cope with sheer amount of information on a site with 200,000+ registered users - but they mostly just type the web URL in the address bar. It is for sure something that can’t be expected from technology leader of big enterprise who is evaluating new technologies. Neither can someone who just wants to play with new content management system be pushed through all the links and menus just to install the CMS.
This combined with usability of Drupal itself (which, as all insiders know, could be a bit better) has make a lot of people to believe that Drupal is something obscure and buggy and not worth of investing time and energy. Nothing could be far away from truth: well, at least there are some big names http://acquia.com/blog/forrester-research-enterprises-should-keep-eye-dr... that do not think so), but this false impression prevails by the people who have ever heard of Drupal (which is also not as many as you might expect).

Dries & Acquia decided to change something about that and contracted Mark Boulton, a respectful web graphic designer from UK to give our community suggestions and proposals on how to change the current graphic design and improve overall usability of Drupal.org system. Mark made fantastic presentation about the process of changing Drupal.org graphic design. See it for yourself: http://www.archive.org/details/redesign_drupal_org . Info about creating beautiful and still functional web-design is a must-see for every graphic designer and/or drupalist involved in Drupal theming.

Re-design process will be of course reviewed by the community (and peer-reviewed by Acquia stuff), so be welcome to share your ideas about the future of Drupal.org!

DAY 3 - Regional companies exhibition day

Submitted by zeljko on Sun, 08/31/2008 - 23:32.

Sorry folks – I have promised you to give you all the best from DrupalCon Szeged, but I just can’t cope with all the info and type them down. We met some very interesting people to talk with, and no time is left us for typing.

Nevertheless, I have some good info for you: all the presentation from all 5 conference room will be kept on video and shared over archive.org. (BoF staff and related presentation in small rooms are not taped, sorry). As soon as I have the link (and that’s probably not going to happen until Monday) I’ll give it on the top of this blog entry.

Jay Batson, Dries Buytaert and Chuck d’Antonio gave us some insider tips about Acquia partner program Acquia Introduction – How Acquia Is Working to Improve Your Drupal Experience, and Your Customer’s too.
There were some numbers and ideas, from partnership to outsourcing of 1st level support, ideas about how Acquia can support community in searching for new clients. Drupal folks have some pretty big ambitions… Sorry – we were strictly asked NOT to disclose ANY of the price information presented, because it’s still not completely official on the Acquia site. But I would say that it’s pretty affordable and price-scaled to the web-business that you or your customer could have. There is also discount for early subscribers (until 31st of December this year), so check Acquia web site in couple of weeks for more info.

UPDATE: I can not tell you anything, but you can find a link to video here: http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/acquia-introduction-%E2...

DAY 4 - Designer exhibition day

Submitted by zeljko on Sun, 08/31/2008 - 23:34.

Just go to the http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/schedule.html and check for anything that could interest you, and then find them in www.archive.org – you can not miss, this was pretty much a day were I could not decide where to go.
Just two quick tips connected to scaling big enterprise sites and semantic web:

Ethan Fremen: Drupal in the Cloud http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/drupal-cloud.html (Expanding your hardware needs in easy way)

Stéphane Corlosquet: Drupal and the Semantic Web: the Neologism project (stay close to those buzzwords! Sounds like Science Fiction, but this could in a few years change the way how people experience the search in web. Rasmus Lerdorf, father of PHP and chief engineer of Yahoo! gave us some hints on first day about it in a presentation that was rather concentrated on PHP performance (Rasmus Lerdorf keynote - Simple is Hard, http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/rasmus-lerdorf-keynote-...), so something is cooking here.

Tomorrow, Acquia is going to give us some more info about their partnership program, so we decided to stay one day more in Szeged.

DAY 5 –Acquia Partner Program Presentation

Submitted by zeljko on Sun, 08/31/2008 - 23:45.

Chuck d’Antonio gave us some insider information about the work flow and pricing for Acquia partner network. I apologize once more; Acquia asked us once more not to disclosure any of the info, because they want to fix their web presentation with all the pricing & co. So in the mean time I can only refer you to the Acquia site.

But if you want to take my word for granted, they have build a biz model that can hardly fail – considering the situation that (at this moment) there are no commercially available professional support for Drupal. If you are dealing with companies that can not tolerate problems in their web site work flow.... think about it.
Besides, there will be also a lot of help materials from Acquia for marketing Drupal, and Acquia is ready to support community in their everyday struggle on the market.

On my humble opinion, if you consider to make some money for living with Drupal (especially if you want something beyond survive), you should do some serious thinking about acquiring one of the Acquia partnership programs.