Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit
Dear Readers. It has been a long time since I last wrote a blog post. I hope you are all well. I thought I would tell you about my recent trip to Seattle, where I attended the Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit (pnwdrupalsummit.org). This summit was somewhere in-betwixt a DrupalCon (big, big uber-uber, lots and lots of people, like a U2 concert) and a DrupalCamp (small, intimate, jazz-club style affair). I think it's probably best described as going to see a band like Metric play at a medium sized venue, but also the band hang around after the show to chat to the fans and sign autographs. The content was a mix of rich, higher-level drupal goodness, mouthwatering 'what's coming up in drupal 7' info-sessions and client-process-business-management brainstorm round-tables. At one point I'm sure my brain started leaking, and I got through at least 2 refils of lead for my automatic pencil: notes were taken. It's always good to attend any drupal event, but with my personal, developer hat on it was nice to attend an event where every session I was learning something new and got a whole lot out of it. If you're at all interested, check out the session schedule page: http://pnwdrupalsummit.org/schedule , as all of the sessions were recorded and I believe the presenters are uploading their slides their too. Some of the highest highlights for me (it was all a highlight):
- Lightning FAPI Jumpstart: Drupal Form API for Module Developers - Lots and lots of great module developing goodness in here.
- GIS, Mapping & Drupal - exciting and awesome mapping potential via Drupal
- JavaScript in Drupal 7: what developers need to know - Drupal gets more awesome in D7 with Javascript goodness
- Staging and Deployment - Greg Dunlap is doing some incredible, incredible stuff with Drupal and his Deploy module
- Selling Drupal 7 - When And Why To Upgrade A Client Site - a really great discussion spanning D7 upgrade and client management techniques as a whole.
But as I say, everything I attended and have watched since has been really top class. It was lovely to see a good representation of Vancouver folk at the summit including the whole Affinity Bridge crew, Colin and Chris from Raised Eyebrow, Katherine from Work at Play, The Jibe folk Steve, Francis and Ben, Audrey Foo, Katy from Seascape Web Design and of course Mr Drupal Vancouver (!) Dale McGladdery and some faces from DrupalCon DC I hadn't seen since, well, Drupalcon DC (Chris Shattuck - who did the 12 hour drive from Boise Idaho with his very young family - that's dedication!). Apologies - I know I've missed many from this list! We have such a rich seam of talent in this area, that I'm excited for this to become an annual event to showcase the PNW drupal awesomeness. Huge thanks to all the organizers of the summit, everyone who sponsored the event and put on the great post event pub-based get togethers (including Chapter 3 for the free drinks!). Anyway, until next time dear readers, Adieu
