drupalcon

In just a few short days, DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010 will begin. I am super excited, especially since I was really fortunate enough to get a scholarship from the Drupal Association. I am still a bit weary of the possibility of being stranded because of a volcano again.

There is a lot happening in the Drupal world around geospatial-related technologies and putting a sense of place to data (I never know the right term to encompass all that). And fortunately, there are a couple of geospatial related events going on at Copenhagen, and hopefully lots of ad hoc discussions in the hallway. No matter your expertise, if you are interested, please come on out, and feel free to stop and ask questions (though I can't promise I have all the answers).

Mapping in Drupal with OpenLayers

Myself and Thomas Turnbull will be giving a presentation on Mapping in Drupal with OpenLayers which will focus on giving an overview of how the module works, alongside a live demo of the cool functionality that this module offers. It will be focused for mostly people that have not used the module before, but given time will discuss some architecture as well.

You can even get a sneak peak at the presentation on GitHub (not finished yet). You can also put together your own demo site with the module, make, script, feature set extravaganza on GitHub.

The presentation will be 25 August 2010 at 13:30 in the VPS.NET room (right after Rasmus' crowd-sourced keynote).

Drupal and Geo-Stuff BoF

I have also reserved a BoF space to discuss the state of Drupal and geospatial things. It'll be a very open discussion, but ideally we will focus on the following:

• The state of the Drupal GeoCMS.
• What is missing?
• What the future holds?
• How do we get there?

The BoF will be 25 August 2010 at 16:00 in the BoF Space 4.

Here it is: my simple, unexciting, unoriginal slides on how we need to get Block Instances in Drupal core.

I just got back from DrupalCon DC. It was amazing! I was really impressed with the quality of organization mostly done by Development Seed, and all the really great and informative sessions that I got to attend.

Sessions and Presentations

I'll highlight some of the better sessions, keynotes, and BoF I went to and link to the videos where possible. Of course all of the presentations were amazing, and I still love to hear things that reinforce what I have already learned. To see a full list of sessions and links to videos, go here.

Building APIs that Rock

A really great session on how to write modules for not just the User Interface for but for the code of other modules. Check out the video.

Code Sprint

There was a huge turn out for the last day which included code, documentation, and design sprints. I helped with the Code Sprint. I had some trouble getting there on time, due to the highly social nature of the conference (see below). I worked on the Term Message module which is used primarily on Drupal.org to help designate when articles that are for older versions are deprecated. This module is mostly helpful for the documentation team, so I'd like to think I was bridging the gap, as I would have liked to help with the documentation.

Drupal Social

I met some really great people while I was there. DrupalCon was non-stop, from dawn until dawn. The day started with lots of Drupal and run through until the sun was going down. Then just as my brain was full and the night was showing her face, we all found ourselves drinking until the late night (and some cases morning). It was exhausting, but I miss it.