Austin Drupal

Some pretty big news this week for my fellow Austin drupalistas.

The University of Texas has just selected Drupal as the content management system (CMS) for core pages within the www.utexas.edu directory structure. Their report states that:

Drupal was found to meet nearly all of the project’s documented high-level requirements, either through core functionality or available contributed modules. Two requirements identified early on as critical to the success of this project were configurable workflows and scalability through high-availability caching. We determined that Drupal fulfills both of these requirements using off-the-shelf free and open source modules.

The report goes on to state:

Since the Drupal project is deeply committed to the open source philosophy, there is a very large community of developers who are continually contributing new functionality back to the Drupal ecosystem either through contributed modules, or patches to the core product itself. Additionally, there are a growing number of companies offering commercial consulting, training, and support services for Drupal.

Read the full story at: http://blogs.utexas.edu/refresh/2009/12/02/cms-selection-process-results/

GeekAustin's Drupal feed is available at: http://geekaustin.org/austin-drupal/feed

Registration is going fine without a hitch. The folks at Norris have a great facility.

Rachel at PetRelocation just told me about a in-house web developer /programmer position that they have. It sounds like a choice full time gig for the right person.

This comes from Chad at emPowered:

Here are the details:

What have I been telling you? Is Austin DrupalTown or what? First, the DrupalCamp Austin website has been launched. The registration fee is only $40. Two days of drupaliciousness for only $40 -- right here in Austin. Register now!.

Second, it was announced this week that Dries Buytaert (wikipedia), the creator of Drupal, will be at SXSWi 2010. Now I can quit begging Hugh.

Third, this month's Austin Drupal Meetup on October 28th features Michael Godeck speaking on drupal database management, drush, & command line scripting.

Fourth, Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization, the new book by Ben Finklea, CEO of Volacci, just made the front page of Drupal.org. Congrats, Ben! Last, David Strauss, of Austin's own Four Kitchens, was just interviewed by the Lullabots regarding PressFlow -- 4K's high performance enhancement of Drupal. Listen to the interview here.

-Lynn

GeekAustin Free Class: Daniel Eastland will be leading a Java Programmer Certification prep (SCJP) group. This is for the Java 1.6 test. The group will be geared toward those who already have a working knowledge of Java and either want to take the test for the first time, or will be upgrading from the previous cert. The group will meet Wednesday nights, beginning the first week of October. For overview of certifications, visit the Sun Java Certification site. If you're interested in joining the group, send me an email at lynnbender@geekaustin.org.

DrupalCamp Austin is seeking a new venue. Because of the number of folks who've already expressed interest (150+) in DrupalCamp Austin, tentatively scheduled for October 24-25, we're looking for a bigger venue. We're looking for a place with 3 rooms for presentations, one of which would be large enough for a keynote. Needless to say, we'll need ample bandwidth as well. If you have access to such a place, or even have suggestions, please contact Lauren Roth at lauren@laurennroth.com. To keep informed on the latest news, visit the DrupalCamp Austin Facebook page. For sponsorship opportunities, send a note to Todd Ross Nienkerk.

I have several interviews/articles almost ready to post on GeekAustin. However, most of my time for the rest of the month will be devoted to the Linux Against Poverty install fest. We have over 50 volunteers ready to go. What we need now are more computers! We currently have a little more than 100 computers ready to refurbish and donate. We could use 150 more. Ken and the Helios team already have homes for these as soon as they are ready. If you have spare computers that meet the requirements, please consider donating them to Linux Against Poverty. We have several convenient dropoff locations around town. If you have quantity, we'll be happy to pick them up. We can provide tax receipts as well. Large donations will also come with free ad space on GeekAustin.

While I'm on the topic of Linux Against Poverty, I'd like to give a special thanks to the folks at RGM Advisors. In addition to providing food and beverages for all the volunteers, they'll be picking up the tab for all the chairs and work tables we'll be bringing into the event. If your company is interested in supporting Linux Against Poverty, send me a note at lynnbender@geekaustin.org.

Lot's of interesting Drupal things going on in town. This Wednesday night, we'll be hosting a Drupal install party at Union Park. It's another evening of Drinks and Drupal. We'll be assisting with both local and remote installs. On Wednesday, July 29, there will be a presentation on Drupal UX & The Client at the ACTlab. Thanks to Lauren Roth for putting this together -- and thanks to Dustin and Joey for helping to secure the the ACTlab.

To break the monotony of all the Drupal posts, I'll have a few C++ stories in the next week.

Jason Cohen and the folks at SmartBear came of with a stimulus package of their own. Anyone (even a big company) can buy a 5-seat license of Code Reviewer for $5 any day this week. This week only! This is a full version. Nothing is disabled; you get full support and upgrades for a year. All the proceeds will be donated to... a worthy startup! Jason says: "There's a few finalists right now so we're not sure who it will be yet, but it will go to a struggling startup, not our bank account." More details here. Remember: this week only!

-Lynn

After seeing her work for a while, I finally got to meet Lauren Roth at the Drinks and Drupal party I hosted in May. I took the opportunity to ask her how one becomes a Drupal design ninja. Lauren was gracious enough to share the knowledge.

Lynn Bender: You first started with Drupal after seeing a presentation as SXSW, yes?

Lauren Roth: SXSW Interactive is a fantastic way to come upon new technologies and 2006’s was no exception. As someone with a writing background, I could understand having enthusiasm for a content management system, but the more I found out about Drupal the more I wanted to use it myself. It is now my primary development platform.

Lynn Bender: In the last year, I've noticed that many folks who've been designing sites in WordPress are starting to look at Drupal. I'm guessing that you've noticed this too.

Lauren Roth: WordPress is the grilled cheese sandwich to Drupal’s double-stacked club sandwich. Both have bread and cheese, but Drupal comes with lots of extra delicious parts. Both are written in PHP, use template files and CSS, and separate presentation from site logic.

Lynn Bender: Nevertheless, a common complaint I heard is that Drupal is extremely difficult to design for. What are the things that people tend to have problems with when beginning to design themes for Drupal?

<understatement>Four Kitchens is one of the premier Drupal consulting firms</understatement>. Fortunately, they call Austin home. In the last few months, I've had the opportunity to work with and get to know them. Aaron Stanush, one of Four Kitchen's co-founders, is also a member of the Drupal.org Redesign Team. I recently coerced him into meeting me for coffee and talking about Drupal.

Lynn Bender: Following your trip to Paris to work on the upgrade and redesign of the Drupal.org, you took the lead on the redesign effort. That's a massive site. How is the process going?

Aaron Stanush: One of the things that really helped focus the redesign effort was that we had an actual style guide to work off of. The Drupal Association hired Mark Boulton Design to rebrand the Drupal product as well as the drupal.org website. Even with a rich style guide, it's a massive site and it takes awhile for the community to decide the best way to re-engineer the content/layout or to remove elements all together.

Last weeks Drinks and Drupal party, co-hosted by GeekAustin and Four Kitchens was a whole lot of fun. Expect more in the future. I promise I'll try to keep the Drupal posts to one a week. This post doesn't count toward that.

The Austin.Javascript LinkedIn group is continuing to grow. Kyle Simpson and Joe McCann are bringing in a range of speakers for the monthly meetings. If you want to get up to speed on the latest Javascript libraries, this is the group to meet.

The Agile Austin group is hosting Ask an Expert tomorrow at Mangia Pizza. Tomorrow's host will be Walter Bodwell, the CEO of Planigle. Planigle provides consulting, training and tools to help teams adopt and get the most out of agile development. To keep abreast of Agile Austin events -- and there are many -- join the Agile Austin Yahoo Group

If your looking for something closer to the Discovery Channel with beer, check out Nerd Nite Austin. To accommodate the crowd, they've moved the event to Buffalo Billiards. Att tomorrow's event, Dr. Jonas Moses will demonstrate how bio-medical innovation happens (or doesn't) in his presentation "The Accidental Innovator", JC Dwyer will explain how arcane politics become modern social policy in "From the Black Plague to the Bread Line", and Philip Wheat will ponder what happens when everything around you gets smart in "Bits & Atoms - the rise of Smart Environments." -- with beer.