Several Mightybyters took some time out of their frenetic schedules to attend DrupalCamp, where "Sessions [were] proposed by community volunteers and programming decisions [were] made based on the interests and Drupal experience level of the attendees," according to their literature. What a user-friendly sounding camp!
A super condensed history of Drupal:
The originator, Dries Buytaert, was looking to register a domain where he and his buddies could use what-would-become-Drupal to stay in touch after graduation. He wanted "dorp", which is Dutch for "villiage", but accidentally punched in "drop," and liked it. "Druppel" is the Dutch word for drop. The whole shebang is named after a type-o, but that hasn't stopped it from growing into an amazingly powerful, flexible, and increasingly popular open-source content management system.
Translated for the non-techie: It's free and you can make awesome websites with it.
Feedback from Team Mightybytes
DrupalCamp elicited a variety of cheers and critiques from our local 'Byters. In their own words, here are some of their thoughts:
JOY, our resident Art Director and Prettiness Expert:
Pros:
1. Very comfortable rooms, fine audio most of the time. Not overcrowded.
2. "Modules are pieces of PHP that take code, do something with it, and then spit something out on the other side." -Tiffany Farriss, owner of Palantir.net, a Chicago-based web and interactive firm.
3. List of drupal groups and resources
Cons:
1. Didn't get that "Drupal 101" I was hoping for, so a lot of the sessions felt too advanced or irrelevant to me.
STEVE, our resident Drupal Guru and Web Developer:
Pros:
1. Writing database queries in Drupal 7 will be much easier. In fact, a syntax error that I wrote today while coding for Drupal 6 would not have been a problem in Drupal 7.
2. The best approach to mapping is up in flux. In Drupal 5 and 6 the modules Location and GMap were the best bet. Though the development of those modules stagnated in Drupal 6. Now as Drupal 7 approaches, there are other modules in the same space like Address Field and Open Layers.
3. Volacci (a professional search marketing firm) works based on the vision and processes put forth by the owner.
Cons:
1. Fewer Birds of a Feather sessions than I expected.
2. The session on revitalizing local user groups had less than 10 people attending. Which seemed ironic. Or perhaps the opposite of ironic.
JAMES, Project Manager and Organizer of Complicated Things:
Pros:
1. Drupal is gaining market share. It's still growing and the passion of the people involved in it is unique and powerful.
2. The back-end of Drupal is flexible enough that you could build your site in Drupal and never need to rebuild it again. You could just re-configure the front end, add/change modules and keep the same infrastructure.
3. Palintir President George DeMet gave a fantastic session titled, Drupal Business Lessons that I Learned from Science Fiction. In the course of the presentation, DeMet shed light on his own company's organization and creatively and humorously outlined several best practices such as the importance of getting a contract in writing.
Cons:
1. There were not enough sessions that focused on the user experience. This remains a problem with Drupal. I sat in the admin themes session and there was no clear "best practice" for making Drupal easier to use for admins
2. Drupal 7 is still not ready and it may not be ready for some time. At DrupalconSF there were 100 critical bugs remaining at the beginning and 85 at the end. At Drupalcamp Chicago there were 40 remaining and it got down to 35. Now it's back up to 44. As companies have already started building sites in Drupal 7, but it's not officially released, will support for Drupal 6 start to dry up?
3. Not inclusive enough for newbies. Specifically, the intro to drupal contained lots of terminology that people didn't understand and a several comments that almost felt like "Drupal inside jokes." Very off-putting.
And that'll do it for our coverage of DrupalCamp 2010. Were you there too? Were you nowhere near there but have opinions about DrupalCamp or Drupal in general? Let us know! Comment below.
]]>Perhaps referring to him as fearless is a tad extreme. When I say he's fearless I mean he doesn't fear irrational things, like, oh, cake. He fears no cake. But he does have rational fears, about things like, say, we humans screwing up our environment so badly that poor ol' Mother Earth can't fix herself back up again. And we, his employees, share that fear.
"But what's the first step in going green?" I asked in a trembling, afraid-of-new-things kind of way.
"Take a look at the 'eco-Andersonville Sustainable Business Certification Program Worksheet'" he boomed in a commanding baritone. Baritonally commanded, I did so. Once finished printing the sizable document I shook my fist at the heavens, suddenly realizing the irony of printing out on mashed-up trees a document specifically dedicated to reducing the amount of things we print out on mashed-up trees. Damn. Karma-wise, I deserved to be chopped up into cubes and scattered about the roots of a young sapling as fertilizer.
Upon reviewing the document, however, I was happily surprised. I think I had been picturing a one page list with check-boxes next to things like "Stop burning tires in the back yard, you jerk" and "Quit it with the chlorofluorocarbons already!" Instead, the seven page document sets up a star system. You know, zero stars = Union Carbide, 3 stars = Ghandi. That kind of thing. And the entire document is split into three main categories: People, Planet and Prosperity. All of which I am a fan of.
Perusing the list, right there on page one was "Participate in Buy Local First campaign". I'm a huge fan of this idea, because of beer. This is why:
• I like beer.
• I not only like beer, I some times make it (see Mightybrew). Now that's local.
• When not drinking Mightybrew, I enjoy Goose Island 312, which is local and awesome.
I know they also make a beer called Green Line that they don't export out of the city (so there's no fuel burned in transporting it places) but I haven't tried that yet.
Reading on, near the bottom of the first page, I see "Institute employee profit sharing plan" and my eyebrows shot up so fast that they actually leaped off of my head. I had to scramble around looking for them for a bit. Once I had them firmly back in place, I re-read it. Yep. Profit sharing. What the heck? Is that ecological? And even if it's not, why am I questioning it?
Clearly, I don't yet understand what it is to be green. More research is needed. Jamming the word "green" into the always helpful Google search field led me to this great piece from the folks at OddPodz on the many benefits a business can reap from going green. In it, they include a case study from the University of Texas on how FedEx accomplished this monumental task as well as a great guide from the UK's Carbon Trust on how businesses can calculate their carbon footprint. "But once you've calculated it," I wondered aloud to no one in particular, "how do you reduce it?"
I will be investigating this green mystery, and a variety of other emerald-hued queries, in this next series of blog entries. Stay tuned for more ecologically savvy, carbon-footprint shrinking, greener than a gardner's you-know-what bloggage!
Do you have a suggestion for a small business trying to go green? We'd love to hear it!
Do you wake up every day and get excited about the idea of going to work? If not, have I got a book for you. In his follow up to A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink explores the many facets of things that motivate us on professional and personal levels. Using the tenets of a phenomena he calls Motivation 3.0, in which our desire to learn, make choices, and achieve supersedes any sort of 'carrot and stick' rewards-based system, Pink offers many rich examples of companies and individuals who have aligned their lives, businesses and culture around these principles to great success.
Pink obviously favors motivation over management and outlines three primary goals for helping you get motivated:
Among many other things, Pink touches on ROWEs (Results-Only Workplace Environments where time plays a much less significant role in productivity than in your standard office), corporate social responsibility, and Hungarian Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow, wherein one is so fully involved and energetically focused on a task that they experience feelings of spontaneous joy and their subjective relationship to time is altered. Much like many concepts outlined in his previous book A Whole New Mind, the ideas in Drive are focused, easy to digest, and backed up with extensive examples, historical data, and quotes from industry experts. The writing flows easily in Pink's signature journalistic style and the book is intuitively organized into three parts, including:
The comprehensive toolkit that closes out the book will help readers integrate these approaches and practices into their own every day lives. Here are some examples:
I must have been in a state of flow when I read Drive because it was a quick and immersive read during which I rarely noticed the clock (though I can't say the same about writing this review, which I originally started in April). The ideas are clear and inspiring and if I can talk some of my co-workers into reading it, I look forward to exploring ways in which we can implement some of its practices into our own. If you're not sure whether this is your cup o' tea, check out this great video animated by the fine folks at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts (RSA) from a lecture Mr. Pink gave there.
Like what you see? If the workday's drudgery is getting to you, check out Drive and see if it can't help get your passions back on track.
]]>As part of Andersonville Green Week, Free from Harm, an educational and advocacy resource, is staging a multimedia event: Highlights of Sustainable Agriculture in the Media and Film—a montage of footage ‘from some of the leading films and non profits of our time, including Dirt The Movie, Fresh The Movie, Farm Sanctuary, celebrated authors Michael Pollan and David Kirby, as well as Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute, to name a few.’
When: Saturday, July 17, 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Where: Mary's Attic, 5400 N. Clark St., 2nd floor,
Corner of Balmoral and Clark in Chicago, IL
Be sure to check the Andersonville Green Week site for all the listings from businesses and organizations for events, activities, educational demos, community picnic and more doings during this week of living green, July 12-18.
RSVP via Free from Harm's Facebook event page.
]]>Mightybytes is proud to co-sponsor the Chicago theatrical premiere screening of GASLAND: A Film by Josh Fox, along with Andersonville Green Week, and the Peace on Earth Film Festival.
Presented by Chicago Filmmakers, GASLAND is a Special Jury Prize Winner - Sundance Film Festival 2010.
About the film, GASLAND:
“It is happening all across America—rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from an energy company wanting to lease their property. Reason? The company hopes to tap into a reservoir dubbed the ‘Saudi Arabia of natural gas.’ Halliburton developed a way to get the gas out of the ground—a hydraulic drilling process called ‘fracking’—and suddenly America finds itself on the precipice of becoming an energy superpower. But what comes out of the ground with that ‘natural’ gas? How does it affect our air and drinking water? When filmmaker Josh Fox receives his cash offer in the mail, he travels across 32 states to meet other rural residents on the front lines of fracking. He discovers toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame. He learns that all water is connected and perhaps some things are more valuable than money.”
Sundance Film Festival (2010, 105 min.)
GASLAND
Friday, July 16th 8:00 PM
5243 N. Clark St.
Chicago, IL
RSVP now to the GASLAND screening via their Facebook Event.
Andersonville Green Week is a celebration of living green by its residents and businesses. Check out the website to find out all of the cool activities from July 12-18.
Mightybytes is located smack in the center of this great Chicago neighborhood.
]]>Being creative on the fly is tough. To sustain that creativity over years for a wide variety of clients who may or may not share your vision is even tougher. Every artist wrestles with the concept of art vs. commerce and in many cases the two are often mutually exclusive. At Mightybytes, we constantly struggle with balancing the needs of project timelines and budgets while still devising great creative solutions on demand. Every creative firm worth their salt does (if they tell you otherwise, they're lying). Engaging in extracurricular creative activities—brewing beer, playing in rock bands, doing improv and enrolling in writing workshops, to name a few—gives us a leg up, but ultimately this struggle is an ongoing challenge that is especially difficult in trying economic times. This conundrum is both how we thrive and one of the company's biggest continuous tests.
It is with this in mind that I read Pamela Meyer's book From Workplace to Playspace: Innovating, Learning, and Changing through Dynamic Engagement.
Full disclosure: we have been talking about doing some of her creativity workshops at Mightybytes and I thought this would give me great insights into her approach (which it did).
Dr. Meyer applies extensive practices from improvisation workshops to help companies transform their business by reclaiming the idea of play and creative exploration as a necessary blueprint for organizational innovation.
There are five main components to her idea of playspace:
OK, the above list is drastically simplifying the book's ideas, but hopefully you get the picture. Dr. Meyer backs her ideas up with real-world case studies and hard scientific data to prove her points on how fostering these spaces within our work environment leads to drastic improvements in everything from company morale to boosted levels of creativity and, yes, the bottom line. A number of businesses that have implemented these practices with great success are profiled throughout the book, including Threadless, Google, Chicago Public Schools, and (former Mightybytes client) well-known toy company Learning Curve International. I also must admit that it was refreshing to read about these innovative ideas unfolding in Chicago.
Meyer also includes guiding principles for leaders, facilitators and participants in each chapter, providing an effective blueprint for organizations to adopt these practices at every level. She ends the book with a set of guidelines for maintaining this idea of playspace over time.
Dr. Meyer is the real deal and her credentials certainly can back up the book's claims:
Here are five take-aways I noted for balancing work and creativity in a new playspace-friendly way:
There are many more where these come from in the book's pages. According to Dr. Meyer, engaging in these principles on every level fosters awareness, acceptance, appreciation, and action in any organization. I'm looking forward to putting these ideas to the test.
Find out more information on Dr. Meyer's site at playspace.biz
]]>As doors opened on the party, over 200 beers were ready for thirsty partygoers. Extreme Chicago heat during the event and a shaky performance by the central air in our new space led to repeat ice cooler visits by sweaty attendees and the near complete decimation of our supply.
The beers were named during regular company meetings over the past few weeks and labels created mere hours before our shindig.
What did we discover? This batch tastes even better than last year's batch.
The Five Brew Flavors were:
FF0000FFFFFF0000FF
An American-Style Cream Ale
API-IPA
A Dry-Hopped India Pale Ale
Tripel Caramel Explosion
A Somewhat Belgian-Style Ale
Welt Weit Weiss
A German-Style Wheat Bier
World Wide Wheat
An American-Style Wheat Beer
Anyone care to venture a guess at what the name FF0000FFFFFF0000FF means? (Designers, you have a head-start.)
Thanks to all the friends, family, clients and partners who came out to celebrate the release of Return on Engagement with us. Oh yeah, and we promise we’ll have that air thing fixed in time for doing business at the new space.
I've been wrestling with the semantic web for a while, trying to figure out specifically what it meant for Mightybytes and what it could do for our customers. Focal Press suggested I include information on semantic search in Return on Engagement and that provided the impetus for me to really wrap my head around its admittedly sometimes esoteric concepts. As part of this process, I purchased numerous books on the topic, many of which read like a dissertation and typically put me to sleep after just a few pages (admittedly, most of them were never finished). None put semantic web concepts into as much relevant context as Pull by David Siegel.
The book outlines a future that is driven by semantic metadata in many forms and is, in my opinion, equal parts Orwellian and utopian (and a touch optimistic as well). In Siegel's future, we all have online data lockers that carry the valuable metadata in our lives, from medical histories to the temperature in our houses and when the last time our cars had tune-ups. Our preferences for everything will be stored in these lockers and we can control who has access to the data at a moment's notice.
Need a new car? Set some preferences in your data locker about make, model, color, and yes, price to bring offers that meet your specific criteria to you. Need to sell the car you bought? The vehicle came with an online birth certificate and the transaction process itself switches ownership automatically. The certificate lives on the manufacturer's server with links to the aforementioned personal data lockers of the buyer and seller, giving all parties access one on level or another to the information. Similar approaches are outlined for everything from eBooks and accounting services to doctor visits and concert tickets.
Meanwhile, our businesses will be organized around customers' specific needs since customers will have more power than ever to make or break products and services in record time. Siegel discusses how the semantic web will revolutionize business, government, law, healthcare, entertainment, the home of the future, and of course search and marketing, as well as many other elements of our current culture.
While I really like the idea of how many conveniences Siegel's semantic future would afford, my head spins when I think about the logistics of getting all these disparate companies, data formats, and technology infrastructures to play nice with one another in open, standardized ways. Also, Siegel's approach to the personal data locker puts most of the onus on individuals to constantly manage their personal preferences and the information storied in their lockers. I'm sure many people will embrace this just as they manage their own bank accounts online today. I'd venture to guess that just as many others will be slow to adapt for many reasons, not the least of which are security and privacy, two of the biggest stumbling blocks I see to making this semantic future a reality.
Mr. Siegel closes the book with a set of general guidelines for integrating the semantic web into regular business practices. He doesn't focus on specific methods—like RDFa and Microformats for instance—but rather appeals to CEOs and upper level management to set the tone in their organizations for embracing the semantic web's potential. His guidelines include:
Is is semantic (using an unambiguous, tagged, open-data format)?
Is it on the web (as opposed to in a database)?
Though Siegel's concepts put a lot of faith in business and government to agree upon standards and work together, and a lot of responsibility on people to manage the huge amounts of metadata their lives generate, his book inspired more ideas and possibilities for me than any other on the topic. For this, I give it a big semantic <thumbs> up </thumbs>.
Have you read this book? I would love to know your thoughts on it.
]]>Tim shares starting points to help you build credibility and ultimately foster engagement with customers, connections, and community members. The tip list topics include:
Return on Engagement gives you contextual descriptions of tools and techniques that answer the important questions of how, when, where and, perhaps most importantly, why you should implement them. Arranged into four sections—Strategy, On-Site, Off-Site, and The Return—the book is a comprehensive resource for integrating these methods into your business and marketing workflow for concrete results.
Read the full list, below the editorial reviews, on the Return on Engagement page on Amazon.com.
]]>Steve and James attended DrupalCon 2010 in San Francisco and here are the top five things they found most impressive:
1. The Exodus: Leading Drupal out of CVS
Drupal is switching from CVS to Git and this session gave a good overview how Drupal development will change going forward to take advantage of the distributed model for version control.
2. Developing Apps for iPhone/iPad/Android using Drupal as Base System
This session mainly covered how to use Drupal in conjunction with Appcelerator to make iPhone and Android apps. This is a topic that Mightybytes has been interested in for awhile. It was good to see another company pursuing the same thing.
3. Drupal 7 here we come!
A good overview of the new features coming to Drupal 7.
4. Objectifying PHP
Drupal 7 runs on an object-oriented database layer. This presentation argues for moving more of Drupal’s core functionality in that direction.
5. Aegir Hosting System: One Drupal to Rule Them All
Aegir allows numerous Drupal deployments on a server to be controlled through one central Drupal install. See how this was presented.
Weren’t able to get there yourself? Check out their Session Videos by viewing the DrupalCon’s conference/schedule for the session you want to watch. The DrupalCon organizers have also posted a ton of info and videos on archive.org for your perusal.
]]>