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DrupalCamp 2010
by Travis Chandler
Drupal may be a very silly word, but it's also a very powerful open-source content management system. And they have a camp, too, which is nice.
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.
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