community - GreenAsh Poignant wit and hippie ramblings that are pertinent to community https://greenash.net.au/thoughts/topics/community/ 2008-11-13T00:00:00Z First DrupalCamp Australia was a success 2008-11-13T00:00:00Z 2008-11-13T00:00:00Z Jaza https://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2008/11/first-drupalcamp-australia-was-a-success/ A few weeks ago (on Sat 18th Oct 2008), we (a.k.a. the Sydney Drupal Users' Group) held the first ever DrupalCamp Australia. Sorry for the late blog post — but hey, better late than never. This was Sydney's second full-day Drupal event, and as with the first one (back in May), it was held at the University of Sydney (many thanks to Jim Woulfe from the Faculty of Pharmacy, for providing the venue). This was Sydney's biggest Drupal event to date: we had an incredible turnout of 50 people (that's right — we were booked out), and for part of the day we had two presentation tracks running in adjacent rooms.

DrupalCamp Australia logo
DrupalCamp Australia logo

Morning welcome to DrupalCamp Australia
Morning welcome to DrupalCamp Australia

Geeks in a room
Geeks in a room

Congratulations to everyone who presented: the overall quality of the presentations was excellent. I'm afraid I didn't see all of the talks, but I'd like to thank the people whose talks I can remember, including: Peter Moulding on the Domain Access module and on multi-site setups; Justin Freeman (from Agileware) on various modules, including Export to OpenOffice (not yet released); Jeff Hanbury (from Marmaladesoul) on Panels and theming; Justin Randell on what's new in Drupal 7; myself on "patch politics" and CVS; Gordon Heydon on Git and on E-Commerce; Erle Pereira on Drupal basics; and Simon Roberts on unit testing. Apologies for anyone I've missed (please buzz me and I'll add you).

Thanks to the organisations that sponsored this event (yes, we now have sponsors!) — they're listed on the event page. Mountains of thanks to Ryan Cross for organising the whole thing, and for being the rock of the group for the past year or so. Ryan also designed the funky logo for this event, which in my opinion is a very spiffy-looking logo indeed. And finally, thanks to everyone who attended (especially the usual suspects from Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, and even New Zealand): you made the day what it was. Viva Drupal Sydney!

]]>
Drupal at the 2008 Sydney CeBIT Expo 2008-05-26T00:00:00Z 2008-05-26T00:00:00Z Jaza https://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2008/05/drupal-at-the-2008-sydney-cebit-expo/ The past week has been a big one, for the small but growing Sydney Drupal Users' Group. Last week, on Tuesday through Thursday (May 20-22), we manned the first-ever Drupal stall at the annual Sydney CeBIT Expo. CeBIT is one of the biggest technology shows in Australia — and the original CeBIT in Germany is the biggest exhibition in the world. For three days, we helped "spread the word" by handing out leaflets, running lives demos, and talking the talk to the Expo's many visitors.

Ryan and James at CeBIT 2008
Ryan and James at CeBIT 2008

Drupal demo laptops at CeBIT 2008
Drupal demo laptops at CeBIT 2008

The Sunday before (May 18), we also arranged a full-day get-together at the University of Sydney, as a warm-up for CeBIT: there were a few informal presentations, and we got some healthy geeked-up discussion happening.

Drupal May 2008 meetup at Sydney Uni
Drupal May 2008 meetup at Sydney Uni

Dinner and drinks after the May 2008 Drupal meetup
Dinner and drinks after the May 2008 Drupal meetup

Thanks to everyone who travelled to Sydney for the meetup and Expo, from places far and wide. Kudos to Michael and Alan from CaignWebs in Brisbane; to Simon Roberts from Melbourne; and especially to the fine folks from Catalyst IT in New Zealand, who hopped over the ditch just to say hello. Many thanks also to everyone who helped with organising the past week's events. Along with everyone (mentioned above) who visited from other cities, the events wouldn't have happened without the help of Ashley, of Drew, and particularly of Ryan.

I gave a presentation at the Sunday meetup, entitled: "Drupal's System Requirements: Past, Present and Future". I talked about the minimum PHP5 and MySQL5 version requirements that will be introduced as of Drupal 7, and the implications of this for Drupal's future. The presentation sparked an interesting discussion on PDO and on Objest-Oriented-ness. You can find my slides below. Other presentations included: "Drupal's Boost module (by Simon); "The Drupy (Drupal in Python) project" (by the Catalyst guys); and "The Drupal Sydney Community" (by Ryan).

]]>