DrupalCamp Stanford, Jan 2010

Hello everyone,
This weekend (last Saturday and Sunday) I attended the DrupalCamp at Stanford.
Overview
The sessions were from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday. Most sessions were very technical and hands on in nature. There were 100 or so attendees. Acquia and ChapterThree were the strong corporate presence. Stanford also had a strong representation and we learnt that there are 70+ Drupal sites at Stanford.

Instead of drowning with all the details, I will focus on my FIVE key takeaways.

Here they are:

1. Getting Started
Drupal can be daunting to get started. Even for me, it took months to get the hang of it. Still working on it…
I made a specific point to attend the most basic, getting started Drupal Session. IMHO it was one of the BEST sessions. I will propose that we use these materials to bring new-bees (and old hacks) up to speed. Take a long look at Matt Cheney's presentation: http://rychosis.org/slides/Mastering-Drupal-Stanford-1-23-10.pdf

2. Admin and Drush
Unfortunately, I could not attend this sessions, but I have been hearing lot of good things about DRUSH. For the layman, it is a command line interface to Drupal and lets you do lot of powerstuff. In my experience, mastering a good set of command line tools can be incredibly productive.
Here is a tutorial from Stanford on Drush: https://techcommons.stanford.edu/topics/drupal/drush

I will await your thoughts!

3. Focus on Design and Themes
The entire camp had a huge design focus. There were a whole set of sessions on designs, themes and what is coming next. I think the Drupal creators believe that UI is a huge gap and they are trying to fill that. Two things attracted my attention: What is possible with the XEN theme and also a new theme called FUSION from Top Notch Themes
It will very interesting to watch the next generation of Drupal UI.

4. Services Module is key to connect Drupal to other systems
We chose Services module to develop our own Flex and AIR Components. I was delighted to cover the iPhone APP on Drupal track and discover that they are all using Services. This is a great validation of our strategy. We have been using Services to build Flex/AIR apps on Drupal using AMF for Services. However, other interfaces like XMLRPC, JSON and REST are important and being actively used.

5. In Summary, Drupal is Hot, Very HOT!
We are seeing this from all quarters. But the key evidence was the number of totally dedicated attendees who came from ALL quarters. There were designers, developers, web masters, entrepreneurs and corporate site builders. The excitement and participation could be felt everywhere. Keep in mind this is a completely FREE, all volunteer supported show. The keynote speaker was Earl Miles, the creator of the VIEWS module. He received a hero’s welcome!
I sense something very strong is brewing in the Drupal area.

In summary, I had a great weekend. Thanks to my wife and children for letting me attend an all weekend event.

Thank you for reading this long. Here is the link to all the sessions: http://stanford.design4drupal.org/

Best Regards and Warm wishes, Somnath