blakehall

After almost a years worth of work, by thousands of developers around the globe Drupal 6 has been released.

This version of Drupal has many UI improvements (especially for site administrators) that are pretty exciting. The block and menu pages now utilize drag and drop for reordering (no more weight system -- at least from the UI). The "sticky" table headers are are a big help on site permission pages.

Now it's time to help module and theme developers upgrade their contributions to Drupal 6, and help with testing (at least that's where I"ll be spending a good chunk of time before DrupalCon Boston).

If you're near Madison, drop by the Drupal Meetup tonight. The event announcment is cross posted at groups.drupal.org/wisconsin and thePHP Meetup group.

I gave my first Drupal talk at the first BarCampMilwaukee, then again at BarCampMadison. By the time BarCampMilwaukee2 rolled around we had 17 participants who tagged themselves with drupal, and two more sessions. In Milwaukee we decided that we might just have the critical mass to have a *Camp dedicated to drupal, and DrupalCampWisconsin was born.

Now we're ten days away, and have 41 folks signed up on the wiki, sponsors to cover the food costs (thanks again Web414, Fresh Coast Ventures, 2XL Networks, Palantir, Cruiskeen Consulting LLC, and EC Connection), and some great sessions lined up. As far as I'm concerned the 19th can't get here fast enough.

So what's next?

I gave a talk at the Madison PHP Meetup Group in November on drupal which drew a good sized crowd. After the talk several folks expressed interest in having a regular Madison-based Drupal User Group (or meetup). I figured it wouldn't be too hard to organize a drupal-related talk once a month, so we're going to give it a shot. The first official gathering of this new group will be another joint-meeting with the PHP group (January meeting info on meetup.com). Hopefully by February, after a successful DrupalCamp we'll be able to spin off and start separate meetings. If you're interested in the group shoot me an email (blake # blakehall * org), or leave a comment.

And don't forget to Sign up for DrupalCampWisconsin if you haven't already!!!

The drop is (finally!) coming to Wisconsin. We've got space secured for a DrupalCamp in Milwaukee on January 19th, 2008. While I've been batting the idea around for quite awhile, I've also done a fair amount of foot-dragging. There were a lot of questions to be answered:

• Can we find space?
• Can we find sponsors?
• Can we find enough people willing to lead sessions?
• Will people show up?

There's definitely some work to be done on some of these fronts, but so far things look pretty encouraging. We've got great space (and wifi) at Milwaukee School of Engineering.

If you're a Drupal ninja, or just wanting to learn more about using Drupal to maintain your web site, I'm sure DrupalCamp will be a good time. You can sign-up here, and since it's free you don't have much reason not to!

BarCampMilwaukee2 -- about a month ago already-- was a great success (more in depth write up coming next week ;)

Pete and I led a session on Creative Commons that seemed quite popular. During BCMKE only about half of the photos tags barcampmilwaukee2 on flickr were CC licensed. As of this morning 1,468 out of 1,600 are (just under 92%). Way to go BarCampers!

I noticed on Lessig's blog this morning that CC has a fund raising drive going on. Since I'm a big fan, and supported of the CC movement I figured I'd let all 6 of you who read this know. So go donate something!

So for those of you following me on twitter, you'll notice that I resigned this week.

Thanks to lots of hard work, and help from Eric (@DANEnet) the drupal conversion of sportsinwisconsin.com is just about done (still some bugs to squash). Eric has also done a great job on the volunteer registration site.

That said, a great opportunity presented itself recently. I am about to become a Senior Web Developer with the folks at the Center for Media and Democracy. With CMD I'll have the opportunity to work on a bunch of cool projects like SourceWatch, PR Watch, Congresspedia, and some other stuff still in the pipeline. I'm really looking forward to working with the group behind some really great books.

From the initial sound of things I've got quite a few drupal projects on my plate already, and I can't wait to get started...

Planning for the second annual BarCamp in Milwaukee is well underway. BarCampMilwaukee2 is scheduled for October 13th and 14th. We've archived the original BarCampMilwaukee Wiki in favor of a Drupal powered site this time around (set up by yours truly).

I claimed a session called BarCampMilaukee.com in Ten Minutes. A bit of an exaggeration? sure. But that's how you get people at your session right. In all reality it didn't take long to set up the site, thanks to the power and flexibility of drupal.

Not to give the whole session away, but here's a brief outline:

• Wiki Install Profile
• CCK
• Views
• + a little bit of clicking-configuration type stuff
• fix bugs

That's really the power in where drupal's been headed the past six months. With very little custom code I was able to setup a functional (while not beautiful) site to organize a BarCamp.

There is already a bit of chatter on technorati about the event. It should be a great time. This year we can only accommodate 250 participants, so be sure to sign-up early. Next step for me is to compile a list of folks I'd like to see there, or like to meet (drupal ninjas -- I'm looking at you)...

Thanks again to everyone who made it out to our reception. The folks at the Candlewood Suites were great hosts. It was neat being their first event; Aside: their grand opening was three days before the reception. I've got the photos on flickr, comment away.

Jeni and I are planning an August 2008 trip to London to visit Ronnie and Liz. I'm hoping to catch a Premier League match. Maybe by then Watford will be back in the league; Aside2: I was a year behind Jay DeMerit in High School, so it was fun watching him play for the national team this summer. In any case I hope to get a round in at St Andrews as well (being the birthplace of golf and all). It should be a fun trip to plan and research...

MinneBar last weekend was great (but I'll save the details for a belated wrap-up post).

Well it's about time. Today I uploaded my first real contribution to the Drupal project. I've been working with drupal seriously for about six or seven months now. I have to say finally getting my hands on Pro Drupal Development by John VanDyk and Matt Westgate really helped speed up the process (and I only got the book last week).

In the issue queue node 16437 has a module which allows you to insert Terms & Conditions as part of the checkout process (with the E-Commerce module). We've been using drupal's ecommerce over at work to handle event registration since I started in August of last year. While I would say the first stab was clunky (and left quite a bit of usability to be desired) version two is shaping up quite nicely. I'm looking forward to feedback as the registrations come rolling in.

I've attached the module, in case someone would find such a thing useful (versions for both 4.7 and 5.x). All in all it's pretty basic: a settings screen for the site admin where they can choose whether or not to display terms during checkout, and if so and html area to specify the terms.

Hopefully, soon, I'll be inspired with module ideas that will require me applying for a CVS account...

I'm noticing more and more people in the area using drupal. I've also been thinking of taking the lead in making a local DUG more active. One of the catalysts could be a Drupal Camp.

Pete's already game, and I know Ashley would help. I think it's just a matter of getting a couple of folks who could lead sessions involved. By now I'm pretty comfortable with a lot of the end-user / site administrator stuff. I'm writing modules, but nothing generic enough to release as a project. If we're going to have separate user and developer tracks we'd need someone who could lead the developers. (side note: I'd personally love to see a lullabot workshop in the area - where area means anywhere close enough for me to drive)

So if anyone out there wants to get involved, or would like to attend a Drupal Camp drop me a line ( my first name AT this domain). In the mean time we'll probably start the discussion at groups.drupal.org

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