walkah

Using Drupal or Look, Ma, I'm on Amazon!

2009-01-09T00:00:00-05:00

In my usual heard-it-hear-last style... I was out to dinner this week with my friend, Phillip, who was apparently unaware that Lullabot had written a book(?!?) and I was one of the authors.

Well, for most of last year (plus) most of us over at lullabot spent sleepless nights putting together Using Drupal. It went to press in early December, and is indeed on amazon and even on shelves.

I'm personally pretty proud of the book. It's the first Drupal book by O'Reilly and the first to take a comprehensive look at building a "real" Drupal site with heavy emphasis on CCK, Views and the rest of drupal contrib.

I have to say, too, that O'Reilly was a lot of fun to work with. There's a reason they have a reputation for having the top tech books. If you missed it, @eaton and I did a live webcast with O'Reilly which was their biggest ever. Kool-aid for everyone!

If you don't have a copy yet, what's wrong with you? ;-)

down under and back

2008-04-16T00:00:00-04:00

Last week I added a new continent under my travel belt when a bunch of us Lullabots headed to Australia to run some Drupal Workshops. I will say, the trip across the Pacific is a much longer journey than the relative short hop across the Atlantic. My body still isn't quite sure what time it is. Jet-lag aside, I had an absolutely wonderful time. The people of Melbourne were wonderfully kind and helpful. On our one non-work day, we had a fantastic brunch (on a recommendation) where the locals at the table next to us kindly recommended activities for the afternoon and even took our picture.

Since it was a work trip, I didn't get to see nearly as much of Australia as I would have liked. No kangaroos. No dingos. No koala bears. But the people of Australia were awesome enough that I am just going to have to go back someday. Thank you all!

SXSW 2008: over already?

2008-03-12T00:00:00-04:00

A few of us Lullabots flew directly from DrupalCon Boston to Austin for SXSW Interactive. It was actually my first trip down to Austin (sadly), and despite some general road weariness, I had a rockin' good time. Personal highlights included:

Worst. Website. Ever.: Aside from being a who's who of the internet famous, it was an awesome format, completely hilarious and really well presented. I'm inspired to bring it to a future DrupalCon :-)

A Critical Look At OpenID: It was nice to watch other OpenID experts field the same questions I tend to - and give similar answers. Mostly, I hit this panel because I hadn't yet met David or Simon. We had lunch together after... I should really get myself out to more identity events. IIW 2008?

CMS Roundup: Obviously, I went to support fellow 'bot, Jeff Eaton, but was blown away by the packed audience (for a 10am session) and the overwhelming Drupal love!

Otherwise, it was great to hang out with friends like Colin and Andy, seeing TorCamp friends everywhere, and meeting a whackload of new people. Looking forward to next year already!

Ontario Linux Fest, DUG-TO and Lullabot in Toronto

2007-10-09T00:00:00-04:00

This is gonna be a fun week! Starting on Wednesday afternoon, most of team lullabot will be coming to town for some work and hopefully a bit of fun.

If you missed the announcement, we're going to start things off on Thursday with the Toronto Drupal User Group meetup - for regulars, please remember we're at 215 Spadina (4th floor) this month and on Thursday (not Tuesday).

Friday night through Saturday night we'll be taking part in the Ontario Linux Fest. We've sponsored a welcome party on Friday night (and, yes, the location is so secret I don't even know where!). Angie is speaking Saturday morning and we'll be hanging out, probably in the Drupal BoF room (check the schedule). There's still space, so register now!

Come on out and say "hi"!

James at lullabot dot com

2007-10-01T00:00:00-04:00

It may be old news to some of you, but it's at last officially official. I'm a full-time lullabot!

When I left Bryght at the beginning of the summer, I wasn't sure what the future would hold. But when Matt approached me about potentially collaborating more on workshops and seminars (as we'd done in Sunnyvale), I had a great feeling about it. After spending the summer working with the 'bots and loving the summer workshop series, I was pretty sure I'd found a new home.

My primary role at Lullabot will be to continue to grow and expand the workshop/training end of the business. We've been throwing around a bunch of really exciting ideas that you'll be hearing all about soon. Until then, join us in Providence for our last workshops of 2007!

Team Lullabot is amazing and I'm proud to be a part of it.

Open Source CMS Summit at Yahoo

2007-02-16T00:00:00-05:00

In my usual you-heard-it-here-first-fashion, I'd like to be the last to announce the upcoming OSCMS Summit 2007 happening March 22-23rd in Sunnyvale, CA. This is actually the 2nd (annual?) event. While the conference last year was a success, it was *very* heavily Drupal-based. I'm actually hoping to see a bit more involvement from the other communities this year, and it's looking like that may well happen.

I'd also like to point out a couple of events that you should attend. The first is a session I have proposed on OpenID called: OpenID : In Drupal core and your CMS too. While I'll mostly be covering the implementation for Drupal, I think it has significant relevance for all content management systems. Now that Microsoft and AOL are behind OpenID, the project is definitely gaining momentum, but the more content management systems that support OpenID the better for the long term success of the protocol as a dominant force in the Identity 2.0 space. So, vote for the session, and come on out :)

The other event is actually not part of the conference itself, but Dries and I are teaming up with the Lullabots and Civicspace to present what should be a very informative session on Drupal Performance and Scalability. It's not a free event, but highly worth it for anyone running a large Drupal installation, and all the proceeds will go back to the Drupal project.

Get yourself signed up and see you there!