Code Sorcery Workshop

Congratulations to Environmental Working Group for launching Pets for the Environment yesterday! From the announcement:

According to the latest research from EWG, I’m the canary in the living room, soaking up more chemicals than you or your children.

New tests confirmed that I’m full of toxic industrial chemicals, and I’m barking mad. You should be, too. I grow 7 times faster than humans, so what happens to pets like me - increased cancer rates, for one - might be happening to people soon.

Did you know that the humans’ government doesn’t make companies test our toys, furniture, or even our food for safety?

I did a little work on this site (built in Drupal, by the way), but the bulk of the credit goes to the EWG team and Mike McCaffrey.

Clearly, this is a big problem and I look forward to more of EWG’s research as this is something that is affecting our cat, too. Code Sorcery Workshop and Macy are definitely on board!

Though I’m headed to SXSW in Austin later this week, I’m in Boston right now for the twice-annual Drupal conference, aptly named Drupalcon. If you’re around, say hi — this is a fairly good representation of what I look like, though sadly I do not have my hat, or at least a non-winter hat. It’s kind of cold up here!

Today, the first day, was pretty engaging and inspiring. I’m excited to see the roadmap for the future of Drupal, and I’m always on the lookout for knowledge that will benefit me both in the Drupal services that I provide as well as some cross-pollination of ideas between both web services and Mac desktop software, be they data storage, user interface, industry trends, or any number of other issues. Not to mention meeting & hanging out with some great folks!

Probably the most interesting session so far for me was the last, on Drupal in China, covering issues as varied as outsourcing & off-shoring, governmental technology initiatives, software piracy, language barriers & internationalization, community involvement, and lifestyle & free-time activities — which of course, if you look at them, are all integral to China’s current standing and future trajectory in the technology scene. Really interesting and fascinating stuff!

Though it’s of course easy for me to hang out with the large DC representation up here, I do need to meet some other folks, so again, don’t be shy — come say hello. And enjoy Drupalcon!

Nothing like a vacation followed immediately by a European software conference to get things off track! I’m a little behind, but I’m starting to catch up and I wanted to post about a number of things, the first of which is Drupal.

I was fortunate enough to travel to Barcelona last week for DrupalCon, pretty much the ground zero for all things Drupal (more on my work with Drupal here). With over 400 people in attendance, the growth in the community has been tremendous and after three years working with the software myself, it’s really inspiring to see both others picking it up as well as the future directions in which things are headed.

I attended a number of excellent panels (which I hope to blog about soon) including topics such as multilingual websites, advanced JavaScript, asset management, publishing workflows, database abstraction, new things in PHP 5, feed aggregation, and the scaling of the Drupal website, itself running Drupal (of course).

I had the pleasure of traveling and working with the team behind the project featured in this panel — essentially, open source software in support of humanitarian and stabilization operations around the world — as well as seeing Workshop friends and fellow DC residents Development Seed as they proceeded to tear up the conference with a multitude of outstanding sessions highlighting their amazing work. Read more about Development Seed’s work on their blog and you might even see a cameo by yours truly!

Lastly, I was inspired to participate in Friday’s Lightning Talks with a quick presentation of the Boost module, which I now co-maintain and have talked about previously. Will White from Development Seed was kind enough to capture a couple photos of me presenting the Environmental Working Group site. You can check out more of Will’s DrupalCon pics here.

I’m looking forward to next year — and if you’re interested in Drupal, leave a comment and I may be able to point you in the right direction, be you a coder, site maintainer, or just a curious tinkerer!