drupal

Just got back from the IDLELO conference in Ghana last week. I've posted my wrap-up on the Bantalabs blog, so head over there for more info.

There are some more Drupal centric thoughts I wanted to share here: more African sites are running Drupal than we realize, but because there is no African Drupal Community to speak of, all this work, these references and experiences are largely invisible. We need more visibility, we need more advocates and we need more community.

As some of you already know my time as project lead and trainer at af83 came to an end last December. Their Drupal team will continue to be lead by the more than capable Damien Tournoud (@damz), one of the most prolific core Drupal contributors out there.

During my time in Paris I had a blast co-organizing DrupalCon Paris, helping grow the French community and being part of the team that founded l'association Drupal France et Francophonie, the French Drupal Association.

It's made me realize that community work is what makes me get up in the morning: the connecting, the building, the learning. It's awesome to witness and a privilege to take part in.

Yes, it’s that time of year again: Brussels is gearing up for the annual Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting. This year Boris Doesborg managed to secure a Drupal Dev Room, so we’re celebrating the Drupal Dev Room’s third Birthday. Yay!

To the point: the Call for Talks ends January 23rd, so if you’ve always dreamed of talking about Drupal in front of the geekiest, Europeanest audience ever, you know what to do!

Not quite the talking type but feel like contributing none the less? Then the Views 7 beta themed Drupal Code Sprint is where you want to be.

A sad tale of neglect

We’ve been running a small educational non-profit – Edulogos – for over three years now. Until recently edulogos.org has been little more than a Wordpress blog with a few extra pages and an off the shelf theme. It was one of the first sites we installed on our then brand spanking new Dreamhost account and we were happy with the results.

Over time however, teaching and project work got in the way of publishing much content. Maintenance was neglected and the limits and drawbacks of Dreamhost became a detractor for giving the site the love it deserved.

We decided it was high time to redesign the site and move it over to Drupal to give it room to grow. Like repotting a plant. “Liefde en substral”, as they used to say in our home country.

Come join the Dakar Linux User Group and other Senegalese Drupal Enthusiasts on this first Drupal Discovery Day Dakar

Where: Dakar, Campus UCAD / Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique (map)
When: Nov 7, 2009 / 13:00 – 18:00

For starters: I am blessed with the attention span of a goldfish. Long blog posts usually make me go “Meh, maybe later. #todo #read”, unless they have a really important subject. Like this one.

So what’s this all about?
A while back, after a heated debate on #drupal, twitter and FB, Liza blogged about the Drupalcon Paris design being sexist – a sentiment shared by a suprising number of men and women.

All semi-shameless self-promotion aside, you can follow the drupal.org redesign sprint in Paris step by step on my twitter stream.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the proposal for DrupalConParis 2009 was cleared to be submitted to the Drupal Association.

It’s been a very interesting ride, starting from scratch and putting together a proposal for a conference that must not only satisfy but rock 1000+ of you Drupal folks out there.

We just published the FOSDEM DrupalRoom schedule.

Lots of interesting proposals this year. Too bad we couldn’t fit them all in but it’s great to see what’s cooking in Belgium and The Netherlands.

The updated FOSDEM 2009 DrupalRoom wiki is up and running.
Head over to http://groups.drupal.org/node/17167 to propose a talk, add suggestions or to sign up as volunteer.

There's no time like the present. Off you go.