2008 DrupalCampToronto

It's fitting that the first entry in this blog should be about the 2008 Toronto DrupalCamp, since it was talking to the people there that inspired me to get a blog going.

As it was last year, this year's DrupalCamp was a fabulous opportunity to learn a lot about what's going on with my favourite CMS, who's using it and for what, and to have some very interesting discussions about how to make it better.

Some of the highlights for me were:

• Michael Baynger of The User Advocate Group and his talk about applying his concept of User Oriented Design to find ways to make Drupal easier to use for non-technical users
• Hearing about the powerful features available in the Google Maps module, and how they were implemented in the equally interesting Heritage Toronto web site. Wish I had had access to that kind of resource when we lived in Toronto, my wife and I are big history buffs.
• Seeing just how easy it is to use to use the Services and AMFPHP modules to seamlessly pass data into Flash. Turns out the key is to use an extra library in Flash. I don't think the notes to the session have been posted yet, but I have found a similar method on modern-carpentry.com.

I also gave a couple of presentations this year, but I'll save discussion of those for another time.

If you're the least bit interested in Drupal and you have the opportunity to this or a similar event, I'd encourage you to go. I also had several people tell me that I really should try to get to a DrupalCon. Looks like I have some selling to do.