There are 346 days until Drupalcon in Colorado. That's less than 49 weeks. The organizing committee has been meeting every monday by Skype to discuss tasks and next steps. We've started thinking about parties, places, events, and activities. We need to figure out what to do with the Drupalgangers, the speakers, and attendees. We're working through what tracks will be offered and who will deliver keynotes. Music is on our collective mind and soon we'll be thinking about food. In the not too distant future our attention will start turning towards bars and clubs.

Basically, how can we make this Drupalcon rock like no other Drupalcon before? Will that involve skiing, bungee jumping off Royal Gorge, billiards or darts the Wynkoop Brewery? Will people want to go to the Zoo, An opera at the Ellie, music at Redrocks or if you prefer smaller venues, the Soiled Dove Underground, or Hockey at the Pepsi Center? Will guests want to eat duck poutine at Euclid Hall, sushi at Hapa, pizza at the Wazee Supper Club, venison at The Vesta Dipping Grill, or just beers at The Falling Rock Taphouse?

Little did I know roughly 4 years ago when I was in a Spanish town wide eyed and somewhat new to Drupal, that I would end up on the organizing committee for a Drupalcon myself. A number of months back, when I found out that Denver was in serious contention for the event, I offered to help out. Before I knew it, there was an IRC channel that was secreted out to a small group that, "were in the know" and a Skype back channel. We were all sworn to secrecy until the event could be announced in Chicago - but the planning had already begun with a sub group of our committee having already figured out the "where".

Ken Rickard used Drupal 3 to demonstrate important lessons learned for Drupal. My notes and videos are below.

Rickard started out by introducing himself and what Palantir is. Why are we sitting here discussing Drupal 3 when Dries has been pumping up Drupal 8. He went onto discussing joke modules and the bad judgement module.

Rickard chose to bring Drupal 3 back to live because it was the earliest versioned Drupal release available in CVS. He talked a little bit about the history of Drupal and Dries' instinct that it was going to be something that he would write in a few days and be done with it. Little did he know a version of his billboard system would be alive and kicking 10 years in the future.

I'm sitting on an airplane thinking about the Chicago convention as I fly back home towards Denver Colorado. My Macbook Air is stickered up with all kinds of Drupal related vinyl goodness. Congratulations to the Chicago team. It was an inviting Convention. The location was great - close to lots of great restaurants.

The Good

• The lunches were excellent in general. Day 2 and Day 3 were of particular note.
• The location of the Sheraton was fabulous. It was nice and close to lots of restaurants. I was particularly enamoured with the Billy Goat - but mostly because I really like divey places.
• I liked that the web site allowed you to reserve spaces for the BOFs
• The work rooms were nicely located centrally with plenty of power in each of them.
• I really enjoyed the BOFs in this particular con. I was thrilled to have participated in a conversation about Project Management tools. It was validating that I'm not the only one challenged with finding the ideal set of software solutions.
• Being able to participate in announcing Drupalcon Denver! I am looking forward to writing about our movement towards March 20th 2012
• Amazingly positive conversations with my colleagues, both inside and outside of Examiner.com
• The variety of tracks and sessions - great job adding a UX/Design track.
• On official days of the convention, the Internet connectivity worked very well for me. I did occasionally drop a signal - but it was largely solid.
• OMG, the Field Museum as good a place as we have ever had a reception. Who ever pulled that off, kudos. I absolutely loved it.

Addison Berry (add1son) did an insightful session on the Health of the Drupal Community underscoring core issues and truisms using excerpts from Doctor Suess. She was frank and open about barriers, conflict, and how these stressors can be both problematic and helpful depending on how they are approached. The video I took is below.

I took video from Dries' Keynote this morning. The stream below are my tweets during his talk. Scroll through if you want to get to the meaty stuff.

• Drupal 7 highlights and lots of stuff about what Drupal 8 should be. Dries starts with a "What makes you feel proud" video.
• Dries mentioning that he asked Angie to be co-maintainer for D7.
• For the first 6 months Dries worked on D7 himself and said to webchick it would be 9 months more.
• 1000 contributors, it looks like a long tail curve.
  

This will be the third Drupalcon I've attended working for Examiner.com and the seventh I've attended since 2007. Each has been rather different with a significant change in scope. Depending on whether the event was in North America or in Europe helped dictate whether it would be a smaller or a larger event - however the trend has been towards larger and larger events.

The first Drupalcon I attended was in Barcelona. It was a smallish event and was a great opportunity to meet members of the community. I was relatively new to Drupal, having only used it since version 4.7 in any meaningful way. I had just started working with a now defunct Drupal shop. I had done a little training up in Vancouver with Bryght and Raincity Studios so I knew a few of the characters other than my direct colleagues. I arrived in Barcelona and dropped my belongings off at the flat we rented and started exploring the city. Who was the first person I bumped into?

Morten - an extraordinary friendly, gregarious, and jovial Dane with a very colourful vocabulary. My mother is Danish - I felt an immediate kinship.

So, that was my first introduction to Drupalcons. You might think that I'd do one of two things - run screaming (only kidding) or be in a state of shock and awe by the unique social nature of the community.

So, what does the Con mean to me? Really lots of different things.

• A time for learning - I often discover tricks and tools I didn't know about.
• A time for networking - who are the new faces in the community? Who should we be watching out for?
• A time to reconnect - while I see many of my professional colleagues in IRC or Skype on nearly a daily basis, many more I only get to personally connect with at Drupalcon.
• A time for discovery - what is new out there that could impact my employer's business in a positive way? What might impact sites that I manage in my spare time like Trauma Adoption or the Nonprofit Commons?

I'm a 10 year+ survivor of cancer. I was lucky that a great deal of research had been put into my disease. I was also lucky because it was caught really early.

A dear friend of mine has a nephew named Nico who has been fighting acute lymphocytic leukemia for 6 years or half his life. My friend is trying to get the word out to encourage folks to get tested for the bone marrow registry and so I agreed to post a blog post and ask for your help. You see, his options have been dwindling as he's continued to battle the disease leaving him with one option left - a bone marrow transplant. A few minutes of your time and you can be tested by the bone marrow registry to see if you are a match.

So far, no one on the international bone marrow registry is a match for Nico. Would you consider registering and potentially save his life, or another like him? it's quick, and easy to do. Simply log on to http://www.dkmsamericas.org/ or call 1-866-340-3567, They’ll mail you a kit. Swab your cheek and mail it back. Of course, if you can donate $, it would be great to help defray lab costs, but the service is FREE.

Nico's donor match may come from ANY ethnicity but because there are so few Asian/part-Asians registered, if you fit this category, another site also offers the cheek swab kit and online registration for free. You can go to Asian American Donor Program http://www.aadp.org/

2010 was a bit of an epic year for me professionally. It was a bit like drinking from a fire hose - and I loved it. So much was accomplished across many layers of life - and somehow pretty much all of it touches Drupal.

Examiner.com
My major focus for 2010 was Examiner.com and that continues into 2011. I purchased an iPad, partially for the large screen and 3G connectivity so I could jump on a usable IRC client at pretty much any time to work with the team. 2010 kind of backwards bled into December 2009. You see, I started working with the Examiner working through a plan to move the site out of Cold Fusion into Drupal. When I arrived, the decision to build it in Drupal 7 had been made because of the performance benefits and scalability improvements that could be gleaned from the pluggable architecture. This was the largest and most ambitious Web project I have ever engaged in my life. The work that I have done for previous companies like WESTAF and pingVision all had led up to the point where I was able to undertake the shepherding of such a project. I send HUGE kudos to the entire examiner "family" - we made it because of the team effort in every corner of the business. It wouldn't have otherwise been possible.

It was a sprint like no sprint I've ever been involved with before. From the start of my work through to August, the team launched the consumer side of Examiner in Drupal 7. This past year sported quite a few "reach outs" to the Drupal community including a code sprint following Camp.

Having come from the consulting world, it feels somewhat strange that I've been focused on a single site for over 13 months, but it has also been a highly fulfilling experience.

Today was the day! The Drupal 7 release party across the world. In Denver, the event took place at the Elevated Third offices in Lower Downtown. The event was co-sponsored by Aten Design Group, Examiner.com, and Growing Venture Solutions. Special kudos to Cyberswat who went out of his way to get the party up and running.

There was an amazing turnout - with about 50 Drupalistas socialising. I think that was my favourite part of the party - seeing all sorts of friends I haven't rubbed elbows with since Drupalcamp Colorado last year. I took a set of photos and posted them.

There was an attempt to connect to other parties around the country - and while it was somewhat successful, the noise and shared wireless made it difficult to be much more than a fun distraction.

About half way through the party a raffle was held for books and giftcards. Kevin, "MC-ed" the give-aways even though some folks were convinced the game was rigged. Come on - Quicksketch was the first to pull a raffle ticket and it was his own?