George DeMet's blog

The folks at South by Southwest (SXSW) recently posted the audio podcast of Content Management System Roundup, the panel of CMS experts that I hosted there back in March. Even though I was fighting a losing battle with the flu and pumped full of DayQuil at the time, I think the session went very well, and the feedback that we got was quite positive. Matt McDermott, Jeff Eaton, Mike Essl, and Tiffany Farriss all deserve a tremendous amount of credit for the work that they did to make it such a great session.

One of the things that really struck me about the experience was the tremendous amount of interest in Drupal among the folks who attended our session. Nearly all of the questions in the Q&A sessions were about Drupal, and when Jeff asked how many people in the audience had heard of the software, nearly everyone raised their hand. What’s significant about this is that there were close to 1,500 people who attended our session; we had just been at Drupalcon in Boston the previous week, and that entire conference dedicated to Drupal had an attendance of around 850 people.

This disparity in numbers is made more significant when you consider that the audience at SXSW is pretty different from the one at Drupalcon. While Drupalcon is primarily attended by programmers and Web developers who specifically work with Drupal, SXSW attracts a wider audience that includes people involved in all aspects of interactive technology. This tells me that there’s a whole lot of people who are interested in and using Drupal that are not currently part of the traditional developer community.

Following up on this post from a few weeks back, I'm happy to report that Palantir has now balanced its carbon emissions for all of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 by purchasing 95 metric tons worth of CO2 offsets from TerraPass, a leading consumer retailer and marketer of greenhouse gas reduction offsets and consumer energy efficiency products.

Palantir is very excited to announce that Ken Rickard will be joining the Palantir team as of May 19. Ken comes to Palantir after more than a decade managing the development of new technologies, strategy, and innovation in the online newspaper industry. In addition to his community and project work, Ken will provide leadership, vision, and training for Palantir and our clients.

We just got in our copy of David Mercer's new book, "Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6", which has the distinction of having been worked on by our own Larry Garfield, who served as technical editor. I haven't had the opportunity to read the entire book yet, but at first glance it looks like it provides a great introduction to installing, configuring, and building sites in Drupal 6. And if you order your copy direct from the book's publisher, a portion of the proceeds goes to benefit the Drupal Association!

We're pleased to announce that the new Palantir-developed Drupal Web site for the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is now live at http://www.herron.iupui.edu/.

The site was developed in collaboration with design partner Studio Blue, and features a unique design that showcases photography of the school's students and faculty, as well as dynamically updated stories about the school.

Look for a more detailed case study coming soon.

Environmental issues have long been important to us at Palantir, even before the "green movement" of the last couple years. My very first job growing up was working at a recycling center owned by my parents, and ever since, I've been pretty insufferable about making everyone around me use recycled and environmentally-friendly products.

George DeMet, Tiffany Farriss, and Colleen Carroll from the Palantir team will be attending the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas from March 7-11. On the morning of Tuesday, March 11, George will be leading a panel presentation titled Content Management System Roundup that brings together a group of experienced Web designers, developers, and businesspeople to talk about their experiences building sites using a variety of content management system (CMS) products.

We're big fans of the Drupal content management platform, and proud to be sponsors of Drupalcon Boston 2008.

Welcome to the new and improved version of the Palantir.net Web site! Our new site is built on the recently-released version 6 of the Drupal platform, and features updated case studies, blogs, and more. We're very excited about Drupal 6 and will keep adding new features to the site as new modules are released for it, so keep checking back often!