Posts by theme: Drupal
At Drupalcon Paris, Roy Scholten (yoroy) kept an amazing journal of notes from the sessions he attended, combined with illustrations that focused on noteworthy themes being presented by the speakers. I thought this was a really cool way to capture the essence of a session and kind of linger over and focus on the ideas that stuck with you. In that spirit I drew the following at a personal moment during Dries' keynote in Drupalcon San Francisco. While I am nowhere near Roy's talent as an artist, I think it manages to capture the moment.
We’ve been looking forward to DrupalCon Copenhagen for so long, it’s hard to believe that it’s less than a month away! In addition to all the sessions, training, code sprints, and other great content you’d expect from an international Drupal conference, this year's European DrupalCon should also be one of the most fun yet; as mortendk, one of the conference's organizers (and bona fide Drupal rock star) puts it, this August 23-27th, something will be awesome in the state of Denmark.
Palantir’s contingent to DrupalCon Copenhagen will include George DeMet (gdemet), Tiffany Farriss (farriss), Larry Garfield (Crell) and Ken Rickard (agentrickard). As usual we’ll be presenting and participating in a number of sessions:
Those who have met us know that it's the team that makes Palantir what it is. Given that, it's understandable that our recent public announcement that we were planning to grow might have made some folks a little nervous. Let me reassure you, however, that this growth was approached with our usual commitment to sustainability and quality. It had been in the works for some time and I think everyone will be excited by the outcome.
Palantir had never done such a public search, and we didn't know what to expect. I was truly humbled by the response we received and very much appreciate the interest from all of the wonderful and talented folks who applied. I am nevertheless happy to announce that our search is closed.
On behalf of the entire Palantir team, I am very pleased to welcome Dave Reid, Arthur Foelsche, Bevan Rudge, April Peck, and Bec White!
Recently, there was a minor flap about a security hole found in one of the modules that's part of the Drupal install running whitehouse.gov. The actual issue itself was rather uninteresting (if you give someone an "administer X" permission they can do evil things to your site; um, duh), and the only reason it attracted attention at all was sensationalist reporting by some online news sources, but it did bring up one interesting and important detail that many Drupal folks forget: You really shouldn't be using pre-release modules in production.
Of course, that becomes a problem given the number of Drupal modules that are in a pre-release state forever. Which is, of course, the underlying problem: Too many module maintainers are not being responsible maintainers.
It hasn't been all that long since the last DrupalCamp here in Chicago, but the next one is only a month away! DrupalCamp Chicago 2010 will be held June 26-27 at the University of Chicago Law School in Hyde Park on the city's South Side.
Not only does moving DrupalCamp into the summer mean that we'll hopefully have better weather, it also gives the local community a lot more breathing room as planning for DrupalCon Chicago 2011 gets underway. The University of Chicago Law School (which uses Drupal to run their site) is a beautiful venue with capacity to hold even more people than last year's sellout event. This year's camp will feature two full days worth of Drupal-related content, including curated sessions, community gatherings, Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, hands-on-training and more.
Registration is $40 for the event and covers lunch on both days. We recommend you sign up on the site and purchase your registration ASAP, as spots are limited. Sponsorships are also available for companies and organizations looking to make themselves better-known to Chicago's vibrant Drupal community.
If you're interested in presenting at DrupalCamp Chicago, now is also the time to submit your session! With five large classrooms to fill for two days, we're looking for all sorts of content, from introductory sessions for people new to Drupal all the way to advanced technical topics.
One of the great things about DrupalCamps is that they're truly community events that bring together people from all sorts of different backgrounds. This community spirit carries through to the way that these gatherings are produced and promoted; the codebase for the drupalcampchicago.org website is based on an installation provided by the organizers of last year's DrupalCamp Los Angeles, and the registration system uses a signup module developed by some of the organizers of this year's DrupalCamp Colorado.
DrupalCamp Chicago is also one of the first DrupalCamps to benefit from the fiscal agency of DrupalCon, Inc., the North American not-for-profit subsidiary of the international Drupal Association that supports Drupal education in the United States. In exchange for this assistance, DrupalCamp Chicago will (as it has in past years) donate any profits from the event back to the Drupal Association to support camps and other Drupal events around the world. Much like the software benefits from the contributions of those who develop code for it, the community also benefits from the efforts of those who work together to help spread the word to others.
We hope you'll come be a part of our community here in Chicago next month. See you there!
There's nothing that we enjoy more at Palantir than sharing our ideas with others. Out of sharing comes collaboration, and out of collaboration comes new ideas and sustainable practices, these are all things that Palantiri are passionate about.
At Palantir we are always looking at ways to improve. In 2008 it was about sustainability in theming, in 2009 we extended this practice into the engineering side, and in 2010 it's about applying transparency, sustainability, and standardization to our process.
The only way to standardize around a process is to take a long, hard, and honest look at what you've got already. We took some time evaluating our current tool set and began weeding out the old and inefficient tools and extended the strong ones.
We recognize that standardizing processes is not an easy thing to do, especially when you don't have the infrastructure to support the research or enough hands to discuss and document it correctly. Because of this we want to share our approach with you in hopes that you'll do the same in return.
I've always found the rock star fantasy alluring, but, alas, that's not my path (karaoke accomplishments aside). Maybe that's why I like Drupal so much: it's a community where even a card-carrying geek can achieve rock stardom.
I've watched enough "Behind the Music" to know that assembling a bunch of rock stars in one place can be perilous and stressful. When you get a bunch of Drupal rock stars together though, it's not like an awkward charity benefit concert or a band that just can't stand the sight of each other. At Palantir, we're more like an orchestra made up of virtuosos who sound kick-ass playing together in perfect harmony.
And it just so happens that this particular orchestra is hiring.
It's no secret that many of us here at Palantir are fans of the science fiction genre, in particular the "Star Trek" franchise. Not only are we obsessed with Trek trivia and memorabilia, but every year for Halloween it's a tradition that at least one of us shows up at the office dressed up in Starfleet uniform. Given that, you can well imagine that we were all very excited when representatives of Paramount Films recently approached us about working on the sequel to last year's hit "Star Trek" movie.
The results are in, and it looks like Palantir will be all over DrupalCon San Francisco, which kicks off in just under five weeks. Nine of us will be on hand to spread the Drupal love (and some great swag) everywhere from the stage to the Birds of a Feather (BoF) room to the hallway. Here's the low-down on the Palantir track:
Museums and cultural institutions make up a large part of Palantir's business. We like working with them because we support their mission and they tend to have fun, twisted problems to solve. They like working with us because we tend to have fun solving twisted problems.
And we both like it because Palantir uses the industry-leading Drupal Web content management platform, and Drupal rocks for museums. In fact, it rocks so much that we'll be giving a workshop on Drupal at the Museums and the Web conference in Denver April 13-17th.