We got a great crowd of around 20 people for our Drupal 'Birds of a Feather'. The above is a shot of everybody in the BIGWIG Bloggers' room -- just before we got kicked out by some group from YALSA (bums, we'll get even)!
(We then proceeded to the next available empty room and had our get-together there.)
First up on the agenda was setting up the Drupal IG, making sure we have enough signatures and asking for volunteers to serve as Chair and Co-Chair. For the first year, Leo Klein (i.e. me) graciously volunteered to serve as chair and Ian Chen as co-chair.
I've got a neat job building a community site for one of the library organizations here. I'll talk more about it at our Drupal4Lib BoF in Anaheim but basically the idea is to promote online collaboration. Needless to say (for those in the know), I'll be making great use of Drupal's Organic Groups.
I'll be doing a follow-up to my talk on Drupal at UIC on Friday, 5/23 5/30 (1:30p-3pm) in Burnham Hall 308. The title of the Talk is: "The Wonderful World of Drupal Modules". Basically I'll go into some of the more important modules: CCK, Views, ImageCache, Panels, etc.
I'll be doing an Intro to Drupal at UIC on Fri., 4/25:
Drupal - An Introduction to the Content Mgmt System by Leo Klein
Drupal is a popular open-source Content Management System that's attracting growing interest both in Academia and the private sector. Leo Klein will be giving an introduction to Drupal on Friday, April 25 (1:30pm-4:00pm) in the Student Center East (Rm 408).
DESCRIPTION: The introduction will cover the (short) history of Drupal, what it can do and can't, its unique features plus where it's headed.
SPEAKER: Leo Klein has been running Drupal websites since 2004. He is Web Coordinator for the Office of Admissions and Records. His personal website is http://LeoKlein.com
AUDIENCE: Webmasters and those interested in the design and development of websites using modern content management systems are heartily encouraged to attend.
In anticipation of my talk 'Drupal in Libraries' that I'll be giving to the Metropolitan Library System on Fri., 2/29 (1:30p-4:30p), I'm releasing the screencast "Creating a Library Database Page with Drupal".
The talk will be about Drupal in the context of Open Source Software and Content Management Systems as well of course as its application in a library environment. (more info and rsvp...)
The screencast goes over the points I'll be making in the second part of my talk.
Have a look and tell me what you think.
UPDATE: The slides and audio from my presentation are now available. You can access them by going here...
You can find a pretty good screencast on new features here...
It's interesting how a number of the new features are in fact integrations of ideas that originally were developed as separate modules (Updates, Blockcache, etc.)
The pattern seems to be: people contribute new ideas as modules and then the best ones are incorporated into Drupal itself. Good plan.
The performance improvements, column headings and drag-and-drop features also look interesting.