Working on, with and thanks to Drupal everyday, it seems just normal to contribute to it as much as we can. Not only Raincity Studios contribute modules, like Katherine B.'s Quicktabs, or Hostmaster (now Ægir) by the already Drupal-star Adrian, but we just submitted our fifth Drupal theme on Drupal.org called Painted Wall.

Recently I have delved a little more into understanding more about topics related to distributed search and identity. It was an eye opener to a whole new world of acronyms. To try to resolve the issue of lack of awareness and information, I have signed up for 3 events in 2 weeks

• Drupal Camp Victoria, where I will be attending/organizing a BOF on identity, to discuss, listen and understand with other interested parties. As well, trying to do my part, by giving a talk on setting up local development environments
• Digital Identity conference in Los Angeles, where I managed to register as a "blogger".
• Drupal Camp LA since I will be down in Los Angeles, might as well.

First off, for those of you still clueless about the pronunciation of Szeged, a handy hint: the Hungarian for sex is szex, pronounced exactly the same (based on my observation of a sign for a "Szex Shop" in Budapest). So basically, just ignore the z.

I have just left the beautiful little city with its gorgeous architecture, wonderful thermal baths, and great bars and restaurants, having had to tear myself away from DrupalCon which is not quite at an end: there's a code sprint tomorrow which I'm really sorry to be missing, but client projects call and I need to get back to Vancouver. I can't complain though - I've had four really amazing days.

In the wake of Gnomedex, we're rallying up a crew of Vancouver Drupal geeks heading across the Georgia Strait to Vancouver Island to commune with our Drupal colleagues for another camp.

This shindig is organized by the fun-loving NorthStudio.com crew and The Victoria School of Business and Technology plus feature what's sure to be an excellent field trip to the Great Canadian Beer Fest.

As Boris pointed out in his recent How Drupal Can Help Change The World spiel, beer and Drupal seem to go hand in hand. Is that what make the modules so tasty? For those less lubriciously inclined, the NS crew are also setting up movie night.

With the remnants of Drupal Camp Vancouver coffers, and the organization and driving skills of Ryan Dempsey, many of the Vancouver contingent are riding over in a big ole van.

Now i doubt that it will get quite as *magic* as the web archive company Iterasi's Gnomedex Magic Bus with the sage-like Nat at the wheel taking the assembled geeks on a magical mystery tour of hi-jinks, but I am confident a rollicking ferry ride to the kick off party - followed by (not too early) solid sessions of peer education on Friday and Saturday - will be a winner!

How about you? Are you on the Drupal Camp Victoria bus?

The Deets:

• September 5th (~8:30AM to ~4:00PM)
• September 6th (~9:00AM to ~5:00PM)
• @ Gateway Village 301 - 771 Vernon Ave. Victoria BC.
  Get Directions
• Cost: FREE, Yes Free as in nada, zip, zilch

I'm just in from a fantastic day 1 of DrupalCon here in Szeged. This is a beautiful town and extremely welcoming of us Drupalers - this is how welcoming: the vice-mayor of Szeged himself gave a brief talk to welcome us this morning. He explained that before becoming a vice-mayor he actually used to be a software engineer, and that the City of Szeged administration is very pro-open source, using Open Office and "an open source content management system" for their website. Admitting that it was actually Joomla drew good-natured cries of "we can change that!" from the audience. I think everyone was really chuffed to be greeted like that by such a representative from the city, especially when he clearly shared so many common interests with us. It set the day off on a great note.