created on Tue, 2008-10-07 11:40

Return to the Bay

This weekend is the 2008 iteration of Bay Area Drupal Camp held at U.C. Berkeley, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th.

Along with the info at Badcamp.net, the schedule is Google-doc'ed and will give you a sense of what's in-store.

Notably, Earl Miles creator of Views, Panels will kick off the learning fest with a keynote on Saturday morning.

My pal Dmitri is presenting on Simple Test (along with Florian Lorétan), CCK and jQuery (along with Amit Asaravala), Tao Starbow will show you how to make your own Wikipedia, Chris Bryant discusses managing site configurations and Keiran speaks about the Acquia buzz.

Alas, the event is full so if you slacked, you are almost out of luck, ...  in true Drupal fashion, some geeks are organizing an overflow event so everyone goes home happy.

BAD Flashback

Last year Francis, Erik and I (DaveO) headed down to enjoy some autumnal California sun and learning.

I recorded a handful of podcasts with some interesting Drupalists {William on accessibility, Dmitri on module making and Colin on innovative projects}. Plus annotated a few presentations from the academic halls of the impressive campus and back to Vancouver.

Beer Tip

If you go to Berkeley, be sure to visit the Jupiter for excellent microbews, woodfired pizza and live music.

Community First

Keeping up with Raincity Studios' international community participation endeavours, RaincityStudios CEO Robert Scales and Production Chief Francis Pilon represented the RCS at Montreal Drupal Camp.

This camp featured more "birds of a feather" informal workshops allowing Drupal ninjas to delve into niche topics at a deep technical level.

A beautiful city from all accounts, M. Scales was sure to enjoy some smoked meat sandwiches from the legendary Schwartz's while there (photo evidence) along with "Hanging out at Drupal camp Montreal all day! Talking aegir, collaboration and hosting with/for the French community!"

Here's what M. Pilon has to say about the trip:

Drupalcamp MTL was fantastic. In fact it was one of the most interesting one, in terms of dynamics, I have been in a long time. I have to admit that I find the BOF format far more interesting than the lecture style so commonly found in these types of meetings.

I was please to find that Drupal is well and alive in Montréal. Of course, it's always a pleasure to put faces on some of these d.o usernames.

As far as sessions went, as usual the range of topics and levels made it so everybody could learn something and contribute too. We had a special cross-Atlantic session with our friends over at Drupalcamp Paris.

Thanks to the great participation of the attendees and generous sponsors (especially our friends a koumbit.org) this event allowed me to get in touch with the "cream of the drop"! 

What's next? 

Raincity Studios' Ambassador, Kris Krüg will be speaking at Journée INFOPRESSÉ in Montréal Mardi 11 novembre 2008 à l'Ex-Centris where M. Krüg will be presenting his remarks in English.