We know we've got lots of work to do on Bryght -- a refresh of this website, new hosting options, new team members, and some new technology. The team recently sat down and had a bit of a roundtable discussion on what the new site should include.

Above all, we need to work on messaging. Meeting us in person, you'll get a fairly clear story: Bryght focuses on open source technologies, with Drupal, Jabber, and identity being the main areas (mobile is sneaking on to this list as well). Engagement and involvement with the open source communities around those technologies is part of our mandate, our work with SpikeSource and Drupal being one example of that (more on that relationship soon).

OK, but what do we do? Well, our main product is an ASP/hosted service version of Drupal (CMS, community site, corporate blogging...yes, that definition definitely needs work as well).

It's not quite a distro (yet...Backstage for bands and record labels is our first step towards an install profile), and it's very much a framework/platform targetted at web designers and consultants. There is the (rare) end user who has clicked signup and gone through the Drupal learning curve...but we've beeen thrilled that that HAS happened. ProgressiveU.org is one of the sites I point to as an example of this.

Our other product isn't launched officially yet, even though we actually have quite a few customers running on it already. It's Bryght Hosting, run in partnership with the team at Firebright, and is Drupal-optimized dedicated virtual private server (VPS) hosting in various sizes. Go ahead and contact us if you want more info on this before it launches.

Dries Buytaert, head of the Drupal project, just announced that he will be down in San Francisco at the end of June for a Drupal Road Trip. I've been talking with both Dries and Jeff Robbins of Lullabot about the continued growth of the Drupal community, and I'll be joining them and Zack Rosen of CivicSpace in San Francisco. Jeff took the lead and organized this trip to connect Dries with a lot of interesting people in the Bay Area.

I made an introduction to SpikeSource, someone that we've been working with for some time now. We'll meet with them and talk about the role of SpikeSource and other commercial vendors in providing verified install profiles. SpikeSource has also shown an interest in training (Lullabot!) as well as working with the community on a testing framework.

Why is this happening? Well, as mentioned above, Jeff Robbins is the one who is getting Dries to San Francisco and is setting up all the meetings. He has some ideas around usability and multi-lingualism for Drupal, and ideally some funding for these initiatives. Dries wrote a great paragraph on what he hopes to get out of the trip:
These meetings will give me a chance to talk to these people about what is happening with Drupal and the Drupal community, and get a chance to promote all the great work we've done together. We're going to try and make sure that Drupal can be a little more connected with the larger FOSS community. Maybe it will open up further possibilities for collaboration and support. As always, we'll let things go naturally. Most importantly, I hope to learn from these people and that alone is going to be an invaluable experience.