Drupal is a free, open source content management system, primarily aimed at websites but equally capable of providing content to frameworks like React, apps, services like Alexa, whatever you can think of.
Over the last few weeks, I have found myself thinking more and more about Drupal.org and the various websites and services that surround it, such as groups.drupal.org, events.drupal.org, git.drupal.org, api.drupal.org, jobs.drupal.org, Slack, drupalchat.me, drupical.com, drupal.tv,
Tech(k)nowday is an online conference, featuring over 200 women in tech and it is taking place on Monday 8th March. Not only that, it is FREE to attend so why not take a look at the program and see what interests you?
I recorded a short talk for them today, about how we are making some improvements to DrupalCon so that we can help people focus their participation on selected strategic initiatives of the Drupal project. I hope it is useful to people.
I knew I wanted to allow "social" login on this website as it made me happier that the usernames I might see appearing are more likely to be the people I assume they are — they will have some sort of "background check" by virtue of their activity on those other social sites, whatever they were. Well, thanks to drupal/openid_connect, I have successfully implemented login via GitHub, LinkedIn, and Google.
There are a few things we do as a community at Drupal that really warm my heart and recognising those displaying the very best values and principles of the Drupal project through the annual Aaron Winborn Award is one of them.
Whilst everyone in the Drupal community can, and should, nominate those they think deserve such an award, it is one of the few truly lovely tasks of the Drupal Community Working Group to read all of the nominations, select a recipient, and present the award at DrupalCon North America.
So, it seems that this website does pretty well from an energy usage point of view - a good sign for an essentially "out of the box" Drupal 9 site. The Drupal community working on the new Olivero theme should be proud of themselves.
Whilst I fully appreciate I am no fan of Slack, for many reasons, not least who they seem to like to associate with, I do accept that not everyone shares my views and that Slack is at the heart of many open source communities.
Whilst I have really enjoyed building this little website, and slowly beginning to write a little more, one thing that has troubled me the whole time is how to facilitate conversation on the topics I bring up in a way that I can believe that the person making a comment is actually who they say they are. Or, at least, they are the same person I interact with on other platforms as that identity.
"Oh that's easy!", I hear you say, "Just use a tool that allows someone to login using their identity elsewhere - lots of ways to do that, such as OpenID."
Having had the joy of experiencing organised events etc from both sides of the coin, as a participant and as an organiser, I have had ample opportunity to notice one thing — people in open source communities can do one thing that makes the experience of organising so much more pleasant: commit early.
I see again and again organisers of conferences, from small meet-ups even up to DrupalCon itself, worrying whether people will buy the tickets they need for the event to be a success, right up until the last few weeks (and days!)
