The Drupal project has been doing user experience work for several years but the pace has really picked up in 2008. This year alone we've have already completed two studies, both for Drupal 6.

Over the last week Leisa Reichelt, from Mark Boulton design has continued her user experience studies with iteration four of the redesigned Drupal.org site. In testing iteration four here's what the team from Mark Boulton design found.

As part of the redesign we will be developing some new branding for Drupal.org. Once we settle on a new brand we are going to want to start promoting it. Part of that effort will including buying branded merchandise via Drupal.org with profits going to the Drupal association.

If you are organizing a Drupalcamp you are probably finding that you are thrust into a fund raising role. As the Drupal association fundraiser, let me offer you a quick tip for raising money to meet your Drupalcamp expenses.

First, follow the rules of BarCamps and keep everything as simple as possible. Don't try to provide too many comforts. Instead, communicate what you need and then what ever you get provided with is what you will have.

[Update] Carey at the consumerist updated the article, including our explanation.

You might have seen Bert Boerland's piece indicating that Drupal just got some bad press, and is currently on the front page of Digg.com for that bad press.

I just got off the phone with Justin Jilg from GoDaddy.com and we are now working together on a joint response. He is reviewing what's going on with his security and his public relations team.

The first 13:45 is Szeged conference logistics, so you will want to forward to get to the beginning of the keynote.

Last night I met with Tiffany Farriss and Drupal association board member Larry Garfield at the Palantir offices in Chicago. I was in town for HostingCon. We reviewed the six proposals we received from 6 design firms.

In the month of June we enabled Google Analytics on Drupal.org as part of an effort to build a user experience toolkit. The toolkit was designed to provide insight on: what users were searching for, what traffic patterns and workflows vistors were following, and what usability feedback we can get from field studies. If you are interested in Drupal.org analytics you should attend the web conference on key performance indicators tomorrow.

UPDATE: We finished off in no time. Thanks to Webchick, MediaDoneRight.

The Drupalcon videos are done being processed, mostly. We need some help watching the first 20 seconds of the videos to figure out which video is which Drupalcon session. If you've got a particular Drupalcon session you missed and really want to see, and your willing to put in a little work, I'll give you links to 5 videos files and you can let me know which Drupalcon sessions they are. We should be able to crowd source this very quickly.

Last week we had a business kick-off meeting for the Drupal.org re-design. The purpose of this meeting was to start two important efforts: establishing business objectives for the re-design, and begin the re-design request for qualifications and request for proposals process.

Two weeks ago I attended a joint Web 2.0 (conference) and Web2Open (unconference) two part session on building a social strategy for your business. Web 2.0 and social software luminaries Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff presented a session " how to have a successful social strategy" based on their extensive research and book "Groundswell".

Pragmatist