By webchick on

The past two weeks have pretty much been non-stop travel; here are some of the highlights:

  • Crashed the Google Mentor Summit, where representatives from each of the open source projects involved exchange ideas and best practices around the Summer of Code program. Those of us from Drupal were able to impart things that have worked well for our community, including the Drupal Dojo, and assigning two mentors per SoC student. It was interesting to see how other projects are handling some of the challenging parts, and I'm hoping to kick off a dialog soon with our mentors and students to talk about how we can make SoC 2008 even better. :) Since Drupal's participation in Summer of Code translates to both funding and new contributors for the project, this is an extremely important initiative.
  • Gave a tech talk at Google about Drupal, along with Geoff Butterfield from the George Lucas Educational Foundation. This was an important marketing opportunity for Drupal, and helps lend the platform credibility, especially when you look at some of the other fascinating Google tech talks that have been hosted. Many thanks to Cat Allman at Google for giving us a chance to share our enthusiasm, and pass along some information about the system we all know and love. :)
  • Headed to Toronto, for a Drupal User Group meeting, where the Lullabots fielded questions from the audience. I was blown away by the sheer number of people present who had been using Drupal since 4.5 and earlier -- made me feel like a total newbie. ;) Among the interesting tidbits are that the Canadian Information Processing Society, a national organization of IT professionals that's almost 50 years old, is looking into Drupal as a platform to support its local chapters.
  • Finally, at the Ontario Linux Fest I gave a presentation about Women in Open Source (warning: big, honkin' PDF ;)). I touted Drupal as a community very welcoming of diversity, which is pretty much the same conclusion we reached during the meeting of the 7% club in Barcelona. I also sat with Khalid Baheyeldin to answer some folks's questions during a Drupal Q&A session.
  • On the event front, I spoke with Leslie Hawthorn at Google about a possible Google-hosted Drupalcon, either in Mountainview or Zurich, but it doesn't sound like it's workable with the sheer volume of people we're likely to attract if current trends continue. However, while in Toronto, fellow Lullabots Jeff Robbins and Liza Kindred scoped out some venues for a possible Drupalcon, Canada-style! We're hoping to send in a proposal soon.