In the last month or so I had a period where I felt things going into a bit of a tailspin. It is a cyclical thing where life just feels overwhelming, out of control, meaningless even. I spent almost a week feeling down in the dumps and like I was letting everyone around me down. I didn't know what to do "about it" so I just sat with it, really poking at it for a few days. By the end of the week I had come to accept some things about myself and life. I'll forget them and eventually, around some other corner, I'll meet the dip in the road again. That's how it goes, but every time I ride the roller coaster I learn more about myself and navigating through life. The main thing that occurred to me that week was that I can not be what everyone thinks I am, including myself. I ended up letting go of a lot of notions I have about who I "am" and where my priorities really lie. I'm petty and giving, angry and joyful, ignorant and smart. And I suddenly felt OK with all of it. My life, and life in general, is much bigger than all of these things. read more »
Doing documentation in open source is often hard, doing it well is even harder. All projects have to struggle with this in some way and, in true open source community spirit, why don't we get together and help each other? I'm excited to spread the word that the open source world is going to get its very own documentation conference. I've been in on a new conference/unconference/sprint being planned for this June up in the great province of Ontario, Canada, called Writing Open Source. The idea was born last fall between a few conversations that Emma Jane Hogbin had with myself and Belinda Lopez. Emma was all crazy-talking about a whole conference just focusing on documentation and I couldn't resist such an awesome idea. Then the talking turned into planning, we got a space (in a library, no less!), some totally awesomely delicious catering, a domain name and now registration is open! read more »
I am not a great follower of politics nor of modern history (modern meaning anything after the Roman Empire, ;-) I'm an ancient history freak). I've been fascinated by Barack Obama, not just from the plain emotional freedom from the Bush years he represents, but also his steady rise as a leader in my mind. By that I mean the way in which he made myself and many, many other people believe that he is a leader for me. What makes great leaders? What makes people rally and believe in an individual, faults and all? This doesn't just happen in politics, though that is a great stage. There are leaders in every walk of life. Humans are social creatures and wherever people come together, there is potential for great leadership. I see it in the Open Source world that consumes most of my waking hours, I see it within my company and the business world, local communities, groups of friends, and families. read more »
We wrapped up Do it with Drupal (DIWD [dūd] to those in the know) a few days ago and after slogging through email and catching up on the rest of life, I've had some time to begin digesting it all. Spoiler: it was awesome. I say that as an attendee and as a worker-bee. On the worker-bee side there are lots of reasons that I didn't want to run screaming and crying into the night, mostly due to great work by our organizing team. On the attendee side, I got to see lots of great presentations and chat with really interesting folks. Some big wins that made this fun for me were: a wide range of topics by expert speakers; in addition to IRC, the Twitter back channel was awesome; moderators to handle questions; and snow in New Orleans. ;-) There were too many times that I was thoroughly torn about what to go see, but being on staff made decisions "easy" since I had to be in certain places at certain times to help the sessions run. read more »
It has been a busy week for me in a lot of ways, but one of the most exciting reasons was due to the first Drupal Association elections. Out of 57 applicants*, 11 were chosen to be added to the General Assembly as Permanent Members (PM). I am deeply honored to be amongst those 11. It feels odd to be amongst such Drupal luminaries but it certainly inspires me. I fully believe that you improve yourself by being surrounded by people better than you. read more »
Just over a year ago Josh Koenig started up a little group on groups.drupal.org called the Drupal Dojo. He thought mentoring a few folks in the Drupal way would be a good way to pay back some karma. Well that little group is now up to 1073 subscribers and has its own website at http://drupaldojo.com. Josh started a Really Big Thing that has turned out to be a Wonderful Thing in the Drupal world. read more »
It has been one month since Google announced their new Open Source program, the GHOP contest (Google Highly Open Participation.) Angie Byron has written up some great progress reports on her website and on drupal.org. I have to say that I have been pretty blown away by the students we've been able to work with. Back before the contest was announced there were only a few of us who knew about it and were trying to come up with an initial task list. read more »
I have been working on more Drupal projects as of late and in the last month or so I have finally followed up with getting more involved in the community. read more »
It is said that once you dream in a foreign language, you are really starting to internalize it. Well, last night I dreamt in Drupal. I saw blocks and nodes aligning and snippets of php to accomplish my tasks. I felt as though my subconscious was building a new website all night long, tinkering with shiny new tools in the stillness of the dead of night. read more »
I will be attending a four-day workshop on the Drupal CMS offered by Lullabot, a group of Drupal masters, in August. I have already figured out a lot of "the Drupal way" by working with it on my own but I really look forward to the prime opportunity to actually discuss specific questions and issues with folks who really understand the guts of the code. I'm excited about what I will be able to bring to my projects after these four days. read more »
