Drupalcon is a month old already??

Well, I had an awesome time at Drupalcon as always, but not surprisingly I was swamped upon my return and failed to post anything more on my trip to DC than a quick wrap-up post for my company. I wish I'd been able to post more while it was still fresh, but c'est la vie. I was shocked to find out upon my return that a man I knew was murdered behind my house while I was away. Small memories of him and my own imagination are still haunting me, and I feel like I live and work in two entirely different worlds... but I digress. Let's be thankful for every day we're given. Anyways, I did have a great time with everyone at Drupalcon. I met a ton of new people and was able to greet again the many familiar faces in the community. It was super cool to meet several regulars from Ubercart.org and share stories and ideas over our second Ethiopian Uberdinner (that was off the chain!) and several other ethnically diverse dinners. A highlight for me was getting to welcome my uncle to the conference as the first person from my family (beyond my wife) to experience the Drupal scene first hand! In my Ubercart on Drupal 6 session, we aired a fun video endorsement of Ubercart by Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame that included a sweet discount from RiffTrax (his Ubercart powered store) for all the attendees. I also managed to pull off a perfect technical demo in Advanced Ubercart Usage... no unexpected bugs and some encouraging feedback made it one of my favorite sessions to present so far. Afterward, I hit up several great Ubercart related BoF sessions, including one that spawned a clear initiative to get better donations support in Ubercart. If you missed the sessions, the videos are available at the links above for your viewing pleasure, or you're welcome to join me in Chicago for an Ubercart training event at the end of May. Finally, the conference afforded me several opportunities to brainstorm with various people about the possibilities for e-commerce on the semantic web. I highlighted the topic briefly in my Ubercart on D6 session, and I hope to pick that discussion up more in the near future. Given the direction of Drupal and the emphasis from the top down, Ubercart is in a great spot as a Drupal module package to really explore how stores can benefit from the semantic web. Cross-site promotions? Affiliate sales? Aggregated product reviews? Drop shipping? I'm sure there are many great applications of the technology waiting to be developed, and it's my goal for Ubercart to drive that innovation. In the meantime, we'll keep doing what we can to make Ubercart simpler to install and use, and by golly, we'll have a solid 2.0 release even if it means sacrificing more sleep and that whole exercise thing. Sorry, though, I'm still gonna catch a little Star Trek with my wife.