Drupalcon

DrupalCon San Francisco will mark my first time traveling with a rolling carry-on instead of the duffel I've brought to every conference / camp since Barcelona. It's a good thing, because Packt was kind enough to send along several copies of their new Ubercart book for me to give away in the Commerce Guys Ubercart Training. I look forward to shedding those pounds on Sunday and replacing them with some sweet new Drupal shirts throughout the week.

Assuming the rest of the team makes it through the volcanic ash, I'm also looking forward to getting on stage in the Sponsor Theater (E. Mezzanine, 236-238) to talk about the latest news with Commerce Guys. Our sponsorship affords us the opportunity to bring together the whole crew for the first time to talk about our vision for the future of e-commerce on Drupal and how we're working to make it a reality. Mark the time in your schedule - Tuesday, 9:45 - 10:45 AM - or stop by the Commerce Guys booth to get the skinny in person / express your interest in relocating to Jackson, MI...

I'll be unveiling the Drupal Commerce demo site during our sponsor spotlight and will discuss it in further detail in my session, From Ubercart to Drupal Commerce. The session will be on Wednesday, 9:45 - 10:45 AM in room 306 Trellon. We had a great crowd in Portland show up to see / hear the latest last week, and I look forward to delivering a slightly more organized presentation in San Francisco.

I'm looking forward to a lot of great sessions, too, and I can't wait to meet up with some old Drupal friends and new contributors to Drupal Commerce. If you're eager to meet up, leave me a note in the comments or use my contact form. I'm happy to hook up for dinner or find you around the venue, and you can always stop by the Commerce Guys table to get in touch.

E-commerce will be huge on Drupal 7, and DrupalCon will be the kick-off. We'll be following up with Drupal Commerce presentations at the CMS Expo in early May, Web Content 2010 in early June, and hopefully a Drupal Camp or two in June / July. But first... I have to survive this next week.

Ken and Addison have scheduled Greg Bear and myself for a 90 minute session titled Selling with Drupal on Wednesday morning of the conference. Greg and I will join forces to chat about the benefits of using a Drupal based e-commerce solution (as opposed to a dedicated application or a weak integration) and the nuts and bolts of preparing to sell online. Then we'll split up and each have a chance to talk about e-commerce solutions in Drupal. As you might guess, I'll spend my time presenting Ubercart, demoing its simple installation/setup and core features using the Livetest. I'm also excited about the opportunity to showcase some awesome sites that are taking advantage of various core features. We'll close off the session with some group Q&A time and stick around to chat for a while afterwards.

I've posted a brief outline of the Ubercart Overview below. Feel free to comment on either the outline or this event in Boston's history that I was unaware of until today.

In imitation poet fashion, I've devoted myself to a bit of poetry to prepare us to brave whatever remains of the New England winter the first week of March. Granted, it's warmer there than here (Louisville, KY) right now, but I'll be doing a lot more walking outside/cruising around on public transportation there. I also recently lost my gloves in an Italian restaurant on a lunch break.

Drupalcon Boston 2008

We come with high hopes
Winter wind cools not our zeal
Numb fingers still type

I don't quite get haiku, and I always feel like I'm cheating when I write it. I think, "Why didn't I just say that in a sentence or two?" I know some of you out there can top this feeble attempt, so feel free to post one in the comments. Also, there's the matter of a free bed.

Here on the Ubercart team we're developing a habit of making last minute decisions about Drupalcon attendance. Hopefully we'll learn to plan a little further ahead in the future, but doing it this way makes for a fun time finding lodging and flights. I'll be flying to Boston for my first time with Andy to represent the Ubercart project in the soon-to-be-enjoyed Drupalcon. We're excited about the opportunities to meet with more developers, say hey to some familiar faces (I'll be looking for you, Joe!), and spread the word about Ubercart. We benefited a lot from my trip to Barcelona, making improvements in security, internationalization, and core features (like file downloads and role promotions) as a direct result of developer feedback.

Ubercart is gaining ground within the Drupal community and other web development corners of the web as the e-commerce solution of choice. We're also helping build Drupal's image as the "CMS" (although I agree that term sells Drupal short) of choice for online stores, and we want that trend to continue. To that end, we're hoping to expose as many people as possible to the features and systems offered by Ubercart. We also hope to capitalize on as much collective brain power as we can to shore up some of our weaknesses as we start planning toward Ubercart 2.0.

Read on to see how we hope to make the best use of our time in Boston!

Ahh, day two of Drupalcon has come and gone. Sorry this post wasn't up sooner... the wireless in our apartment decided to stop working altogether today, so I had to type this up in the evening and post it from the venue. C'est la vie. Briefly, I will let you know that I ended up skipping the morning sessions to explore La Sagrada Familia with my wife. A little bit of this post will be about that with some photos below, but I did make it back to Drupalcon this afernoon for a few sessions (install profiles, Ubercart.org, and a BoF session on training new Drupallers) and some fun meet-ups with other Drupallers I only know by their usernames and avatars.

Well, day one has come and gone. Christina is in bed beside me asleep and feeling more toward the better side of things. She's been sick since last night, unfortunately, most likely due to the disrupted schedule and lack of good food and enough water. Nik gave her a cocktail of medicines that have been helping. Hopefully she'll feel up to a tour we will take tomorrow of La Sagrada Familia... which is incredible! I'll post pictures later of the place lit up at night. Onto some details about the conference...

Well, Christina and I did arrive in Barcelona in one piece yesterday afternoon. We landed right on time around 2:30 PM and had an adventurous time making it to our apartment. It took us a lot of question asking, map reading, and confusion, but we were able to take a train to the metro (subway) which had a stop at La Sagrada Familia near our apartment. (The cathedral is incredible!)