Drupalcon

As it turns out, I really enjoyed my time in London. Getting to visit old, historic cities is quite a treat for someone from the Midwest in the U.S.A. There are no castle towers on hills or centuries old steeples gracing my skyline in Louisville, KY, and I'm quite a sucker for both. Getting to visit the Tower of London, which supplies arms to my local museum, turned out to be a special treat. I'm also a sucker for good food and drink (who isn't?), and while it's not the height of elegance, my first experience of fish and chips with mushy peas was good, too. Note to Americans: it's mush-y, not moosh-y.

Fish and chips courtesy of The George.

My first couple of days in London were my busiest. I delivered a Drupal Commerce training to a room full of students with Greg Beuthin (a.k.a. smokinggoat), our in-house trainer par excellence. Unfortunately, he and I both had sniffles and scratchy throats, so I can only imagine what those reviews will say about our delivery... C'est la vie. We survived, but my day was only just getting started by the end.

For most of the next day and a half I was minding my queue in preparation for the 1.0 launch of Drupal Commerce. With the help of Bojan Zivanovic and Damien Tournoud (and a few others throughout the day), we were able to close out a variety of issues and ensure all of our automated tests were passing when we finally packaged the 1.0. In a feat of endurance sure to be remembered for ages to come, Damien and I outlasted Bojan's youthful energy to finalize the release after postponing dinner for a couple hours. That's what experience gets you, folks.

An excited Damien is never too hungry to celebrate.

It's a boy! He weighs 8 lbs. 6 oz. and is 22" long!

Coming to DrupalCon to collaborate with the other Commerce Guys and the various contributors from across Europe was the greatest part for me. Without the community, we wouldn't have the 1.0 that we do, a solid e-commerce framework that is not limited to a particular use case or locality. We're standing on the shoulders of Drupal core, the contributions of Merfago, and the dozens of patch contributors who have helped ensure Commerce can accommodate all those crazy taxes around the world. I also personally wouldn't have known that mushy peas are better with malt vinegar mixed in without John Albin Wilkins.

With the 1.0 out, my attention is now focused on ensuring our essential contributed modules are ready for use. I'm focusing specifically on making product administration simpler, ensuring Commerce Shipping supports calculated shipping quotes, and pushing code upstream from a local project into Commerce Addressbook. I always have a half dozen payment related projects in the works, too.

If you want to hear more about Drupal Commerce in person, I'll be talking about the project as an international community success story at DrupalCamp Atlanta. I'm busy compiling statistics on committers and contributions to share along with my usual hand-waving, mile-a-minute overview of the modules' functionality.

I'll also deliver a show-and-tell style training at this year's Do It With Drupal in NYC. I love DIWD as a more intimate gathering of module authors, core contributors, and web pros from outside the Drupal community. It's a great place for attendees to soak in a wealth of information and run their project needs by the folks writing the code they'll use. Today is the last day for early bird pricing, so if you're on the fence, you may as well make the impulse buy and come hang out in New York with us.

I hope to see many of you at those events and many more minding the queues.

At long last I'm breathing British air and getting psyched for tomorrow's Drupal Commerce training. I lived in the UK for four years as a child but only have vague memories of a nanny and getting AG Bear and My Buddy for Christmas. I didn't come back with a nanny, but I did bring along my wife to help take care of me and my daughter to carry the dolls. We spent a few days in Paris recovering from jetlag, ringing in our fifth year of marriage, and finalizing training arrangements before riding the Eurostar to London with the rest of the team this afternoon.

We'll have a total of fourteen Commerce Guys at DrupalCon London, meaning we'll have plenty of people on hand to talk about Drupal Commerce. In addition to tomorrow's training, we'll be presenting / discussing the Commerce modules and contribs in BoF sessions throughout the week. To see the line-up, check the BoF schedule under Room 334. If we can record or screen capture anything from these, they'll end up on the Commerce Guys Vimeo channel.

I'm looking forward to the Developing with Drupal Commerce session on Thursday, because it will be me first go at leading a panel discussion instead of introducing all things Drupal Commerce in a solo, hand-waving, water-guzzling presentation.

I'll be joined by several other developers and business owners who have been bidding on and building Drupal Commerce sites since the alpha and beta releases. We're now gearing up for a 1.0 release thanks to the hard work and contributions of everyone on the panel. It should be valuable and entertaining to hear them talk about what it's like to develop with Drupal Commerce and how the core modules have evolved since they've been working with them.

Last but not least, for everyone who doesn't care a lick about e-commerce but likes Indian food, I have discovered the best Indian place in Croydon. Look no further than The Spicy Affair for a fair-priced, keenly seasoned meal (with a surprisingly kid friendly wait staff!). That's probably the most controversial statement I made in this blog post, and I can't defend it as though I'm some sort of connoisseur. If you know a better place, feel free to link it in. Otherwise I'll see you there.

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.