DrupalCon update
So I'm in Boston, which was an interesting drive. I'm here for the Drupal Conference. I've taken a few notes about the sessions I've attended, which I'll try to upload somewhere, but it's a very interesting conference, in a critical moment in Drupal's history:
- this is the biggest Drupalcon ever: double the people from last year
- this is a much more "commercial" conference: sponsors, higher conference fees (200$), etc
- Aquia is creating a commercially-supported Drupal distribution
- Drupal 7 is coming, with ambitious goals (RDF support and abstraction, for example)
Those are exciting times, but at the same time I feel a bit worried about the direction the community is taking and the effect all this commercialisation is going to have on it. I personnally think that this was to be expected: there is a lot of business going around Drupal. It's simply exploding and most Drupal shops have a steady flow of work coming in, some with very lucrative contracts (think NATO, Warner Brothers, Forbes...) that inevitably shape the software in unexpected way.
I'm personally really glad to be here, as I've got involved with hostmaster which is being rewritten by Adrian and I'm having a hard time keeping up with it. I've also got involved in filmforge which heavily depends on the video module which nowadays seems to be completely (or not exactly, but I still couldn't figure out what's missing) replaced by te media_mover module, which is great, but which also means we'll have to figure out ways to fund a rewrite of the filmforge install profile again. I also question more and more the "install profile" concept, because it's only marginally useful: it can only be used when installing a new site whereas most of the time, you want to customize an existing site...
Anyways, so lots to do, lots of people to talk with, I hope I'll be able to keep up...