Drupal Camp Vancouver was a big hit! After all of the planning, the weeks sped by, and next thing I knew, it was all over. I think the conference went fabulously, and have been getting great feedback from the attendees and presenters, which has been so satisfying! Big thanks to DaveO and Dale who were my partners in crime wrangling all the people, checking over the details, delegating tasks, and making sure everything went as smoothly as possible. Thanks too to Boris, who was a great conference planning mentor, letting me bug him with questions about how best to do stuff, and helping Dale and I choose and schedule the sessions. And ginormous thanks to the awesome presenters, volunteers, attendees, Workspace (for being awesome), and most of all sponsors who donated their time and cash to make this all happen!

People kept asking me things and talking to me as if I was one of the Drupal "rockstars" - ie. someone who knows the ins and outs of Drupal like the back of their hand. And although I'm not that advanced yet, it was nice to see that not even two years after going to Drupal Camp Seattle 06, where I first got sucked in, I have learned a lot and am actually able to answer a lot of questions from people who are now where I was then. I think several people were also surprised to see that someone who is not a big contributor code-wise, nor an employee of one of the big Drupal shops was helping organize such an event.

That is something I really took away from DrupalCon in March--both from talking to Angie Byron, who is a major contributor and currently on the Drupal Association board, and from Addison Berry's talk on how everyone can contribute to Drupal. Both Angie and Addison work for Lullabot, and do a lot of community outreach, and I feel like they helped provide me some much needed direction as to how I could help and contribute even if it wasn't by actually contributing code. So when I noticed that even though there had been some talk of doing a DrupalCamp here, nobody was really taking any initiative to get it going, it dawned on me that maybe if *I* really wanted this to happen, it was the opportunity for me to do my part. After chatting a bit with Dale at the monthly meetups, he was game to take it on, and everything kind of fell into place after that.

I'd never organized anything on this scale before, but was impressed at how much interest there was even early on--I don't think that we had any expectations that it would become such a large event! We had people from here, from the Island, a bunch up from Seattle (who have a Drupal Camp coming up at the end of June, by the way), a presenter from Lethbridge (who nearly didn't make it because of snow in Calgary), and even a couple guys from my hometown of Saskatoon! We also had a great mix of really experienced developers, intermediate users and novice developers, and then people brand new to this all (shout out to the librarians!).

Personal favorite sessions (some other great ones were repeats of previous presentations I'd seen, so I've left them off the list), which I may or may not elaborate on in future posts included:

• Lyal's session on popular modules, which was a great way to start the day, and where I learned about a couple modules I haven't been using but should, as well as rationale behind using certain combinations of modules for image handling.



• Gregory's session on Panels 2, which was an awesome walk through a pretty complex but powerful new(ish) module.
• Scott's Intro to SVN session, which gave me an actual understanding of what SVN does and how to use it, it was a total lightbulb moment for a lot of people!
• Boris' session on Install Profiles, which helped solidify some of the stuff on install profiles that I'd been reading up on and tinkering with in the last few weeks.
• Rob and Alex get special props for originality and fun :-)

I also have to mention the wrap up session in which Boris talked about where Drupal is going, and then opened up a discussion that covered a lot of ground from community to contributing, to business challenges. The conversation touched on how to foster learning and participation in the local community, which led to some good ideas about cooperative learning and also pointed out the likely need for formalizing some training and certification. Also, talked to a few people about client management and end user training, which may turn into a good project to take on.

Last but surely not least, I have to give some Drupalchix props to all the super smart and awesome women who attended and presented. Not only did we totally up the attendee ratio, but had five women lead or co-lead sessions. Go Vancouver and Seattle!

Whew, I think that does it!  Till next time!

I meant to write about this last week before the blogger plague took me down (I'm still in recovery...c'est terrible!) but better late than really late--did you know my bosses just published a book?! It's true!

My bosses, Lauren and Emira wrote a book, called The Boss of You and it was released May 1st! You can get it on Amazon.com right now, as well as Sophia Books (450 West Hastings St., Vancouver, BC), and it should be in Chapters and other bookstores any day now.

It's a guide on how to become your own boss on your own terms, geared towards women, but useful to anyone who wants to define their own vision of a successful business. And they should know, having run a successful web business for the last 8 years after deciding they could surely do it better! It's a practical guide, and contains lots of great input from a variety of successful women entrepreneurs.

If you want to share in the excitement, be sure to head to Sophia Books this Wednesday, May 7th, at 7:00pm because they are doing a reading and Q&A session--be sure to bring some good questions for them! If the blogger plague releases me from it's germy grips, I will see you there!

I don't know how the time went so fast either, but it's true--only 2 weeks until Drupal Camp Vancouver is underway! Somehow, along with DaveO and Dale, I ended up being one of the wham-bam organizers for this, and boy has it crept up quickly...we've got our locations rented (SFU Wosk Centre and Workspace). We've got a good number of volunteers helping out (but we can always use more!!!), and a bunch of lovely sponsors making this possible for the low, low price to attendees of $20 (that includes a t-shirt and Saturday lunch)! Which reminds me--registration is filling up fast, so if you are planning on coming, don't wait, REGISTER NOW!!!

There will be a good range of sessions for themers, developers, and users of different skill levels and interests, and it's only $20, so don't hesitate, just come check it out! I went to Drupal Camp Seattle two summers ago, as a total newbie, hardly knowing any HTML or CSS, and only being a beginner Drupal user/configurer, and I can pinpoint that as the event that sucked me into doing web and Drupal work. It was a great experience, and we're hoping that DCV will be just as great for everyone who attends, actually to be frank, we're hoping it's an even better experience!

Aside from registering, the other thing we need is more speaker submissions! The deadline for speaker submissions is MAY 1st, that's this Thursday! If you're not totally sure what to pitch, feel free to submit a few different ideas, and if you're super busy but committed to presenting, just submit something that we can follow up with, ie. "Hey, it's me, I'm super busy and didn't get a chance to properly flesh this pitch out, but I want to do an awesome session on install profiles, and I promise it will be SUPER AWESOME." is better than nothing! There is also a list of possible topics to skim through on the speaker submissions page, so have a look, pick a topic on which you feel you have a bit of knowledge to share, and pitch us your session!

Can't wait geek out on Drupal with everyone who makes it!

ps. Here's the RSS feed for the DCV site so you can follow along on announcements.

Hey geeks--

The day ain't over yet--it's Open Coworking Day at Workspace today!  That's right, our lovely friends at Workspace have opened their doors for the day to those who don't normally shell out for a membership to come enjoy the great view and excellent vibe here.  Such a good deal, that even I (after a mopey week, finally put to an end last night by a good ol' pep talk from a friend) woke up on the right side of the bed this morning and decided to pack up my lunch and laptop and head over to work on my notes and research from DrupalCon.

Too late for you this time?  Don't miss out next time--subscribe to their news RSS!

I've got a mental list of things that I've been meaning to blog about, and now that I've got a few quiet moments to myself sitting in front of the gas fireplace in the hotel lobby (oh, how I miss having a fireplace...) I am attempting to collect my thoughts a bit. The last couple weeks have been incredibly busy, between Northern Voice, Boston, and a bazillion appointments, on top of being really sick last week, I still haven't quite had the time to process everything.

To catch up, Tuesday night the week before last, I went and had my MRI done finally (it actually turned out to be of my head and ears, not neck). Despite what I'd heard, I actually found it somewhat interesting/enjoyable as far as medical tests go--there were several rounds done ranging between 20 seconds and about 6 minutes, and each round had a different sound and pattern. It was kind of like my own personal electroaccoustic music show...only I couldn't groove to the beat. I think having done a lot of laying still and breathing for yoga, it didn't really bother me having to lay there with my head relatively immobilized, and I actually didn't really feel at all claustrophobic which seems to be a common complaint about the test. Plus, I got to wear rad scrubs and see what I would have looked like if I'd ever gone to med school. On the way out, I ran into an old friend from SFU, Dave Bell, which was rad cause I hadn't seen him in what must already be something like four years. It was a pretty odd place to run into someone, but great to catch up for a few minutes none the less! Should be getting the MRI and balance testing results when I'm back.

Then it was time for Northern Voice. Thursday night at the pre-conference dinner, I faced my fear of public speaking and read one of my blog entries at the open mic. It went pretty well all things considered, and I got a good cheer when I got to the part about deciding to read at the dinner. (photo by Ianiv) It was definitely comforting that a couple other of the lovely blogger ladies (Stephanie and Kim) who were a little apprehensive about reading in front of everyone were sitting at the same table for dinner.

Highlights for me were definitely Matt Mullenweg's inspiring keynote talk (listen here) and Dave Olson's rad talk entitled "Fuck stats, make art" (good overview on Miss604, Audio of the presentation documented by Cosmo). I can't even really communicate how great Dave's talk was...it was one of those experiences that made me totally reevaluate what I'm doing, creatively speaking, in my life. His message is still percolating in the back of my mind, and I have yet to fully process and integrate it. (Got a lot of good photos from the conference, so I'm gonna throw a couple more in...)

The following week I was really sick, which sucked mainly because I felt really bad that I was missing work right before taking the week off to go to DrupalCon, and I'm still not 100% again, but managed to pull myself together enough to go on the trip anyway. Oh, and also last week, I had an appointment with a new rheumatologist to get a second opinion on the diagnosis of fibromyalgia that the other guy gave me, and then proceeded to tell me to 'just forget' (after a very non-thorough work up...the guy was a little odd). The new guy was also kinda odd in a totally different way, but at least seemed really smart--he didn't think I have fibromyalgia, and instead said that my pain is probably unrelated to my other health stuff, and that it was most likely due to my slight scoliosis and desk job. His advice was physiotherapy, better posture and work setup, and more exercise. Kinda frustrating that two doctors with the same certification can have such totally different opinions on what is wrong with a person--goes to show how much of medicine is really an art. Anyhow, I think I'm going to give up on pursuing that any further for now.

And then before I knew it, I was hopping on a plane to Boston. And here I am. Have been feeling so-so, though much better since I ventured out and got some real (ie. non packaged) food yesterday. I'm pretty tired, everyone has hit a bit of a wall today, but I'm going to attempt to go to bed earlier tonight even though I still haven't exactly adjusted to the time change (and there's not really much point now...), as there is a session I want to make first thing in the morning.

And on that note, I think I'm going to wrap this up.

Aka. Revised goal: finding the balance between yes and no.

So, last Thursday, I read my blog post "Practicing yes." at the pre-conference dinner. It was an(other) exercise in trying to get comfortable with public speaking, and actually went relatively well--thanks to everyone who cheered me on!