Drupalcon SF2010

This past week I attended my first ever Drupal conference in San Francisco. The conference was the official Drupal conference, Drupalcon, that is held bianually. The conferences are typically held once in the US and once in Europe each year. The conference was the biggest conference to date for the Drupal community with over 3000 attendees. The conference itself kept us pretty busy basically all day. We were in sessions from 8:30 to 6:30 with a lunch break in there.



A few of the things that I took away:

- Drupal 7 is going to be awesome. There are tons of new changes and improvements that should greatly improve the speed of a typical Drupal site. I guess that is what we get though with over 2 years of development on the platform. Awesome improvements in the FAPI, Token (now in core), and database layer.

- Drupal is becoming a very impressive platform and highly used. Over 1% of the sites on powered by Drupal now according to Dries Buytaert (Drupal founder). On top of that, there are a lot of high profile sites being powered by Drupal (i.e. whitehouse.gov).

- Drupal developers are some of the most sought after in the market. There are a lot of Drupal jobs out there even in the bad economy. There was a graph in the keynote by Dries Buytaert that showed how many more jobs there are for Drupal developers than for Wordpress or Joomla developers.

- I really enjoyed hearing the keynote from Tim O'Reilly (yes, that O'Reilly) on Tuesday. The internet and the cloud is a place that must be made by the strides of new innovations and developers. Very interesting presentation.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the conference and we are excited to start using D7.

On another note, San Francisco was a lot of fun. I got out a couple of times and ran along the bay. It was really pretty good weather the entire time that we were there and the area was pretty nice. Also, we ate out at several different restaurants, but probably my favorite overall was the Russian Cinderella Cafe (I mean obviously I love Russian food). There is obviously a pretty large Russian population in the area as there are several small such cafes in the area.

A big thanks out to all of those who helped out around here while I was away. I look forward to attending another Drupalcon again in the future.

Movie Time

I know you might think that all I do is read (which I do a lot of), but it isn't all that I do. I tend to watch 2 or more movies a week as well. I don't usually just sit down and watch a movie, rather I will turn on a movie while I am cleaning or preparing a meal. Since I've stopped updating my movie blog (not enough time or interest), I wanted to share a few of the best films I've watched over the past several weeks in no particular order.

Forever Strong

Released: 2008
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840322/
Short Synposis: A rugby player is put up in a juvenile detention center. There he plays for the Highland Rugby team and ultimately plays against his father in the National Championships.

My Thoughts: I heard about this film when it first came out but never got to see it. I typically enjoy sports films and this was no exception. I think that it helped that this film covered the Highland rugby team, which I knew a lot about since they were a region rival when I was in high school. Nonetheless, an inspirational film and a film that you should definitely watch.

An Education

Released: 2009
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1174732/
Short Synposis: A coming-of-age story about a teenage girl in 1960s suburban London, and how her life changes with the arrival of a playboy nearly twice her age.

My Thoughts: This is one of those films that didn't get a lot of hype even though it was up for picture of the year at the Oscars. I didn't know a lot about this film when I watched it, but it was one of the better films that I've seen in awhile. The film isn't too long and keeps a good pace and is very well acted. Big fan of Carey Mulligan in this film (I can see why she was nominated for best actress).

The Island

Released: 2005
IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/
Short Synposis: A man goes on the run after he discovers that he is actually a "harvested being", and is being kept along with others in a utopian facility.

My Thoughts: This film was probably pretty popular/hyped up when it came out, but since it was right in the middle of the time when I was on my mission, I'd never heard of it. The film is directed by the same director that did Transformers (Michael Bay). The film focuses on a Utopian society and the way to get to "the island." The film picks up in action during the second half of the film, but overall an excellent film.

If you are looking for a date movie, I would recommend any of these movies. While all of them would be suitable for children, I don't think that they would find them too interesting. If you have a question about another movie, it is highly possible that I've seen it. Also, if you have any movie recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Review of Drupalcon is coming soon.


**********UPDATE***********
If you are looking for entertaining films about history, then I have two recommendations: The Young Victoria and The Other Boylen Girl. The Other Boylen Girl is pretty depressing whereas The Young Victoria is pretty inspirational. Both films are good in their own respects.