Drupal iPhone SDK and stuff I like

As social media lead for DrupalCon Munich, having worked closely with The Drupal Association marketing team for 2 DrupalCons, I was perhaps one of the first to flag that a Denver modelling agency had posted a blog that they had supplied models to DrupalCon exhibitor. I am not going to link and give them yet more SEO juice which I am sure is what they are after. Nor am I convinced they supplied models to the conference. I emailed them and never heard back.

A conversation on Twitter has rumbled ever since about ‘Drupal Booth babes’. As a Denver attendee, I can say I never noticed any inapropriately dressed booth staff. Everyone I spoke to appeared highly knowledgable and employees of the booth’s company.

Drupal Code of Conduct

Subsequently George DeMet of Palantir has lead an initiative to revive the creation of a DrupalCon Code of Conduct. This was first started back at DrupalCon Chicago and conversations have persisted ever since. The community debate via comments on the proposed DrupalCon Code of Conduct has been highly active, heated at times in the comments and over on Twitter.

During the process I have had conversations with prominent figures both within Drupal and other open source projects. I have observed comment coming from at least Joomla and Wordpress contributors, not always in a positive light. From the outside it can seem quite peculiar the way in which Drupal conducts itself as a community when on the path to a concensus.

George DeMet pointed me towards a blog post he wrote last September “Bottoms Up: Problem Solving in the Drupal Community” in which he eloquently explains how the Drupal community reaches a collective agreement. It is as relevant now as then. He reflects that 

I think the fact that these issues are being discussed openly is a tribute to the strength of the community and a point of difference between Drupal and other software projects

In respect of the Drupal Code of Conduct there is no doubt in my mind that one should exist. A global conference attracting over 3000 attendees needs to set standards of acceptable behaviour. Anyone who arges one is not necessary should review Geek Feminism Wiki: “Timeline of incidents” which outlines a timeline of sexist incidents in geek communities. The proposed code is not just about sexism, but the timeline clearly highlights incidents are a reality. We cannot ignore that.

George also points out that

Decisions are rarely made quickly within the Drupal community; they’re discussed, debated, and argued over at length before a consensus is reached. 

I hope the DrupalCon Code of Conduct proves to take the time it deserves in order to arrive at one which we can live with, which reflects and respects the cultural diversity of the community. I know the intention is to protect the spirit of DrupalCon and those who attend, not quash. I for one commend George in having the foresight and commitment to take on this intiative.

Read George DeMet’s article 
Read the Drupal Code of Conduct

I am currently implementing a number of Responsive Design sites using Drupal and Drupal Commerce. We are using a variety of different tools to help with the design and build process. These were particularly useful.

• http://icanhaz.responsiv.es - http://www.livelinknewmedia.com” target=”_blank”>example
• Responsinator - provides an indication of what the site looks like across a multitude of devices
• Mattt Kersley Responsive Web Design Testing Tool

I’m sure there are others, would love to know your favourites.

Normally I cite MCFC as leading the way in digital. I love their site, particularly the fan map and user generated content.

However, the Twitter Hashtag on the side of the celebrations bus last week was #together. So, whats the problem? Unfortunately any tweet which contains “together” also returned upon searching the Hashtag so completely negating the point, diluting the MCFC celebration tweets with irrelevant messages.

Lesson is, if you plan to hang a campaign off a Twitter Hashtag, make sure it is unique. #citytogether #mcfctogether would have worked.

SASCON attracts the very best talent the UK has in search marketing and social media. This Excel Sheet listing all the speakers at SASCON 2012 is a very useful source of who to follow on Twitter plus urls of each agency / individual.

Thanks to Dan Barker for Tweeting the file

I’ve just been listening to an excellent presentation about “International NGOs Leveraging Drupal for Social Change”. One of issues raised was how difficult it was for people to establish who site creators are.

Providing a way for site visitors to reach you ensures that potential clients and other business opportunities are not missed. Ideally every site you build should be a lead for future work. It is so easy, we should all be doing it.

There are at least 2 ways to add information to every page which provides attribution to the site author.

DC.creator meta tag

The creator meta tag can contain your company url or perhaps a link to a case study in your portfolio.

<meta name=’DC.creator’ content=’{author}’ /> 

Humans.txt initiative

Whilst the DC.creator tag allows linkage back to your web site, it would be nice to present more information to interested parties. Detailed contact information, list of credits if multiple developers or indeed agencies contributed to the site. One way to address this challenge is to use Humans.txt. The sample implementation here provides ways of reaching all the members of the team who contributed.

Last week at DrupalCon Denver Dries Buytaert announced that Drupal 8 will use more features of the Symfony Framework.

Symfony provides an architecture, components and tools for developers to build complex web applications faster. Choosing symfony allows you to release your applications earlier, host and scale them without problem, and maintain them over time with no surprise

Symfony benefits

Dries made the following points about Symfony

• A robust, modern toolkit for today’s web
• Well-tested, open source code
• A healthy, welcoming community behind it

It’s like when we adopted jQuery, but for the backend!

Below is a short video to explain what this actually means for Drupal 8. You can also watch Dries’ full Keynote below to get the context.

Dries Buytaert Keynote

A large delegation from the DrupalCon Munich organising team are present at DrupalCon Denver.

We are all enthusiastic about the next DrupalCon, so if you have any questions or just want to meet us, we’d love to bump into you and talk you.

Even better, if you are interested in getting involved, we are keen to recruit new volunteers to help us make Munich a huge success.The following Munich volunteers are at DrupalCon

Local management team
Florian Loretan - @floretan (Germany)
Karsten Frohwein - @karstenfrohwein (Germany)

Volunteers (no particular order)
Ralf Hendel - @ralfhendel (Germany)
Daniel Kudwien - @tha_sun - Sun (Germany)
Jeffrey McGuire @horncologne - Jam (Germany)
Miro Dietiker @miro_dietiker (Switzerland)
Paul Johnson - @pdjohnson (UK)
Reinhard Gloggengiesser (Germany)
Carina Pellar - @CarinaPellar (Germany) - for Cocomore
Carsten Müller (Germany) - for Cocomore
Matts Hildén (Sweden) - for NodeOne
Larry Garfield (USA)
Cary Gordon

Drupal Association Staff
Marta Betts - @martabetts
Stephanie El-Hajj
Neil Kent

With luck the federal border agencies will go light Florian and let him into the USA. His bags will be bursting with thousands of specially produced DrupalCoasters. He may have some explaining to do.

We, the DrupalCon Munich team, want you to grab some and take weird and wonderful photos featuring them. Then post them on Twitter and Flickr to help spread the word about the next European DrupalCon.

For more information visit http://munich2012.drupal.org/news/grab-it-snap-it

Few people have realised that @pinterest is the world’s fastest growing social commerce platform. It’s so simple! All you need to do is ‘Pin’ your product page and include in the description of the pin a price. When you do so, the pin gets a ribbon in the top left with the price.