I'm guessing most people in the attendance at Dries Buytaert’s session, RIP Content Management System, myself included, don’t require a Drupal pitch to understand the benefits of going open source. That said, it didn’t detract from the geek thrill of listening to Buytaert, creator of Drupal, plead it’s case. The room - one of the ballrooms on the main level of the convention centre - was packed to capacity and despite complaints on Twitter about the lack of content and new information, nobody left. Buytaert took us through the ever expanding list of government organizations, corporations, and institutions who build their sites using Drupal. Upgrades introduced with Drupal 6, Drupal’s scalability, and the upcoming release of Drupal 7 were also touched upon. I was very pleased to get the opportunity to speak with Buytaert afterwards and came away with some useful information that will be of great help with a project I’m currently involved with at UVic.
Too bad about Monday’s keynote address! I think we learned at this keynote that a popular interviewer and a brilliant, visionary mind do not necessarily make for a great presentation. I’m not exactly sure what happened but of the 3,000 people who packed the main exhibit hall to listen to Evan Williams discuss Twitter, the majority had vacated by the time the address hit the half-way point. Things did start off with a bang with Williams announcing the new Twitter’s new ‘@’ platform - integration for websites called @Anywhere. The rest of the interview went pretty smoothly with Williams talking about his involvement in Twitter’s continuing development and strategy; his thoughts on building the company both externally and internally; his view of the Internet as a facilitator of the democratization of information and the role he expects Twitter will play.
Finished off my day at the Adobe All-Access Happy Hour with some yummy food, free drinks, tons of give-aways and a team of Adobe experts on hand to demo the latest updates and new products. Updates and new products included Flash Mobile development tool and Browser Lab which allow you to overlay opaque renderings of web pages in different browsers. How awesome is that?
What happened at the end of the day was probably the highlight of my entire SXSW experience, and similar to our trip to the Olympics, it had nothing to do with the core focus of the event, but with music. Half way through the day I noticed on Facebook that Billy Bragg was playing a surprise show at the British Music Embassy that night! Unfortunately I already knew I was too pooped to make it to the late hour of midnight when he would be taking the stage. That said after the Adobe Happy Hour wrapped up, I headed over to the BME on the off chance that I might catch a sound check and guess who was there, hanging out! Now that I think about it, perhaps running into Billy Bragg is appropriate to the conference…in addition to being one of my fave musicians he is also my social media hero. Check out his NoBonus4RBS Facebook page for an example of his handiwork.
He may not be a techie but he’s got the social part down pat.
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