September 2008

The magical hour, Acquia launches Acquia Drupal and Acquia Network

Like many in the community my first exposure to Acquia came back in the first part of the year. It was an exciting time for the Drupal community and what we learned at Drupalcon in Boston suggested many great things to come. At the time I was running an independent Drupal development shop. The news that an organization like Acquia was going to come to the Drupal ecosystem was great news. Some had early concerns that Acquia might compete in the site development space. These fears turned out to be ill-founded and the entry of Acquia into the marketspace a great boon for small shops like ours. Now the future held the promise that we could continue to work on the development we were doing and help customers build great sites, while having a solid organization we could hand off day-to-day support on the back end.

Green conference bags

One of the popular mainstream media items at the moment is shining some light on the "green" reusable bags that many stores and other places have these days. See it turns out that if you use a bag that is made to be reused just once it is a terrible waste of energy and generates a mountain of additional waste. However in many cases such as Friday's Wall Street Journal article on the matter talk in the same breath about how many conferences are giving these bags away. What is incongruous about this is that it completely misses the point that the conferences would not be giving away the light-weight grocery-store bags but much heavier, more costly and resource intensive bags. And that instead of attendees taking an easily reusable bag away they would have once taken a bag that could only be added to the closet or recycled.

We exist...

You wouldn't know it from the dearth of blogging going on here but indeed we do exist. And now, only several years after the house we live in was built, Google Maps thinks we exist too. No more do we have to explain to delivery drivers that they can't use Google Maps or they'll end up on the other side of the park with no way to get here. More soon on life, universe and yes, even Drupal but for now we're enjoying the first rain on this beautiful Saturday morning.

What's Next? Acquia and Drupal social publishing

A year ago we were about to set out on our family version of Travels with Charlie. At the time our thinking was that we would be looking to move out of Southern Nevada in a couple of years. On our return to Southern Nevada we talked and chewed on the options. Finding no great reason to wait we packed up and moved north. Along with the move came a change in my focus. I made a great move from the world of running an information technology department to running a small Drupal shop. Along the way I've had many great experiences. From traveling to Drupal camps to having visited Boston for the first time for Drupalcon last spring.