Journal tags: drupal

I was in Boston last week to give a talk. I ended up giving four.

I was there for An Event Apart which was, as always, excellent. I opened up day two with my talk, The Way Of The Web.

This was my second time giving this talk at An Event Apart—the first time was in Seattle a few months back. It was also my last time giving this talk at An Event Apart—I shan’t be speaking at any of the other AEAs this year, alas. The talk wasn’t recorded either so I’m afraid you kind of had to be there (unless you know of another conference that might like to have me give that talk, in which case, hit me up).

After giving my talk in the morning, I wasn’t quite done. I was on a panel discussion with Rachel about CSS grid. It turned out to be a pretty good format: have one person who’s a complete authority on a topic (Rachel), and another person who’s barely starting out and knows just enough to be dangerous (me). I really enjoyed it, and the questions from the audience prompted some ideas to form in my head that I should really note down in a blog post before they evaporate.

The next day, I went over to MIT to speak at Design 4 Drupal. So, y’know, technically I’ve lectured at MIT now.

I wasn’t going to do the same talk as I gave at An Event Apart, obviously. Instead, I reprised the talk I gave earlier this at Webstock: Taking Back The Web. I thought it was fitting given how much Drupal’s glorious leader, Dries, has been thinking about, writing about, and building with the indie web.

I really enjoyed giving this talk. The audience were great, and they had lots of good questions afterwards. There’s a video, which is basically my voice dubbed over the slides, followed by a good half of questions afterwards.

When I was done there, after a brief excursion to the MIT bookstore, I went back across the river from Cambridge to Boston just in time for that evening’s Boston CSS meetup.

Lea had been in touch to ask if I would speak at this meet-up, and I was only too happy to oblige. I tried doing something I’ve never done before: a book reading!

No, not reading from Going Offline, my current book which I should encouraging people to buy. Instead I read from Resilient Web Design, the free online book that people literally couldn’t buy if they wanted to. But I figured reading the philosophical ramblings in Resilient Web Design would go over better than trying to do an oral version of the service worker code in Going Offline.

I read from chapters two (Materials), three (Visions), and five (Layers) and I really, really liked doing it! People seemed to enjoy it too—we had questions throughout.

And with that, my time in Boston was at an end. I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning to get the plane back to England where Ampersand awaited. I wasn’t speaking there though. I thoroughly enjoyed being an attendee and absorbing the knowledge bombs from the brilliant speakers that Rich assembled.

The next place I’m speaking will much closer to home than Boston: I’ll be giving a short talk at Oxford Geek Nights on Wednesday. Come on by if you’re in the neighbourhood.

I’m about to have a crazy few days that will see me bouncing between Brighton and Amsterdam.

It starts tomorrow. I’m flying to Amsterdam in the morning and speaking at this Icons event in the afternoon about digital preservation and long-term thinking.

Then, the next morning, I’ll be opening up the inaugural HTML Special which is a new addition the CSS Day conference. Each talk on Thursday will cover one HTML element. I am honoured to speaking about the A element. Here’s the talk description:

The world exploded into a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else…

Enquire within upon everything.

I’ve been working all out to get this talk done and I finally wrapped it up today. Right now, I feel pretty happy with it, but I bet I’ll change that opinion in the next 48 hours. I’m pretty sure that this will be one of those talks that people will either love or hate, kind of like my 2008 dConstruct talk, The System Of The World.

After CSS Day, I’ll be heading back to Brighton on Saturday, June 18th to play a Salter Cane gig in The Greys pub. If you’re around, you should definitely come along—not only is it free, but there will be some excellent support courtesy of Jon London, and Lucas and King.

Then, the next morning, I’ll be speaking at DrupalCamp Brighton, opening up day two of the event. I won’t be able to stick around long afterwards though, because I need to skidaddle to the airport to go back to Amsterdam!

Google are having their Progressive Web App Dev Summit there on Monday on Tuesday. I’ll be moderating a panel on the second day, so I’ll need to pay close attention to all the talks. I’ll be grilling representatives from Google, Samsung, Opera, Microsoft, and Mozilla. Considering my recent rants about some very bad decisions on the part of Google’s Chrome team, it’s very brave of them to ask me to be there, much less moderate a panel in public.

You can still register for the event, by the way. Like the Salter Cane gig, it’s free. But if you can’t make it along, I’d still like to know what you think I should be asking the panelists about.

Got a burning question for browser/device makers? Write it down, post it somewhere on the web with a link back to this post, and then send me a web mention (there’s a form for you to paste in the URL at the bottom of this post).

The last time I was in Chicago the weather was rather lovely. I spent some time walking around, gaping up at the skyscrapers and exploring the city.

This time the weather has been a bit chillier. My attempts to venture out and explore the city on foot ended in defeat as I was beaten back to the warmer confines of the hotel playing host to Drupalcon.

My first day, as anticipated, was spent hunting down a mythical FedEx/Kinkos so I could print out workshop materials—paper-based exercises and HTML5 pocketbooks. With that task achieved—at no minor expense; charging for ink on paper is clearly a lucrative business model—imagine my surprise when I turned up the next day for my workshop and I was handed the printouts of my workshop exercises; the same materials I had been told I would have to print out for myself. Clearly, I didn’t get the memo …possibly because said memo was never conjured into existence.

Apart from that breakdown in communication, the HTML5 workshop went smoothly. Better than smoothly. The attendees were asking excellent questions and some great discussions emerged. Running a workshop can be very tiring but it can also be very rewarding.

The next morning I attended Dries’s pep-talk keynote. It was like experiencing a milder, kinder more collaborative version of Scientology (I kid, I kid; ‘twas a lovely State of the Union address).

Part of the keynote was a compilation of answers to the question “What is Drupal?” put to a backing track of a suitably schmaltzy motivational song (David Brent would’ve been jealous). As I watched the quotes appear on screen, I noticed that one of them was attributed to me. Except… I have no recollection of ever saying or writing something along the lines of:

Drupal makes complex things easy and easy things complex.

Sure enough, it turns out that the quote was misattributed to me.

I guess it sounds like something I could have said. In fact, I could justify the paraphrased quote thusly: If you want to get a database-driven site up and running quickly, you can do that with Drupal simply by pressing a few buttons and pulling the software equivalent of levers. However, if you want to edit, for example, the way that a particular form field has been marked up, or you’d like to remove some superfluous div elements …well, for that you need to really know what you’re doing.

Hence, Drupal makes complex things (like setting up a website) easy and easy things (like editing some markup) complex.

I had quite a few conversations with people about the nature of frameworks and Drupal in particular. Personally, it doesn’t appeal to me, not just because it doesn’t output the kind of markup that I’d like. It doesn’t appeal to me simply because it outputs any markup at all. I prefer something more like Django that takes care of abstracting away all that server-side complexity and database work, but leaves it entirely up to you to create the front-end (well, except for the admin interface).

But that’s just me. And I totally understand that for other people, that just isn’t a priority and Drupal’s ability to deliver an entire site, front-end included, is a godsend. Different frameworks will appeal to different people—the trick is in finding a framework that matches the way that you approach a problem. A framework is, after all, supposed to be a tool to help you get work done faster. No one framework is suitable for all projects and no one framework can possibly hope to appeal to everyone.

Yet, at Drupalcon, I got the impression that Drupal might be attempting to do just that. Rather than focusing on the kind of sites for which Drupal is particularly well-suited, the goal appears to be nothing less than total domination of the web. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. If you try to please literally everybody, I think you’ll probably end up pleasing nobody.

I did hear rumblings of the possibility of changing Drupal so that there would be no markup in its core release. Rather, different distributions (built on top of core) could be used to create the right kind of site; one distribution for news sites, another distribution for company websites, and so on. I like that idea. It would also make it easier for Drupal to adapt its output to different devices—something that Dries touched on his keynote.

Meanwhile Jen is spearheading an effort to update Drupal’s output to include HTML5 additions—new input types for forms, sectioning elements for content, and so on. She’s beginning by proposing some design principles. I believe this is a thoroughly excellent approach. At Jen’s Drupalcon core conversation I offered my feedback (and encouragement) on how the design principles are shaping up.

For the rest of Drupalcon, I found plenty to keep my interest. There was a significant design portion to the proceedings so even a non-Drupal person like me could find some great talks, like Samantha’s superb round-up of design techniques—I’ll be bringing some of those gems back to the Clearlefties.

My final night in Chicago was nigh-on perfect. Adrian had been in touch to let me know that his band would be playing in the historic Green Mill. I rustled up a little posse of designers and we spent the evening listening to superb gypsy jazz in an amazing venue that was once a favourite haunt of Al Capone (rumour has it that the grumpy doorman is related). A nightcap of beer and cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger at The Billy Goat Tavern was the coup de grace.

Now I bid farewell to Chicago and hello to Austin, where the weather is significantly warmer.

I’ve been back in Brighton for just a couple of days and now I’m about to embark on a fairly lengthy trip away to the States.

Tomorrow I’m flying to a somewhat chilly Chicago. I’ve only been there once before, but I absolutely loved it. The architecture! The hot dogs! Cheeseborger! Cheeseborger! Cheeseborger!

I’m going there for Drupalcon. I’ll be leading an HTML5 workshop on Monday. I’d love to try to Abe Froman my way into the Web Science Workshop the day before, but I’ll probably be too busy finding somewhere to print off workshop materials (a service the conference organisers are unwilling to provide …it’s like the opposite of how Sophie runs UX London).

Right about the time that Drupalcon is wrapping up, I’ll head down to Austin for the annual geek pilgrimage to South By Southwest Interactive. I should really pay close attention Tantek’s SXSW packing and check list.

This year, I’m not giving a presentation or speaking on a panel so I can relax and enjoy myself. If you’re heading to Southby, I look forward to sharing a Shiner Bock or three—one of the reasons I like going is not just to see people I haven’t seen in ages, but also to meet new people who equally geeky about the web.

After the craziness of Austin, I’m going to unwind for a while with the in-laws down in Saint Augustine, Florida, which should be nice and relaxing.

After that, I’m off to Portland, Oregon; a place to which I’ve never been but about which I’ve heard plenty of good things. There’s geek meet up planned for March 24th. Come along for a beer and a chat.

Finally, I’ll finish up in Seattle for the first Event Apart of the year. I have no doubt that the conference will be excellent, as usual. I just hope that the presentation I’ve got planned can meet the high standards set by the other speakers.

If you’re going to be in any of those places—Chicago, Austin, Saint Augustine, Portland, or Seattle—I look forward to seeing you there.

I’ve been on a little trip to Copenhagen. Usually when I go to Denmark, it’s for Reboot but alas, there is no Reboot this year. Instead, I was there for Drupalcon.

I have to admit, it was quite a surprise to be asked to speak at a Drupal event. After all, I don’t use the Drupal framework. To be fair, I don’t use any framework—though I did dabble with Django once. Clearleft is a backend-agnostic company: we do UX, IA, front-end, but we’ve deliberately avoided committing to one particular server-side solution.

Anyway, I was kinda nervous about addressing a large group of programmers devoted to a PHP framework that I’m not that familiar with. I needn’t have worried. Everyone was incredibly welcoming and I got a very warm reception.

I had been asked along to speak about HTML5 but rather than just run through a whole bunch of features in the spec, I thought it would be more interesting to talk about why features have been added to HTML5. So I concentrated on the design principles driving the development of the specification.

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. The whole thing was streamed live and it’s all been recorded and posted online.

The Drupal community is clearly very vibrant: the 1000+ people gathered in Copenhagen were very enthusiastic about their chosen platform. That said, I did sense some frustration from the theming community—it isn’t always the easiest to change the markup and CSS that’s output by Drupal. This is something that Dries acknowledged in his keynote and people like Jen Simmons are fighting the good fight to improve Drupal’s front-end output.

The Drupal community also know how to party. This was the first conference I’ve been to that had its own beer; the rather excellent Awesomesauce from the world-renowned Mikkeller.

All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. And I had enough time before my flight back to Blighty to nip across to Malmö in Sweden, where Emil showed me the sights.

Then it was time to catch a ludicrously comfy train across a remarkable bridge, past a stunning wind farm to the snazilly-designed airport to catch my flight home.