Photo by galawebdesign - http://www.flickr.com/photos/galawebdesign/2315810343/in/pool-644862@N21/

It wasn’t so long ago that Drupalcon was in the upstairs rooms at the BCEC while AIIM met downstairs in the cavernous expo hall. The contrast between the suits and huge corporate sponsors at AIIM and the open source designer/developer culture of Drupalcon was pretty palpable that year, and the two felt worlds apart.

Now AIIM has launched some online communities of their own and they appear to be using Drupal Commons to do so, with some excellent theming (and I assume development) work by ForumOne Communications:

Enterprise 2.0 Community for AIIM on Drupal Commons (cropped)

Check out Drupal Commons and the AIIM Communities for a sense of what it can do:

• Enterprise 2.0
• Capture
• ERM
• Sharepoint

Yes, there really is an AIIM Microsoft Sharepoint community running on Drupal Commons. Not sure I would have predicted that at Drupalcon 2008.

One of the favorite keynotes of any Drupalcon of course is the State of Drupal address. Here’s video of Dries from Szeged:

(I took the one supplied by archive.org and cut out the first 37 minutes, including Drupalcon logistics – 10% female attendance!- and a welcome from the vice-mayor of Szeged, Sandor Nagy, who revealed that Szeged is open source friendly but unfortunately uses Joomla! to manage their web pages).

I love Dries’ approach. Most of the talk is structured around this list of the five things preventing Drupal from achieving world domination:

1. Slow porting of contributed modules
2. Learning curve
3. Restricted access to Drupal talent
4. Drupal.org Experience
5. Lack of Features

He basically walks through each, commenting on what might be going on and how the Drupal community at large can address the issue.

Highlights:

• Seems clear that more features need to move into core. Some (more) aspects of pathauto, CCK, and Views into core, perhaps a WYSIWYG editor (though Dries said he isn’t quite ready to pick one here). Looking at what modules most people install helps determine where core should go.
• Multimedia handling and file handling generally – cleaning up the relationship between files and nodes.
• Usability improvements – here the focus is on Drupal.org as well as Drupal itself. The default install and administer experience is still too confusing. There’s an initial step for first time users that is still too high.
• RDF/Semantic Web – moving beyond the assumption that output = xhtml (This was also a theme at Drupalcon Boston)

When will Drupal 7 be frozen? When it is ready to be frozen. Not likely before January 2009, maybe not even then.

However, based on the twitterstream (hashtag #gsp), sounds like lots of interesting presentations there:

• Charlene Li on the Future of Social Networks (CNet coverage)
• Charlene Li on the Future of Social Networks (the Slides on Slideshare)
• Beth Kanter’s notes (and her own slides on “Giving Good Poke: Using Social Apps and Media for Social Good)
• Chris Messina on Diso (slides)
• Slideshare tag gspwest2008 and tag gsp seem the best places to look for presentations to be uploaded
• Jeremiah Owyang’s notes on David Glazer’s presentation Open Social

I know I’m also missing lots of others blogging the conference – links in the comments appreciated.

Drupalcon Boston 2008 takes place from March 3, 2008 to March 6, 2008 at the Boston Convention and Expo Center. There will also be a Drupal Code Sprint on March 7 at the Stata Center at MIT in Cambridge.

Drupalcon is the twice-yearly gathering of Drupalers to learn about, discuss & advance Drupal, and to network with other Drupal community members. With sessions targeted at everyone from novice to expert attendees, Drupalcon is where you go to advance your understanding and use of Drupal.

Note: Deadline is Today, Feb 11th, for submitting proposals.

AIIM Expo will be held at the same time and location, and Drupalcon attendees can visit the AIIM Expo Hall. For full access to AIIM Expo, separate registration is required.

Tracks & Sessions:

• Marketing and business
• Design and user experience
• Site building
• Community and core
• Showcase and case study contest

Review the conference program and submit your own session proposal.

Conference Events:

• Job fair
• Industry networking
• Conference Social at FELT

Cost & Registration:
The cost to attend Drupalcon Boston is $195. This covers four full days of intensive sessions and tutorials, networking and social events, lunch and a t-shirt.

To register for Drupalcon, sign-up at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org.

Sponsorship:
Affordable sponsorship packages are available for companies who would like to show their support of the Drupal Association and receive visibility in front of hundreds of Drupal developers and enthusiasts. To learn more about sponsorships visit http://boston2008.drupalcon.org.