Langemarks Cafe - Still spilling the beans while boiling the ocean

Drupal Dangerous?

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 06:42:38 -0600

I made a comment to Peter Van Dijcks blog recently, and thought I'd post it here too. The discussion is about whether Drupal is to be considered dangerous to startups:

We’re having a “posture” contest here?
Assessing that Drupal is unfit for any serious venture calls for examples. I mean - Drupal ACTUALLY runs MTV UK, The ONION and several other large scale websites. IBM is working with Drupal, and so are other big shots.
I don’t think that such a comment is to be taken seriously.

That said. Drupal is NOT the cure all CMS (Whether C means Community, Collaboration or Content). It does have it’s drawbacks, and it is not easy to learn how to use to 100%.

Drupal can probably damage your start up, if you don’t know how the system AND the community works.
You will NEVER get your Usability issues addressed the way you want by the Drupal community. Drupal is 98% developers scratching their itches. They are smart geeks, but the approach to usability is only changing slowly. I know because I've been part of it since 2002, and I'm not a programmer but a communications guy and a strategic web consultant.
There have been several attempt at solving the usability problems in Drupal - and TOP GUN information architects and usability people have given their feedback. Some of this has been implemented, and more will in the future.
BUT - you cannot sit back and expect the Drupal community to implement all of your wishes within 3-6 months. It takes time time time - and some work behind the scenes. What you need to do, is to change the perception of the influential people in the Drupal community, which is hard work, OR you need to do it yourself/pay someone to do it - and show the improvements.
It is not a FLAW in Drupal - it is the way such a community works, and should work. If you expect it to work the way a commercial company works, the flaw is in your thinking.

So my understanding is: "Not understanding how OSS communities work - considered harmful to startups depending on Open Source!"
And that is not a question mark!

Drupal-COBRA movement

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:17:00 -0600

Bert wrote this:

Drupal Cobra

If Dries and Gunnar would cross post this blog posting, it would start the first Cobra-Drupal movement.

Well, apart from the fact that Dries doenst life in Brussels, Gunnar not in Copenhagen and I dont life in Amsterdam.

Update: Judging from the comments I get, I think a lot of people dont know which CoBrA I meant!

I crosspostet!

Redesigning Social Media website

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 02:34:29 -0600

I have launched my - not finished - Drupal 5 based website for my small strategic consulting business: Social Media.
So now I'm live on Drupal 5.
Cool!

Drupal hosted by Wikipedia founders pet project..?

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:51:19 -0600

No I'm not quite dead yet.
Wikipedia founder remakes Web publishing economics.
Very interesting I'd say - especially this part:

"Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday his for-profit company, Wikia Inc., is ready to give away -- for free -- all the software, computing, storage and network access that Web site builders need to create community collaboration sites."

and this:

"Wikia aims to become is a clearinghouse of free software.

Armchair's software is the first of hundreds of freely licensed software packages to be hosted by the company in the near future, Wales said. These could include popular open-source publishing software such as WordPress and Drupal. Consumers would then have a single password across all sites."

When the software is free like that - what will be the business model of hosting services in the years to come?

Hiatus

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 05:01:35 -0600

No - I'm not closing the site down. I just realize that I don't have enough drive, time and energy to keep it going right now. I have other priorities, and I will decide how to keep this going. Until then, I will remain silent for a while. The feeds will keep working, but I will probably turn off comments in a few days.

World dominance time?

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:51:50 -0600

The more I work with the new Drupal 5.0 beta2.0 - the more I envision the total success of Drupal in the new year. I have installed and worked with Organic Groups CCK and Views and some add on modules to these, and even though I have a little trouble with Panels, I have them working under 4.7.4 - so here's my verdict: It will totally change the world of Open Source CMS systems. We should build an install which has a standard installation of above modules - and no other CMS - Open Source or otherwise - can match the versatility, power and ease of administration.
I see a need for some education, but that is all.
If we think we had success with the previous versions, wait and see what happens when the world wakes up and discovers the real POWER of Drupal. It is extremely powerful to be able to build a list or a table of certain content and show it in a panel on a front page or similar. It is extremely powerful to be able to - by configuration - add new content types. I build a "task list" content type in 20 minutes with owner, status, type etc. I then build a view to show a list in a table.
I'm thrilled.
I have not yet found a way to "drag and drop" build a form - which will create a query to fill a table of results. I also wish I had a way of selecting a row in the results table - and have a detailed view of this item show up under or above the list. That would be REALLY cool.
I think there's a lot of potential in building this type of "design pattern"/"best practices" LEGO BLOCK type of site building tools. And I especially believe in the future of data oriented interfaces - with lots of interesting data to be dug into and discovered. Data mining and discovery is a big thing.
If that is true - then we will also need some visualization tools - like the social network analysis tool. Graphing search results is a big thing.
But that's a different story altogether.

Drupal 5.0 beta 2 out and kicking some serious a..

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 01:56:10 -0600

Last night the second beta of Drupal 5.0 was released.
I'm so thrilled to see how Drupal is moving into new territory. It is a much slicker install - with the install script. All you have to know is the name of your database and the login - and it will install itself.
When installed you'll likely want to see the new default theme - Garland - which is a lot cooler than the previous one, and which makes Drupal look as cool as the best. It even has a "color schemer" build in.
5.0 also made improvements in the admin interface - to the degree that anyone who knows his way around the old interface - will be totally lost. But the good thing is - it will work for new administrators. As I was a little involved in the early stages of designing this thing I must say that I'm happy with the outcome.
Actually I'm a little scared that Drupal will be the CMS of choice of 2007, and that the popularity will explode even more. It worries me because I don't know how the community will absorb all the newbie inquiries.
I hope we find a way to deal with the percieved hostility of some of the core coders.
I for one think that the core developers should not feel obliged to answer any newbie questions at all. They do their excellent job elsewhere.

social software trends

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 14:40:11 -0500

What works and what not - in the user generated content space:

social software trends - ... I got this from the summary of the Future of Web Apps Conference' User generated content and social software trends This is a bit of a catchall, but I’d like to list what has been working and not working in the user generated content space.Not working:Requiring participation from square 1. Not all users need to participate to generate social ...A Sack of Seattle [Technorati - Social Software]

Futurelab on learning, social software and games

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 14:39:24 -0500

Good post with some links to presentations about social software, learning and games:

Futurelab on learning, social software and games - ... [ Futurelab] Futurelab is a not-for-profit organisation in the UK, passionate about transforming the way people learn. Tapping into the huge potential offered by digital and other technologies, it is “developing innovative learning resources and practices that support new approaches to education for the 21st century.” Three reports and two ...Putting people first [Technorati - Social Software]

The End of Open Source? - The Beginning of Open Services

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 14:29:20 -0500

When our software lives on the web - will it spell the end of Open Source? Asks a blogger:

The End of Open Source? - The Beginning of Open Services - ... Open source was fine for desktop computers, but what if the network becomes the computers, then it matters less that we have Linux on our computers, instead we need to make sure the services are open! Join the debate on this topic at OpenBusines.cc: The rise of the ‘network as the computer’, web 2.0, and social software architectures - ...P2P Foundation [Technorati - Social Software]

Social Networks, Innovation and Corporate Blogging

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 14:25:04 -0500

Short reading about blogs as hubs for social networks of innovation.

Social Networks, Innovation and Corporate Blogging - ... This is an attempt at synthesising some thought streams from various blog posts that I've read in the last few days and that I have had, concerning the topics mentioned in this post title. Corporate Blogging:Intel has just got in on the Corporate Blogging trend, launching an officially sanctioned blog that supposedly represents Intel's IT ...Transforming Business Weblog [Technorati - Social Software]

Home from EUROIA

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 15:01:57 -0500

I came home from the EUROIA conference the night between Sunday and Monday. I need some time to digest.
We got left in the airport, as the plane was overbooked, so I and three others rented a Mercedes and drove all the way from Berlin to Copenhagen during the night.

After being rejected at the airport by SAS and Lufthansa - who overbooked our flight - we rented a Mercedes and drove home during the night. But first we had to get used to the GPS......

Will be back with more on the conference.

Back from DrupalCon and BarCamp

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:03:19 -0500

Thanks to everybody I met with at DrupalCon and BarCamp. It was a BLAST!
I so enjoyed meeting in person the people that I have been in contact with over the past four years in the Drupal loop.
I also enjoyed meeting a lot of new people.

As Boris Mann quoted someone for saying: "It was like a fast forward mailing list". Yes reality really rocks!

I'm going to blog in danish about Drupalcon on drupaldanmark.dk in the coming days.

Morten is also blogging.

I'm going to ajust my business strategy a little, to be in line with what I now believe to be my future, and the future of the web.

I'm also going to do a little in ajusting my Drupal engagement - to reflect what I believe will be the best use of my time.

There is so much cool stuff coming up in Drupal-land. The agenda is changing, and it is cool to see. Interface, semantic metadata, social relations, identity, applications development foundation framework. You name it.
Drupal is coming of age, and moving in the right direction. I AM THRILLED.

The Drupal Association initiative is taking off - and I think it will be of great value to the community and the future of Drupal. I aired some concerns, but over all I think Drupal can't do without it - in the long time perspective.

My small video clips will probably go online one of the days in one form or another. More about that later.

The whole experience was great. We had so many interesting talks, chats, presentations etc - and we went out and had dinner and beers at night, and continued to build community and relations. Drupal is really also a bunch of great friends. I really love that.

Ninjas, Information Architects and Drupal

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:28:16 -0500

Fast Company runs an article on "The Jobs of Web 2.0" - which happens to resonate with much of my world nowadays. If only I were a programmer.

New skills are needed when the whole idea is to build applications on the web - suitable for people to use right away - to build networks, communities of practice and to leverage their combined power to reach ambitious goals.

Cool to see Fast Company mention Drupal - en passant.

Open Source and Beer

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 04:56:49 -0500

Drupal is Open Source, and it is developed and maintained by a large community of dedicated people. In Denmark some people developed an open source beer last year. But actually the concept of open sourcing beer is as old as industrial beer production. The Carlsberg breweries discovered how to isolate the yeast type that was best to use in a controlled brewing process - in 1883. The yeast called "Saccharomyces carlsbergensis" or "Saccharomyces uvarum" was given away to anyone interested, following the orders of the brewer - J.C. Carlsberg. In a traditional industrial setting - this yeast would have been patented or otherwise sought protected as an industrial secret. Had it been so - most modern breweries would have ceased to exist - because they would not have been able to produce a standardized product.

So in that way Open source is older than you may think.