meetup

Earlier this year, SilverStripe core developer Ingo Schommer and German tech-writer Steven Broschart wrote a magnificent book for SilverStripe CMS developers.  When the book was released, SilverStripe's Sigurd Magnusson stated that this book "provides a more structured and comprehensive set of SilverStripe technical documentation than what is currently available at doc.silverstripe.com".  But there is one tiny problem with the book.  If your only language is English then you likely will have difficulty reading the 450 pages in SilverStripe – Das umfassende Handbuch because the book is written in German!

English reading SilverStripe developers will be glad to note that an English version of the book is expected to arrive in August of this year.  How do I know? Just minutes before this post was released, Sigurd posted the details on his blog:

One of the world's largest book publishers, Wiley, has agreed to license our 450-page German SilverStripe book (pictured) from the German publisher and translate it into English. The effort of updating and translating the book is being done by our core developers, including Ingo Schommer who co-authored the initial book.

The book is targeted at professional developers with existing knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and object-oriented PHP5. It provides insight into our web development philosophy and explains the theory underpinning our Sapphire framework and our CMS. It balances this with frequent practical code examples, all of which will be offered for download to make learning quicker.

The aim of the book is to teach the reader how to create websites with rich, slick, and sophisticated features, customise the CMS administration interface heavily, and create extension modules.

The book will sell for £29.95 (a little over USD40.00) online and in major bookstores worldwide.

Amazon has already reserved a place for the English version of the SilverStripe book on its United States site as well as the UK site.

With the release of the new book in English, SilverStripe fans and developers should have something to celebrate in the coming months.  Let's also not forget that the SilverStripe staff are planning some great SilverStripe meetups in both the United States and United Kingdom. The SilverStripe staff wants to meet face-to-face with developers and organizations interested in SilverStripe's software and business. Sounds like a good opportunity if you're a developer wanting to learn more about SilverStripe.

Although I had a lot of fun this summer, I allowed a lot of commitments to slip though my fingers.  Many of those commitments were made here at CMS Report.  The following is a list of promises that I haven't kept.  My apologies to those that had expected more.

• I never got around to reviewing Barrie M. North's Joomla! A User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website (link via Amazon Associate).  My apologies to the author as well as the publicist.

• After all the experimentation and posts I did before the official release of Drupal 6, I never got around to discussing my experiences with the CMS after Drupal 6.0 was officially released.  For now, let me just say that it has been an experience running a site on Drupal 6 with some of the more essential third-party modules still under development (Views, Panels, Subscriptions, etc).

• Elgg's Dave Tosh and I still need to complete that email interview on Elgg 1.0.  Dave was busy and was at first the one slow to respond to emails.  However, during the past two weeks, I've been the been the busy one and the ball is still on my side of the court.

• After two years, I and Deane Barker (Gadgetopia and Blend Interactive) still need to get together for a geek chat.  Depending on the time, I think we owe each other a beer or a cup of coffee.

Last night, I took the opportunity to spend some time with the Drupal community at a Twin-Cities Drupal Meetup. My trip to Minneapolis for the meetup was on the tail-end of a 1300 mile drive. Those miles covered a drive that looped me south to the state of Missouri and then eventually back north. My activities during the past week ranged from sleeping in the Missouri woods at an old scout cabin with outhouse included...to having conversations in Minnesota with some of Drupal's brightest and most active members. This was a week of contrasts for me and now that I'm back home, I can't help but acknowledge that there was something different about attending a Drupal meetup in comparison to other meetups, workshops, and conferences I've attended in my fields of interest, information technology and atmospheric science.

It didn't dawn on me until during my drive back to South Dakota on what made the evening so unique to me. The people at this Drupal meetup were all happy. I truly can't tell you the last time I've attended something IT related where someone didn't ruin the day or evening for me with their negativity. Seeing the smile on the faces of others is unfortunately something many of us don't get to see often enough. I imagine that not all Drupal events are this pleasant, but it's going to be difficult in the future for me to find an excuse for not spending more time with other Drupal fans.

Dean Barker from Gadgetopia is throwing the idea of a meetup for bloggers in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Dean writes:

This is not a large-scale formal endeavor. We’re just looking to take over a coffeehouse for a couple of hours and discuss the state of blogging in Sioux Falls (and the surrounding area), and the common problems we face.

Personally, I like the idea of an informal endeavor as I often prefer round-table discussions over formal presentations. If you have an interest in attending such a meetup, you can either send Dean an e-mail at editors@gadgetopia.com and/or send him a comment from his original post.

Posted at Joomla.org:

"An event not to be missed by Joomla! users and professionals in the United Kingdom, is being held in Leeds at the end of the month.

JoomlaDay UK 2006, has been put together by Brian Teeman, and features a host of top-level speakers including Joomla! lead developer Johan Janssens. Johan will be sharing some "gems" about the forthcoming 1.5 beta release."

Read more