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.

"Are you a Mambo user in Houston, TX? Do you want to be?? There is a new Meetup..."

Read more...

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

"So 1 day after the announcement, 104 people have signed up that they're coming to WordCamp and 58 have joined the mailing list. Wow! Thank you, as this has been a huge help in determining what sort of resources we're going to need to pull this thing off. Now the big challenge is finding a venue appropiate for the event, feel free to ping me if you have any ideas."