One of the biggest unknowns for those of us that live in the north central United States...how many Drupal enthusiasts are there in our area?  Not knowing the answer to this question has been bothering me.  I have also been a little disturbed seeing the map so empty of a Drupal user group for my part of the region.  So I'm hoping those of you that are Drupal users from South Dakota and bordering areas will join me and others in the new South Dakota Drupal User Group at groups.drupal.org.

This is a group for those in the state of South Dakota and and the border areas of South Dakota who are interested in Drupal! The number of Drupal users in our area may be small, but our numbers are steadily increasing. Lets get together and chat about all things Drupal whether you are a Drupal user, developer, or Web designer.

Could we have enough people for a Drupal meet-up?  Stay tuned...

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.

Yesterday, I spent my time at the Techknowlogy Summit in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We don't get too many technology or geek conventions in the state of South Dakota, so I didn't want this one go to by without a mention here at CMS Report.

Keynote Speaker

The Techknowlogy Summit is a trade show with presentations by both national and regional leaders in technology. The keynote speaker for the show was Kodak Company's Bill Lloyd, CTO, discussing his company's transformation for meeting the demands of the digital age. It was an interesting discussion on the challenges a century old company faces when needing to shift their primary products (film) over to new digital products. Kodak's current modernization efforts began around 2001 and is expected to be near completion in 2007. It was an interesting story, a story that looks likely to have a happy ending for the company and its investors.

Breakout Sessions

The show also had some breakout sessions. I attended a couple Web oriented sessions as well as a session on project management (well done). Regarding the Internet focused sessions, all the speakers were knowledgeable but I'm not convinced all the speakers fully understood who was in their audience. The make-up of the audience was made up by about half developers and half small business people (many of them small retail owners). Naturally, a business technology show should have made sure those talks had the small business owners in mind.

However, the talks were more geared toward the CEO crowd. When the speakers found that the audience didn't contain the companies with the huge IT budgets, the speakers then shifted their talk toward the more comfortable IT people. From my perspective, the small business people were squirming in their chairs and suddenly felt out of place. Oh, how often we IT people spend so much time talking about what we know and so little time listening to the needs of potential customers!