Submitted by Nik on
Day one of the Drupal Con in Szeged, Hungary. Morten and I made the initial keynote speech by Dries & Co. Well, almost. We were in the door about 4 seconds, there was some clapping, and we left. Couldn’t tell you why we were so late… ;)
Sam Boyer then presented a very decent overview of the Panels module, with some information about the direction of Panels 2 and what’s upcoming in version 3. The key fact that people are most likely hanging on for is the release date for Panels 2 under Drupal 6. Sam seems confident that the answer is something akin to “soon, I promise!” This is a Good Thing. Currently we’re developing a magazine website and using version 6, and really Panels 2 is the last great module that’s not working under that version.
One thing I picked up on was the proposed abstraction of the override functionality (node, taxonomy, etc) into a separate module. This is pretty smart thinking – when I give people a tour of the panels administration interface that powers the Curt Smith website, the override stuff is probably about 40% of the show.
As I write this paragraph, Rasmus Lerdorf is talking about some insane low level PHP optimisation stuff. Some of it I get, some of it is working at a level that is so low that I just can’t afford the brain cells to care about it. He makes a pretty convincing argument for this optimisation though, and points out that you’re basically an idiot if you don’t use opcode caching on your server. Ahem, no comment.
Rasmus also mentions how optimisation can have a positive effect on managing environmental damage – specifically he mentioned the ubiquitous kitten and its untimely demise due to environmental damage. I have taken this concept and run, coming up with the concept of a new unit of measurement for computing – “cycles per kitten”.
Next on the agenda (of most interest to me) is Emma Jane Hogbin’s small business overview, or Wolfgang’s rules module talk. Not sure which yet. More later.
Later: went to Emma Jane’s talk, which was very frank and it was most refreshing to see someone with such vigour and passion talk about her business and practises. Currently listening to ChX talking about menus. I have not a lot to say about that, as I understand very little…
Day one is a great start to an already cool ‘Con, so here’s looking forward to more of the same!