Drupal

Occasionally known as Gerhard Killesreiter, Killes is a resident of the town of Freiburg (in Baden-Württemberg), and is also one of the oldest, most-valued, and most central members of the Drupal developer community. Seeing that I was passing through his neck of the woods, I was lucky enough to get a hold of Killes, and to meet him in person for the first time. Despite his fierce reputation as a "blunt, rude newbie-killer" when online, Killes is actually a very friendly and easy-going guy in real life, and he was more than happy to take me out for a tour of his town, and for some dinner and drinks this evening.

When I met John and Matt, back at DrupalCon Sunnyvale in March, they were still in the final stages of writing Pro Drupal Development. But now it's out. And there's no doubt at all: this is the book on Drupal. It's so good, it even scored a Slashdot review (and that's no small feat). This book really does have everything the professional Drupal developer needs to know. Pereonally, I like the final chapters most (on security and performance), and I'm confident that they'll be a reference asset to me for years to come. Got the book today in Boston, as it will undoubtedly be more expensive back home than it is here in the USA.

A few days ago, I e-mailed my friend Moshe Weitzman (one of the people that I met at DrupalCon Sunnyvale, back in March), to let him know that I'd be coming to his home town of Boston soon. Well, as it turned out, the Boston Drupal Users' Group (Boston DUG) organised their monthly meetup for tonight! Moshe, of course, was nice enough to invite me along for the evening. So after finishing my jetlag duty today, I headed over to the Berkman Center at Harvard University, to meet and greet the Drupallers of the city of Boston, and to see what's going on Drupal-wise in this part of the world. Oh yeah — and also to catch up on the goss from (unfortunately it was too-far and too-bad-timing for me to attend) DrupalCon Barcelona, which took place about a month ago.