I'll be doing a talk this Friday at the sold-out Drupal Camp Vancouver on the fast and elegant Sphinx search engine. Sphinx is open source, straightforward, and used by folks like NowPublic and The Pirate Bay to provide scalable search.
After nearly a year of organizing, Open Web Vancouver 2008 went off amazingly. Over two days, we managed to feature over 30 talks in three rooms. Over 300 open web enthusiasts attended and the crowd seemed fun and diverse, with a lot more women attending than I've seen at past conferences. Gerald Baurer managed to organize a SocialCamp track that provided a forum for Vancouver startups and online ventures to show their stuff.
On May 9-10, Vancouver will see its second ever Drupal conference, Vancouver Drupal Camp 2008. The event will feature multiple tracks and will take place at two downtown locations.
If you're interested in helping organize or sponsor, let the organizers know how you'd like to contribute on the wiki page!
Yesterday afternoon, when saner souls were watching the SuperBowl, Paul Prescod and I presented introductions to the Django web framework at the kickoff of Vancouver's first public Django-centric event: Vancouver Django Jam. My presentation "Basic CRUD in Django" (which is designed to show neophytes the hard, but conceptually familiar, way of doing things) can be downloaded here as a PDF, here in Apple Keynote format, or here online.
Interest in the Django web framework in Vancouver seems to be growing. The Vancouver Python and Zope Users Group held a meeting last Tuesday where Paul Prescod, Dethe Elza, and I gave presentations on various facets of Django development. In addition, the Django Book is attracting interest for its collaborative proofing model.
Props to the organizers and sponsors of Vancouver Bar Camp 2006 for putting on a damn fine event. Their work is appreciated.
The space and food were amazing, the organization was smooth, the mood was playful, and good times descended like friendly bats.
The kickoff event took place at Bryght's offices and the presentations took place at WorkSpace.
I gave a presentation on the Python-based Django web framework, which people seemed curious about (slides available online here). The presentation was created using Zoho Show and was featured on Zoho Blogs!
Vancouver Open Business News (http://www.vanopen.biz) is open for beta testing.
On it, folks can submit Vancouver-related open source/open business related news, commentary, etc. As on the popular tech news site Digg, Stories can be submitted, voted on, and commented on by anybody. Stories that receive the most votes will be ranked highest on the site.
The aim of the project is to promote a sense of community, and facilitate intelligence sharing, in Vancouver's open source and open business communi
