Author: Joe

Woke up really early (think the whole timezone thing must be messing with me a bit), so I figured I’d check out the gym in the hotel. Surprisingly, many others had the same idea. I got a nice super early workout to start off my day.

Then I walked over to the Colorado Convention Center which featured the opening keynote by Dries, the founder of Drupal. The theatre was massive, and much to my surprise it was practically packed with all the attendees. I’m really interested when they release the final count, it’s gotta be at least 3000+

Then the sessions began.

My first was Drupal Media. This is a very important module to practically all the sites I work with now. It was great to hear all about it and it’s features firsthand. I was pleased to hear of how much they’re committed to it and wil really try to chip in myself to this most noble cause.

Then we had lunch. Thousands were driven like cattle to the food upstairs. It was a lunch in a box (like the shoobies pioneered), and not too bad. In my box was a turkey sandwich (very good on some fine bread), a bag of chips, a big chocolate chip cookie and an apple which I wisely decided to save for later in the day (so glad I did just a few minutes ago). A fine box.

Then I went to my first ever BOF (birds of a feather) session. These are more group discussions than formal sessions. It was pretty cool, the topic was Drupal Trends in Education: Mozilla Badges, Learning Registry and Data.ED.gov. Everyone there seemed to be from education, so I had a good amount in common with most of them. The whole badge idea sounds very promising, but I can’t see the NJEA not somehow shooting in down in fear or something like that.

The Drupal Community: Where Are We Going and How to Get Involved was the next session. This had a much smaller attendance than most the other sessions, but the presenter webchick put on an excellent. The audience seemed very eager to contribute to the community and that’s a thing to see.

The next session, HTML 4S turned out to be much more interesting that I’d imagine it’d be. The presenter was a very animated, foul-mouthed Dane. He was hilarious, though there were times I didn’t quite understand what he said I still found myself cracking up. He was clearly very passionate about what he does, and had some excellent tips and suggestions regarding markup with a strong focus on HTML 5 today.

The final session of the day for me was Webform: The Survey Tool for Drupal. The presenter did a really great job, going over the basics as well as some advanced tips that I will surely put to use. I worried that it might be too basic before attending, but it was perfect and I’m glad that I did.

Then I headed back to the hotel and dropped my stuff off and headed out to grab a bite to eat. I’ll try to check out Denver a bit more tonight and see if there’s anything going on in the Code Lounge later tonight if I’m up to it.

Woke up around 3:30 am or so to make sure that I had plenty of time to catch my 7:15 flight. I really didn’t have any trouble getting up (didn’t need the alarm clock), and didn’t feel tired driving to Philadelphia Airport either.

I’m not much of a Philly visitor, so getting to the airport is still an adventure for me. Luckily, no wrong turns were made and I got there in decent time. I’m not sure if this is a new thing with me or not, but I really didn’t feel comfortable driving over the bridge. I’ve driven over many a bridges in my day, but for some reason this morning it kinda creeped me out a bit. Perhaps I was more tired than I recalled, oh well.

The plane ride wasn’t too bad either. Flew on SouthWest, and we actually landed 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Apparently the wind was really down today, so that meant much less drag on the trip over. The flight wasn’t even close to full, so every seemed to be no more than 2 people per row.

There was a good deal of turbulence at times, especially as we approached Denver. I was told to expect that, so it didn’t spook me too much. By some miracle I hopped right onto a train at the airport and would up right at where my shuttle service was. Did not expect that to go so smoothly.

I then checked into the hotel, seems nice so far. As you probably can assume if you no me at all, by this time I was starving. So I took a walk to Sam’s No. 3, a place that I found on one of the Food Network shows.

Food was very good, portions were huge. I moved so that a couple could be seated. This turned out to be a most chivalrous act as the person I was now sitting next to was a toothless crazy talking bad lady. She said some pretty random stuff to me, and I do feel as though I will smell of cat for months.

I then proceeded to return to the hotel, with a few missed blocks along the way and took a much needed shower. I am very proud to state that Denver has decent water, and the hotel has great water pressure. This is most important.

Next I walked over to the Colorado Convention Center and registered for the conference. This place is massive. There’s even a gigantic blue bear statue looking into the place, very cool. Registration was a snap and I got a nice t-shirt to add to my collection.

I missed the cutoff date for the hack-a-thon (such a bummer), but did sit down and chat with some other great people with similar interests. It was great to exchange tips and tricks with them. I don’t have that day to day to do, so it’s always a pleasure to meet fellow geeks in person.

I also took in the shortened conference opening day to explore much of Denver. The 16th Street Mall was very nice. Tons of nice shops with a bus that runs the entire stretch for free (I of course walked the entire time).

I did treat myself to some frozen yogurt at Pink Berry. Got salty caramel with raspberries and blueberries. Yum. I pretty much walked around a lot today. Checked out the capital building and some park and walked in pretty much every store imaginable. It’s a pretty cool setup they have here.

I’m exhausted and probably falling early tonight to catch up on the poor sleep last night and have energy for the sessions I really want to check out. All the good stuff really starts tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to learning all that fun stuff.