Day 2 of the workshop was much more rewarding. We covered some truly advanced topics, including automated unit testing, modifying the core search index, manipulating node access, best practices for writing secure code, and how to contribute and get involved in the Drupal community. Matt Westgates presentation on security was the best of the day - I may not be an expert in securing my sites yet, but I have enough ammunition to cause some trouble on others! I'll skip posting my notes since they are likely only valuable to me, but if anyone is curious, let me know and I'd be happy to share. I also have a couple of great presentations which I can post.

Overall, while I felt the workshop was over priced ($900 for 2 days), I did some tricks and and met some great folks. I was really surprised to find that I was the ONLY Portlander attending the workshop. The other 50 or so attendees were from all over the country, and even a few form oversees. I think this speaks to momentum Drupal has as a web platform, which is great for everyone involved.
Thanks to the Lullabot team for a very informative couple of days.

I have the pleasure of attending the Lullabot Drupal Advanced API and Module Development workshop this week. I've enjoyed getting to know the Drupal platform and community over the past year and have based many successful projects on it. The team at Lullabot are known for their Dupal training and consulting work, and have some great sites and contributed modules under their belts to prove it. If any Drupal geeks happen to come across this, what follows are some tidbits I picked on day one.

Level OS was hired by Andrew Fowler of Single Cell, LLC to develop a website allowing news presenters to submit stories which will then be picked up by the media.  According to Andrew,

Newsvetter allows communications professionals (and others) to vet the substance of their news before sending it to the news media.  Andrew developed a vetting process to provide communications professionals a framework for sending high quality story ideas.  Media can subscribe tonews feeds in areas that interest them and can rate and comment on any news submission.

While it may not be obvious to the casual observer, this is actually an all new levelos.com.  As a developer, I am ashamed to say that I have not always given my own site the attention it deserves.  You know the old phrase, "the coblers kids where no shoes," or something like that at least.  In anycase, over the past year or so, I have become enamored with Drupal, an amazing website platform for building anything from a simple blog to a complex web application.  Kudos to the amazing job the Drupal community has done - I hope I can find a way to contribute back.  Some of my recent successful projects, including The Portland Opera, MomHub, and Newsvetter were all developed on the Drupal platform.