Another day full of learning and trying to stay awake.

Oh, and fun.

Stayed up a little too late last night, and, for some reason, woke up before my alarm went off, ruining any good solid sleep I would have had.

But, I made it to the first session on time and was surprisingly lively until the afternoon sessions rolled around. Then I couldn't keep my eyes open... my ears were still pulling in the sound, but the head and eyes drooped something fierce.

Today's brain-filling menu included:

• Drupal Distributions on Drupal.org (a kind of new thing that packages Drupal with modules and makes it more of a solution package or product as opposed to a platform to build on from scratch... lots of potential here, even for some things that we're working on at the day job)
• The Magic of Teams: Communications and Collaboration (possibly one of the most entertaining presentations I've ever seen... mostly reaffirming that yes, you do need to communicate clearly and regularly with people you're working with or for. Did get a nice list of tools to look into, though.)
• Efficient Workflow for Design and Development Packages (again, communication is key, but so is planning and keeping track of what's what and where. Another good list of tools to look into... and some ideas on how to revamp what we do at the day job.)
• Open Source in Government Key Note Panel discussion (wow... amazing stuff going on in the hallowed halls of government. Did not know that NYS was using Drupal already. May have to pitch a switch to the home town.)
• Building a Viral Marketing and Customer Rewards E-Commerce Site (It did what it said in the title... really nice implementation of things and some good, almost non-standard uses of module combinations, could come in hand for some clients we have now)
• Beyond Budget and Scope: Managing Client Expectations and Delivering Value (Communication again... but also some nice tips, tricks, and tools to ensure that everyone's on the same page.)

Had to put out a few fires for clients during the day, no big deals, but I did discover that for one reason or another, I can't remote in to my work computer. So something will have to wait until Friday.

The closing presentation threw around some pretty impressive numbers. About $300,000 dollars raised by the con for the Drupal Association, about twice that spent on putting the thing together. Around 3,000 attendees with another 3,000 or so tuning in online to the keynotes and broadcast sessions. Announcements that the next DrupalCon is going on in Copenhagen in August, then the ten year anniversary of Drupal will be celebrated in 2011 with DrupalCon Chicago (really want to do that one... they've got an entire hotel reserved for everything... hopefully, it'll be full of just Drupal people). Everyone left in very high spirits.

A few hours after that, I was on a but down into the Mission District for the final bash of the con. It was distinctly better than last night's shindig. At least as far as I'm concerned. Probably because I was there from right at the beginning, before everyone had gathered into their own groups, maybe because it was the last night and everyone was just in a different state of mind.

Accidentally networked with a handful of people, heard some good stories, met good people, may have some freelance writing work coming my way eventually (not holding my breath on that... and if it does come in, where the heck am I going to fit it into my schedule?).

And now, here I am, up a little too late again, but with plenty of time to sleep on the plane back East. (The first leg is about an hour or two longer than the second leg of the trip out--more or less straight across the map, followed by a short hop north.)

Once I'm back to my own speedy internet connection, I'll get around to uploading the pictures.

Yep, definitely a good trip.

Was much more awake and alert today than I was yesterday... and I ended up with just as much useful info crammed into my brain.

I was also struck, yet again, by that vague feeling of being totally adrift.

There are people here who are genuinely passionate about Drupal and the work they do with it. Me? I see it as a very effective tool for accomplishing important tasks. If something considerably better came along, the only thing that would keep me using it would be force of habit.

So, I'm often not sure at all just how much I have to contribute to this vibrant community. Which, due to my own proclivities, makes me feel quite disconnected from the general surge of awesome that's going on here.

Maybe some day I'll figure it out... or really get fired up... or... something.

Until then, I'm taking a great amount of pleasure in learning more that can be done, hearing fantastic success stories about what has been done, and looking forward to implementing some new practices and habits when I get back to the office.

Today's plate of brain food included:

• Parlez Vous Internet? Ignore the Rest of the World at Your Own Risk (once again affirming that we did pretty darn good with our implementation of the i18n translation module, even with all the frustration we had)
• Views Demystified: Parts I and II (very basic stuff, but introduced me to a couple of new tricks/best practices and useful additions that will come in very handy)
• Open Source in the Cloud Era (the day's keynote speech by Tim O'Reilly that was kind of mind blowing. Yeah, he's the O'Reilly that publishes all those tech books.)
• Case Studies in Non Profits: The Jane Goodall Institute (talk about technology making a positive impact for people--a well done implementation of Drupal and the CiviCRM system of modules freed the staff from more tedious work and gave them the tools to get the word out more effectively. Very inspiring.)
• Building Drupal to be Easy to Maintain and Administer (again, best practices ideas that I try to stick to--but more importantly, more modules and little tweaks to make that easier!)
• Managing and Deploying Configuration with Exportable and the Features Module (I've seen this presented on a smaller scale by the Development Seed crew at the local DC Drupal Meetup, seeing it a few months more developed and clearly presented on a big screen... yeah, I'm going to have to try to change how I manage some things with my deployments)

My boss rolled into town this morning and the three of us had lunch, talked some business and whatnot. He reminded us that we can expense some food. (Which is what we did with the Chinese we had for dinner.) Didn't really see him after that--the man's a working machine and will be off shooting video out here for another client the rest of the week.

The night rolled up with a sponsored shindig/networking event at a local bar/poolhall. Here that feeling of being adrift struck full force as bars are so not my element to begin with... and neither are networking events... and I had no idea what I'd be offering up in conversation... and there wasn't much else going on (apparently missed the Karaoke at last night's event). Give me an actual activity to participate in and talk about and all's good. Throw me into a sea of people where I don't know my place and, if I don't have to be there, I'll just fade into the scenery as much as possible while I watch and listen.

And that's kind of what I did.

Thankfully, I got there while some of the tasty appetizers were still available. The calamari was tasty... and free... so it was worth it. :)