I’ve been meaning to post this since I got back from the Oxford Geek Night on Wednesday but I was struck down by a dose of man-flu (more commonly known as “a cold”). Apologies.
So, Wednesday 7th February 2007 was the inaugural Oxford Geek night event, at the Jericho Tavern. I was asked to give a talk as part of the first ‘microslot’ session, where 6 individuals talk for 5 minutes on a topic of their choosing, and I chose Drupal, seen as I spend the bulk of my development time hacking on it in one form or another.
The presentation started with a quick introduction to Drupal Core with a focus on the Taxonomy module. Then I walked people through the modules that I use the most: Pathauto, Views and the Content Construction Kit. Finally a whirlwind tour of some Drupal sites out in the wild including MTV UK, The Onion and Ask A Ninja.
Trying to give an overview of a system as large as Drupal in 5 minutes is a pretty hairy proposition, but I think I at least managed to pique peoples interest enough for them to want to find out more.
Overall the night was a great success. There were some really interesting talks, Simon Willison’s OpenID presentation and James Wheare’s Oxford bus times mash-up being two highlights for me personally. I also got to meet some cool new faces in the Oxfordshire development scene, and there was beer. Top night all round really.
Natalie will be putting up the slides and podcasts of each talk at some point, at which time I’ll update this entry. In the meantime there are the obligatory pictures on flickr.
Update: Links to the slides and podcasts are now up on the Oxford Geek Nights site.