Deeds

Guidelight Business Solutions, a custom software and web strategy company based in Texas, has put together a little video highlighting their experience at last month's DrupalCon in San Francisco. The video does a good job in capturing the fun, scale, and pace of a Drupal conference. At the start of the video, you'll also see a snip of video of me taken during an interview while we were waiting for one of the keynote speakers to come on stage. I'm honored to be included in a video among so many of the other talented faces that were there for DrupalCon.

You can check out the video either below or at the website of Guidelight Business Solutions.

I spent Sunday flying to San Francisco for this year's DrupalCon. Attending this Drupal conference is a first for me. For the past few years. I've wanted to attend the conference but either personal or professional distractions came up that prevented me from attending the conference. This year is my year for DrupalCon and I'm anxious to get to know the Drupal community better than I have in the past.

Five years ago, my wife and I had a dream. Together, we wanted to start a blog called "Like that Idea" and so we registered the domain LikethatIdea.com. The idea for the WordPress blog was to have a site where we could identify and review neat ideas which we thought others would like to read about. The ideas came in the form of products, books, movies, services, and interesting article that we read ourselves. In the end though, we ran out of ideas to write about and the site never really took off.

By the time many of you read this post, Like that Idea will be never more. I'm currently working on wiping the site off the server. It's time to say goodbye to one of the few joint Internet projects that my wife and I worked on together. Instead, we'll use the time to work on our own personal projects as well as working jointly on the biggest project of our lifetime, our family.

Below the fold is a post I couldn't help but transfer from LikethatIdea.com over to this site. Thinking back at this moment in time still puts a smile on my face.

A couple years ago, Jeff Whatcott introduced to me the concept of a social publishing system. Within minutes after reading his article, I knew I wanted to expand further on his idea of social publishing and discuss the potential impact social publishing would have on content management systems. During this time period, Andrew McAfee was continuing to observe the emergence of Enterprise 2.0 into the normal day to day business world. From these two moments, I couldn't help myself from dreaming of the opportunities I had before me to learn more about social publishing and collaboration tools.

Last month I began my annual break from technology. Using previous technology breaks as my guide, I had expected to spend a lot less time at the computer and cell phone. My plan was simple, straight forward, and summarized in a simple slogan, Blog Less, Relax more. A month later, I write this blog post with the realization that my Technology Break of 2009 was a complete utter failure.

We made it! We made Jon Marks' updated Follow Forty Twitter CMS Gurus list.

So, you want to follow the CMS world on Twitter. How about the ability to follow the creme de la creme of the CMS Twitterati in a couple of clicks. Well, my friend, you’ve struck gold. [UPDATE: Even more gold than promised. The list is growing. More than 40]

Better yet, if you read the comments, we were added after some controversy. By the way, Jon has correctly included himself in the list.

@McBoof – Compiler of useless info and lists.

Every year, I like to slow down my technology usage for a few weeks. I don't think as human beings we were meant to be immersed in the huge quantity of digital information that we are today. From the moment I am awake to the moment I go to bed, my body is being loaded information. The email, cell phone, and the Internet seem to have a never ending presence in the lives of us IT folks. I don't have much control with removing technology from my work day, but I do have options in my personal life. It's time for me to unplug and officially begin my annual Technology Break.

As I  have done each and every year,  I'm taking a break from technology. From now through August, I'll be posting and managing the site a little less. I won't be abandoning CMS Report, but you will be seeing me a little less. My slogan for Tech Break 2009 is Blog less, Relax more.

CMS Report and I now have a Twitter account.  This adventure into micro-blogging reflects my willingness to be easily coerced into doing things I normally wouldn't do after long months of winter cabin fever here in South Dakota.

Personally, I cannot see the real benefit of answering Twitter's question, "What are you doing?".  Does anyone really want to see me tweet, that "after I'm done blogging, I'm going to take a shower" on the Web?  Deane Barker once called Twitter "creepy" and I tend to agree with him.  Sadly, Deane Barker allowed himself to be coerced into his own Twitter account last Fall.

Last year I was one of the beta testers for Acquia's Drupal distribution and the Acquia Network.  I was evaluating Acquia's products and services for a potential intranet project at work.  For this particular project, unfortunately, it looks as if Acquia or Drupal wasn't the right solution.  Our regional folks wanted a solution similar to Microsoft's Sharepoint that is more integrated with Microsoft Office and heavily featured in document management.  That's alright though because there are a number of smaller intranet projects at work where Drupal is the perfect solution and a lot of pr

Earlier today, I officially canceled my reseller account for Dakota Hosting.  I started the account at the same time I started to build websites as a side business.  I finally decided to stop pushing the hosting business not because I was losing money, but because it wasn't personally rewarding.  I learned a lot about the business and decided Web hosting just isn't in my blood.  I will build a Website now and then for a friend or acquaintance, but to be honest my IT job during the day keeps me plenty busy.  I'd rather find some new challenges using my free-time for doing good instead of the sole goal to make money.