B. Mann Consulting

All I can say is....whew!

The response to the OSCMS Summit this year has been simply overwhelming. OK, OK, maybe we could have predicted that making it a) free and b) in Silicon Valley and c) on the Yahoo Campus would drive attendance, but...

...well, I'm overwhelmed. And the conference is, too, which is why I've been basically radio silent about it on the blog here: we've been full for weeks, and madly scrambling to see about staying in Yahoo's good graces so we could fit a few more people into nooks and crannies. Promoting it more was the last thing we needed to do because of our space constraints.

I want to specifically thank Bradley Greenwood for taking point inside Yahoo, and to the twin 'bots, Jeff Robbins and Angie Byron, for website and schedule wrangling and working through all the details from the outside. 

I'm really looking forward to learning more from the collection of Open Source CMS projects that will be attending. I *still* would like to see broader participation, but of course this time around we were slammed for space from day one. And, really, note to self: if there hasn't been a US Drupal gathering in a while......make it it's own event.

I am stoked that a large portion of the Joomla crew are coming out -- they've got a massive release on the go with many, many exciting changes and I want to learn more. Alfresco should serve nicely to teach us all a little more about "enterprise" features. They also went 100% GPL open source on my birthday this year, so it will be interesting to see what changes that brings.

Lastly, but absolutely not least, Yahoo: again, thanks to all involved for sponsoring and letting us bring this event to the heart of your campus. I want to see lots of cool code integrating with your sites and APIs, from the ever present Flickr to Yahoo Maps, Pipes, and all the other stuff you've got brewing. 

I'll be in San Francisco late tomorrow until noon on Monday, March 26th. My time will be filled out with OSCMS events plus the overflow of Drupal activities at the Sheraton Sunnyvale, but if you're in the area and/or attending, I'm looking forward to connecting with you.

OSCMS Summit is something that I helped pull together in short order last year. We had great attendance (about 300 people over 3 days, with about 150 people per day) and lots of local Vancouverites mixing in.

This year, Vancouver has the Vancouver PHP Conference which is going on right now, and the OSCMS Summit 2007 is happening down at Yahoo's Sunnyvale campus. Yep, Yahoo: we joked about this a while back, and then some of the folks we know inside Yahoo said -- sure, we'd love to help out with this. Moral of the story: ask and ye shall receive. I have to say, Yahoo should be applauded for this: they've really been reaching out to developers lately, with great events like Hack Day showing off some of the great work they've got going on.

Once again, the OSCMS Summit will be a kind of "container" event for other projects to gather around. This does mean the Drupal hordes will be descending...but, if all I wanted to do was a Drupalcon, that's what I would push for. I'm still really passionate about having various open source projects come together and discuss solutions and approaches to web content: we're all facing the same challenges and the nature of open source means it's that much easier for us to learn from one another.