Couldn’t make it to DrupalCon?   Videos from most of the sessions (with slides) are now available on the conference website.  You can see them for yourself on the conference sessions page.

As DrupalConSF ramped up today, it became evident that the convention was even more successful than expected.

Gaining entrance into the first session of the morning proved to be a bit of a challenge for Ken and I, simply due to the sheer mass of people that filled the hallway.  We managed to squeeze into a full-capacity room, though, for a quick introduction to DrupalCon.

I should mention that there are many sessions available at this convention.  In fact, new sessions on new topics run approximately every hour, in several different rooms.  The organizers have split the topic categories up into six different categories:

• Welcome to Drupal
• Configuration, Set-Up, & Administration
• Design, Theme, & Usability
• Under the Hood
• Providing Professional Drupal Services
• Leveraging Drupal for Your Business

This means that six different sessions are running roughly every hour on the hour.  What’s kind of amazing is that nearly every session that I attended hit max capacity.  I was even dumped into an overflow room on one occasion, which was kind of nice because by that point I needed to find an outlet to plug into.

The highlight of the day, was the keynote address by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert.  For someone who, self-admittedly, was nervous about speaking in front of such a large crowd, he did a fantastic job of keeping the information interesting, well-paced, and humorous.  He covered a few different main topics during his address, including the a report on the progress of Drupal 7, the need to keep Drupal relevant while still being innovative, and the increasing involvement of large corporations such as Microsoft and Google – both sponsors of this event.  As a wrap up, the location for the European 2010 DrupalCon was announced – it will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark this fall.

Other than the keynote address, which Ken and I both really enjoyed, we both had our own favorite sessions that we attended.

As a developer, Ken focused primarily on the programming and development side of things, of course.  Understand that Ken is normally a rather quiet guy, but after the Drupal As A Web Services Platform session with Greg Dunlap of Palantir services and Josh Kopel of Kolaborationstudio.com, it was evident that the interest was really starting to percolate.  Basically, what this particular session focused on was how to use Drupal as an information distribution source that feeds other applications such as iPhone or Android.  Warning to our managers, he’s coming back with some ideas.

For myself, my focus is primarily on professional services such as consultation and training.  I found a great deal of value in the last session of the day, Planning and Executing a Successful Drupal Implementation with Michael Morris and Jeff Walpole of Phase II Technology.  These guys did a great job of outlining common issues that project managers and analysts face when working with large Drupal projects.  They provided some sound tips regarding how to effectively prepare for and handle these issues.

Stay tuned for more coverage of DrupalCon San Francisco as we head into Day 2.

Wow!  DrupalCon San Francisco is proving to be the biggest one yet.  With over 3000 in attendance, this mark more than doubles the attendance at last year’s North American Drupal convention, held in Washington, D.C. (Just for the record, Drupal conventions are held bi-annually – the North American convention is typically held in the spring and the European convention is held in the fall. With around 850 in attendance at Paris last year, DrupalConSF participation is bigger than both of last year’s conventions combined!)

Today, Sunday, is actually a day of training that’s made available before the convention even begins.  A mighty long list of different training opportunities have been provided – from ground level beginner workshops all the way up to topics such as advanced module development and Drupal systems administration.   So, yours truly spent the day with a great gang of guys from Growing Venture Solutions (Carl, Ezra, and Steve), and 31 beginning Drupalistas in the Intro to Site Building: Hands On training event.

My goal today wasn’t as much to learn about how to build a Drupal site as it was to observe different methods used by different instructors and to see if there may possibly be some additional items I could add to our OSU Drupal 6 training program.  I’m happy to report that the folks at GVS didn’t disappoint.  They unveiled a nifty – and thrifty – way of creating an “approval” based workflow to sites without the need to add any additional modules.  It was pretty darn slick and I hope to be sharing it soon with our OSU Drupal troopers.

This class covered an enormous amount of ground in only 8 hours: from how to install a Drupal site on a local computer using the Acquia Drupal installation profile and DAMP solution stack, to basic Drupal content editing, some general theme configuration, brief primers on CCK and Views, and some fun extra stuff like how to use the Fivestar voting module.  Additionally, the instructors included some very insightful information about the Drupal community in general.  Needless to say, by the end of the day, there were quite a few heads swimming around in the Drupal pool.

And the convention hasn’t even started yet!!  Stay tuned over the next few days as Ken and I keep you posted on the many and varied activities occurring here at DrupalCon San Francisco.