Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog

Once again the conference season is warming up and one of the largest FOSS conferences in the world is going to be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

The conference, called “Forum International Software Livre” or “FISL” for short is in its fourteenth year.

Every year I look forward to going to FISL. In recent years this means joining a bus of university students sponsored by the Federal University of Santa Caterina (UFSC) who leave the evening before the event starts and arrive just before opening of the event. For me, this trip sets the tone for FISL, which is a healthy combination of programmers, systems administrators, university students and professors along with business and government people. I go there to see what people are doing, to be reacquainted with old friends, and to meet new friends.

This year I am also going to FISL to become better acquainted with Drupal through DrupalCamp.

Drupal, as many of you know, is a platform for building websites, which supports some of the largest websites in the world. Most people think of Drupal as a “Content Management System” (CMS), but Drupal is much more than that. It links mail systems, e-commerce systems, and many more subsystems that allow an entire website to be created. There are other content management systems that specialize in one type of website or another, which typically allows a simpler form of systems administration, but Drupal, through its platform framework allows very complex websites, admittedly at some consession to ease of use.

Therefore at DrupalCamp POA 2013, a two-day (July 4^th and 5^th) event at FISL, some of the Brazilian supporters of Drupal will be meeting with companies, developers and users to put on some lectures, workshops and exchange ideas on Drupal.

At DrupalCamp people will be talking about how to spread Drupal (now in its seventh edition) to even more websites, discuss issues with Drupal, expand opportunities for Drupal development in Brazil, unite communities of Drupal in Brazil and otherwise embrace the Drupal community. It is a good place for beginners to get their questions answered, and for experienced people to trade “tips”.

Written in PHP, Drupal is an Open Source system that runs cross-platform, and DrupalCamp is hoping to have many people interested in creating their own powerful website in attendance.

For those people who also wish to attend other events at FISL, DrupalCamp's hours are from 1400 to 1900 each of the two days, so there is plenty of time to attend other FISL talks. DrupalCamp is free for attendees of FISL.

For those of you interested in Drupal, you can find out more information at the Drupal Web Site, or the Official website of the Brazilian Drupal Community, and of course the website of FISL.

Finally, when you register for either DrupalCamp or FISL (or both) you can use this link:

http://fisl.org.br/14/greve/caravan/join?hash=GDCSCGTY

which will save you one-half of the normal FISL registration fee.

I bet you are glad you read this far!

Carpe Diem!