After some good times at the after-camp social activity (thanks Pete and crew) at Jupiter, we are back in action today for more sessions, networking, and conversations. Fun conversations from Michigan weather to the One Laptop per Child machines which i tinkered with for the first time.

I am in another session by the kind Chris Bryant in the squeaky chair room. This time, a basic overview about Drupal to explain the parts of the puzzle - data in database, programming logic via PHP, and templates for design and so on ... Also APIs (allows programs to communicate and share data), URLs (make 'em how you want them), pathauto (makes aforementioned URLs easy), taxonomy (a way to classify information) and ... nodes.

What is a node anyway? Good question and one I've wondered how to articulate to the masses since Gnomedex when geek impresario Chris Pirllio wondered aloud (albeit mockingly) why the word "node" was chosen to identify your "stuff" within Drupal.

Nodes are the basic building blocks of the "content" but not the smallest bits. Nodes generally contain at least two fields (title and body) and other bits of unique data can be attached to the node (i.e. comments). Nodes may have more fields than the aforementioned basic 2 and nodes might be blogposts, stories (basically the same thing), static pages (within a book or standalone), a form page or some other content type (think a portfolio item).

So that description is not really portable and clear and maybe a better one isn't really necessary ... is there a good analogy we can come up with explain this basic building block of Drupal?

OK i give up on that for now - suffice to say a good blurb to explain clearly will save a lot of Drupalists some client explanations.

A few others notes:

Talked with William about accessibility and the benefits of making clean, standard code. While accessibility is required for government contracts, the other benefits are the same best practices to ensure accessibility also optimize for search engines.

Digression: Drupal features great SEO goodness natively - Google looks at page title (the bit that shows up in the top bar in your web browser's interface), the URL (no ? or other queries, should use words instead (which pathauto does auto), the page header (the H1 headline) and the pages' content (particularly the first 250 words).

Dmitri Gaskin, learn this name and listen to what he has to say. A 12-year old Drupal savant is running 3 presentations (CCK, Views, at this camp and seems to take in all in stride despite him standing on a step stool while addressing the audience. Fields questions with aplomb and seems nonplussed by all the compliments and enthusiasm lauded upon his young shoulders.

Caught up with former Bryghtster (now freelancer) Colin Brumelle for a sunny day talk on the building's steps. He's living in the Mission district and co-working at Citizen Agency while working on sites for entertainment and music related clients. We talked about Drupal's strengths and way for Drupalists to better communicate for fun and profit. Plus the state of the client/Drupalist realtionship.

Was interviewed by Scott from Sun Microsystems who had a cool mic/recorder - we talked about my role at Raincity as a community evangelist and telling the world about Raincity's work and the wonders of Drupal and open culture.

Worth noting: A great range of ages (a couple real smart and experienced old-timers), experience levels are all over the place (diligence is common thread) and there are more than the usual tiny percentage of women (awesome!).

At this point, I should link up this post pointing to all the people and resources mentioned but the convo is getting into permission, roles, and access control which i need to pay attention to so you will have to wait for link fortification (or leave your link in the comments and save me the work ;-). Here's the Badcamp attendee list for starters.

PS the Canucks won last night 4-3 over the Avalanche making Dajo quite sad (thanks Leonard for the score updates via his iPhone).