Return to the Bay

This weekend is the 2008 iteration of Bay Area Drupal Camp held at U.C. Berkeley, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th.

Along with the info at Badcamp.net, the schedule is Google-doc'ed and will give you a sense of what's in-store.

Notably, Earl Miles creator of Views, Panels will kick off the learning fest with a keynote on Saturday morning.

My pal Dmitri is presenting on Simple Test (along with Florian Lorétan), CCK and jQuery (along with Amit Asaravala), Tao Starbow will show you how to make your own Wikipedia, Chris Bryant discusses managing site configurations and Keiran speaks about the Acquia buzz.

Alas, the event is full so if you slacked, you are almost out of luck, ...  in true Drupal fashion, some geeks are organizing an overflow event so everyone goes home happy.

BAD Flashback

Last year Francis, Erik and I (DaveO) headed down to enjoy some autumnal California sun and learning.

I recorded a handful of podcasts with some interesting Drupalists {William on accessibility, Dmitri on module making and Colin on innovative projects}. Plus annotated a few presentations from the academic halls of the impressive campus and back to Vancouver.

Drupal Camp Montreal

In the wake of Drupal Camps in Victoria and LA, BarCamp Vancouver and of course DrupalCon in Hungary, the undaunted Raincity Studios crew is now heading east to La Belle Province for Drupal Camp Montreal.

Raincity Studios' CEO, Robert Scales and Production Director, Francis Pilon are both making the trip to their home province of Quebec to collaborate with Drupalists this coming weekend, Oct. 3rd and 4th.

Bryght en Français

With a French version of the Bryght Drupal install profile in the works, I suspect they'll have a chance to share with Francophone Drupalists seeking hosting and configuration in their preferred language.

Drupalists Koumbit are hosting the event and have a great plan in mind. They describe themselves as "a non-profit organisation which promotes the use of free & open source software by community groups in Quebec, Canada ..." Sounds very cool.

Koumbit are working closely with our man in Africa, Adrian, on the development of Ægir - the evolution of Hostmaster - the open source Drupal mass deployment project which is at the heart of Bryght Drupal hosting (see Adrian's presentation at DrupalCon).

A "prequel" to the videoblog that Dave, Richard and I did at The Boss, in this quick videocast we chat about Francis who's currently at RCS Shanghai, Chinese New Year (which formally ends today), Robbie Burns night and that wonderful Vancouver fusion of Chinese New Year and Robbie Burns night, Todd Wong's Gung Haggis Fat Choy.

Check out the video after the jump.

One year ago I decided to offer myself a very special birthday gift: I accepted a full-time position with Raincity Studios. The wrapper looked cool, the card was inviting and it sounded good when I shook the box.

Little did I know what was to come when I accepted the offer... We were a crew of six at that time, occupying the cosy 525 Seymour office and working on small and engaging projects. Then talented new team members and soon-to-be-friends joined our gang. Next there was the fruitful Bryght acquisition and, more recently, the opening of the Shanghai office. We are now a family of 27 hard-working, dedicated and fun-loving people, collaborating together on larger exciting projects. It feels like I'm still unwrapping the gift...

Over the past year or two, Raincity Studios has teamed up with the Lullabots to build and theme unique Drupal sites for several high-profile and up and coming Sony BMG artists.

Drupal themeing has long been Raincity's calling card and we've certainly enjoyed contributing our skills to connect rock stars with their fans and vice versa. While we are still working along on some more Sony projects, here are a few we've rocked out in the past while.

Ozzy Osbourne

When we were asked to build a site for Ozzy Osbourne the guys were stunned and honored. The end result was to have fans that love Ozzy Osbourne have a haven to reside in for all their Ozzy needs. Fans can review events involving Ozzy. Any announcements or rants from the man in black will be posted there. There is even a place to research hidden meanings in the lyrics.