Meet the Candidates!

Rolling along with the SXSW Get the Vote Out campaign, heeerrrre's Robert Scales.

Robert Scales is the CEO and Founder of Raincity Studios, a consummate biz-ness-man and an international man of "open everything" evangelism.

A multi-year veteran of SXSW, he is pitching two panels for Interactive 2009 covering some of his dearest subjects: Drupal, Social Media, China and the Olympics.

For your Consideration:

1) Using Drupal to Manage, Publish, and Promote Your Content - Robert Scales + a collection of Drupalista panelists

Drupal is a fast-growing content management system built by a loose knit community committed to making a highly usable and infinitely extendable publishing platform ideal for individuals to enterprises. Learn how to use Drupal to organize content, publicize your message, and activate your audience.

2) Social Media and the Olympics - Robert Scales + panelists

Coverage of the Olympic Games is dominated by IOC's contracted rights-holder and accredited major media conglomerates however some feel there is a role for grassroots documentation of both sporting events and the cultural context. The related conundrums are discussed by social media makers who covered several Olympics Games.

You probably saw all of these articles already but ... in case you missed any ... get comfy, pour a beverage and do some reading about Open Source CMSs in the news:

Drupal and The Future of News

Tech writer Kurt Cagle from Open Source Pixels {cribbed article bio: managing editor of XML.com, lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and is beginning to wonder what happened to summer - Ed note: Ditto on the summer ;-)} offers a wide-ranging narrative about his experiences with Drupal, (including a name-check of Bryght/Raincity Studios) in his June 1, 2008 article. Well worth a read for his interesting historical and technical perspectives.

With Vancouver personal expression conference Northern Voice approaching, Dave O, Roland Tanglao and Richard Eriksson preview the Internet Boot Camp track at Moose Camp (Friday Feb 22, 2008).

This year at Moose Camp, Richard will present Blogging 101 and Roland (along with Jordan Behan and Warren Frey) will present Video Blogging 101 to go along with the ad hoc track. On Saturday's Northern Voice, Dave will lay out his pitch to encourage the assembled folks to seize the opportunity to make creative endeavours with integrity and not get hung on stats and fleeting noteriety. Then, plates of steaming tasty Cantonese food arrives to the table at The Boss cafe in Vancouver's Chinatown.

In the seemingly endless stream of meet-ups, conferences, un-events, random occurrences and edu-tainment of all kinds, there is one event which reigns supreme and I posit is Vancouver's must-goevent.

Anyone interested in: a) social media creation, b) meeting collaborators in an unpretentious environment, c) good times - should really show up for both days.

After the close of Gnomedex, we're organizing a giant meet up before the Canadians have to run for the border.

Matt Mullenweg of WordPress was afraid of the Canadian wrath, so we're combining forces to take over the world, starting with the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel today at 6:30pm. Check the Gnomedex Wiki for updates.

I've discovered that, as I suspected, Matt really is evil: he made our announcement on the wiki gigantic and red.