Techvibes posted a year-starting list of Vancouver tech-industry insiders to watch in 2008 - from those whose wild ideas are finally coming to fruition to others whose ship is coasting gently into port ~ if you catch my meaning.

The whole Raincity Studios clan was pleased to see three of us on the list of 10. The compact team of Scales and me (Dave calls us the Jagger and Richards of tech) share a slot and uber-evangelist Boris Mann gets his own line to stir up commotion about whats happening in his skunk-works. Thanks to Rob and the crew for the kind nods.

Being the newest runt at Raincity Studios, and a first time Gnomedex'er, I came into the event not knowing what to expect. Thursday was filled with booze driven conversation and much needed socializing. It was a great icebreaker and had the chance to meet some great people. Friday started with an early morning start with Robert Steele leading discussion that was far too extremist for my liking.

Darren Barefoot gave a brilliant, and much needed, follow-up speech where he coined the term 'Stacies' for the cost of food to feed one homeless person. I really enjoyed the value of his talk and hope that we can all start doing similar deeds throughout our own communities. I can sure relate to it from commuting through the Downtown East Side each day.

Raincity is happy to welcome Lyal Avery in joining our team and jumping on board as our Drupal Developer. Lyal has spent the last few years with Sporg where he was the integration developer supporting the open source community, while of course delving into the wonderful world of Drupal.

Having worked in Drupal for almost 2 years, he's done some stellar development on projects for several local companies, including Bryght and Nitobi.

Microsoft Releasing Standards-Based Web Design Tool

While it seems the feedback and criticism of IE7 has been predominantly on the negative side, Microsoft is getting set to launch Microsoft Office 2007 at the end of this week, and with it will come several other new web tools.

Apparently, Web Expression will be a tool that will actually be useful for designers, and not just for your average Joe, designed to be a professional-level product. It will eventually replace Frontpage, but will of course be going up against the big guns of Dreamweaver and GoLive.

CRTC Blocked and No More Wires!

Many of us at Raincity are busy this week with helping out and participating in the Drupal training workshop that we're co-producing with Bryght, while continuing with our client work.

All is going great at the sessions... sooo much Drupal my head is starting to spin, but spin in a really, really good way. Collectively, we're training and learning a lot. For me, I'm on the learning a lot wave, not having used Drupal too deeply in the past. Right now, we're in the middle of looking at the neat 'views' and 'contemplate' modules: Hot stuff!