[drupal-docs] New book about Drupal?

Tue Aug 9 20:13:11 UTC 2005

I'm completely in love with the "ecology" of Drupal-- the dynamics of 
how developers, Foundations, companies, customers, individual 
end-users, interested third-parties all consciously and unconsciously 
work together to make the result of Drupal making a positive difference 
for the world happen.   I think we're really just seeing the "tip of 
the iceberg" in terms of how this works and how much of an impact the 
Drupal ecology is going to make in the world.

We've had great discussions about this ecology recently at the Advocacy 
Software Developer's summit here in San Francisco and Dries gave a 
great presentation on it during the first day of Portland DrupalCon.  
I'd love to help collaboratively write or edit something about that 
(after August) if it fits with the overall topic you choose.

Andrew

On Aug 9, 2005, at 10:55 AM, Roland "Bryght" Tanglao wrote:

> I am totally down with the Kieran "why" approach. And I'd love to help 
> in any way I can (co-author, proof read, write a chapter, sorry but I 
> don' t have the time to write an entire book myself, don' t know how 
> Djun does  it :-) !)
>
> I am also down with a book that has Drupal community recipes (my user 
> friendly word for best practises)
>
> ...Roland Tanglao, Chief Blogging Officer, Bryght, www.bryght.com
> HOSTED 'Web 2.0' websites for organizations and communities
> +1 604 729 7924 Skype/AIM/iChat: rtanglao
>  rolandtanglao.com UrbanVancouver.com
> this email is: [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private
>
>
> On 9-Aug-05, at 10:12 AM, Kieran Lal wrote:
>
>> When thinking about adopting a trend I tend to look back at human 
>> history and makes bets based on things that seem inherent in our 
>> nature.
>>
>> Love, Hate, Growth, War, Art, etc.
>>
>> If I were going to write a book on Drupal, I'd write about 
>> communities.  They have always existed and likely always will.   
>> PHPTemplate however, has a limited lifetime.
>>
>> I'd start with a history of this community, because that story will 
>> be timeless.   Then I'd write about the types of communities that are 
>> emerging to use these tools.  Communities that are undergoing 
>> disruptive changes should be particularly interesting.  Politics, 
>> artists both have the smell of a great overthrow of the powers that 
>> be.
>>
>> Community members and community organizers want to know the 
>> principles of building successful communities and how Drupal can 
>> assist them.  They need decision criteria and choices.  But most of 
>> all they want the why's behind a successful recipe.  One of my 
>> favorite technical books is Essential COM by Don Box.  It's a great 
>> read, even though COM is not hot anymore.  He explains eloquently the 
>> why of how Microsoft came to tackle the challenges that unix 
>> wouldn't.   The why last's, where as COM didn't.  What are the why's 
>> behind Drupal's current choices, that's a story with real value.  
>> Where did we lead, and where did  we follow, who made those 
>> decisions.
>>
>> If you write a page about the event module, how will you explain to 
>> the editor that event module is getting a patch every few days.   
>> You'll get blasted when the book comes from the printers because it 
>> will be wrong.  In the future, I'll be walking along in the mall and 
>> see the book in the $0.99 store.  Wow!  Drupal 5.7, that's so old, I 
>> can't believe we actually had to use that stuff.
>>
>> There are approximately less than 400 CVS accounts for Drupal right 
>> now.  There are 6 billion people who are part of a community one way 
>> or another.
>>
>> Leave the technical stuff to the docs team and, write the great 
>> pragmatic Drupal narrative that needs to be told.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Kieran
>>
>> On Aug 9, 2005, at 9:15 AM, Laura Scott wrote:
>>
>>> Count me in as one more person who sees a cultural revolution 
>>> happening, in which Drupal is playing a part. And I think it would 
>>> be a shame to not look at the possibilities.
>>>
>>> But like Jon who just replied as I was writing this, I think "Web 
>>> 2.0" and "Blogging 2.0" are nonsensical -- the former especially, 
>>> which seems more of a marketing strategy by big corps to sell their 
>>> platforms. To me, it's rather ridiculous to try to attach release 
>>> numbers to the continuous evolution of interactivity. And to add a 
>>> number simply to say, "This isn't the web of the '90s," I think is 
>>> an error. I know a lot of web pundits and developers have adopted 
>>> the terms, but in the end it doesn't capture the kaizen of web 
>>> evolution, and impiies that there actually is some sort of stable 
>>> worldwide web in equilibrium, unchanging (and therefore safe to 
>>> invest in).
>>>
>>> /rant
>>>
>>> That said, I wonder if the cultural present and the anticipated 
>>> future of interactivity aren't a bit too big for a book ostensibly 
>>> about Drupal.
>>>
>>> On the other hand, to make the book purely for developers I think 
>>> misses the boat. There are aspects of administration that could and 
>>> shoud be included. A discussion of creating and customizing 
>>> phpTemplate themes I think could be one rather large chapter, at 
>>> least. And then there are ways to use Drupal in applications -- as a 
>>> blog, as a photoblog, as a business site, as a community site, as a 
>>> campaign site, as a software distribution site, as a music store, 
>>> and so on -- all with existing real-world examples.
>>>
>>> I also would like to submit the idea that -- assuming this is 
>>> intended as a book printed on paper -- that the text then get posted 
>>> as a wiki, so that it can become a living document as new releases 
>>> come out, new hacks are invented, new modules are developed, new 
>>> interactivity patterns of use create new demands on the software, 
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> There seem to be plenty of volunteers. Please add me to the list of 
>>> potential contributors. I could write or co-write on themes, and 
>>> applications of Drupal to various uses.
>>>
>>> Laura
>>> pingVision
>>>
>>> Liza Sabater wrote:
>>>> On Aug 09 2005, at 05:58, Jeremy Epstein wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> a) be focused towards developers - they're much more likely to be
>>>>> interested in reading it than layman end-users;
>>>>
>>>> Completely disagree.
>>>>
>>>> Let me finish writing my notes about the BlogHer conference. If 
>>>> anything BlogHer shows there a lot of smart and sophisticated 
>>>> bloggers out there HUNGRY for technology like Drupal but they don't 
>>>> know it even exists. I am actually saddened that nobody from the 
>>>> community came to BlogHer to talk about Drupal or CivicSpace 
>>>> because, especially in my panel, the product would have been 
>>>> perfect as a topic of discussion.
>>>>
>>>> One more thing : The two most successful blogging companies were 
>>>> co-founded by women. And these women focused on usability and 
>>>> flexibility. Blogger was bought by Google. SixApart is right now 
>>>> the biggest blogging company out there, with the capacity to have 
>>>> gobbled up LiveJournal and spawn poliglot versions of TypePad.
>>>>
>>>> They are great tools for people coming into blogging but people 
>>>> like Dooce [ www.dooce.com ], for example, need Drupal to manage 
>>>> the communities that have evolved around them. She represents a 
>>>> whole group of bloggers "graduating" into blogging 2.0.
>>>>
>>>> Heather told us during my panel that she closed comments and 
>>>> trackbacks because of the trolls and spam attacks she was having. 
>>>> She just could not manage the more than 500 comments a day coming 
>>>> at her. But she has a posse of devoted readers that could have 
>>>> managed trolls and kept house for her at Dooce.com if she had a 
>>>> tool like Drupal. And if she cranked it up a notch with the tools 
>>>> of CivicSpace, she could have "Dooced" maps of people connecting, 
>>>> networking. And this, just for what a lot of you would derisively 
>>>> call a "mommyblog" -- my thoughts about that are here 
>>>> http://www.culturekitchen.com/archives/003210.html
>>>>
>>>> If you think Drupal is just for developers you have no 
>>>> understanding of the cultural revolution that blogging has wrought. 
>>>> That revolution was a metaphor in net art 10 years ago. What we are 
>>>> seeing here in conferences like BlogHer and online in places like 
>>>> DailyKos, is a cultural phenomenon agenced by the technology and 
>>>> changing how we are living and forming communities online and off.
>>>>
>>>> My challenge to you as a developer is to take a step back and think 
>>>> of yourself as the guy chipping flints off a rock in the cave. 
>>>> Think of what that did to the development of humanity. You're the 
>>>> flint chipper, blogs the spearhead. Look how easy and transparent 
>>>> the development of that technology was. That's blogging 1.0. The 
>>>> question now is what does blogging 2.0 look lik. That's what Drupal 
>>>> is poised to be.
>>>>
>>>> Making the book just for developers would be like sticking that 
>>>> spear in your own foot just because you can. Do you really want to 
>>>> hurt yourself and limp around while others are running away with 
>>>> this cultural revolution?
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Liza Sabater
>>>>
>>>> AIM - cultkitdiva
>>>> SKYPE - lizasabater
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