Utopia is Drupal

And once again in English...

Utopian society is often characterized as egalitarian distribution of goods in a society that is striving toward perfection. Citizens work on pursuits that are both enjoyable and contribute to the common good. This ideally leaves the citizens with more time for the cultivation arts, culture and sciences (and of course, Facebook).

Drupal?

Drupal is a free, open source content management system that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. With it you can build a powerful, flexible website with a feature-rich, database-driven site with little knowledge of programming.

Last weekend I attended Drupal Camp Vancouver (dcv08); on purpose. I say this because I was hesitant, afraid there might be a skill testing question at the door. Classified as a neophyte because I'm still unclear about what a "node" is. I mostly don't get the in-jokes even though I really dig Darth Vader. But I'm drawn to this community.

Originally written by Belgian student Dries Buytaert as a bulletin board system, Drupal became an open source project in 2001. The purpose was to enable others to use and extend the experimentation platform so that more people could explore new paths for development. Web development companies use this system free of charge and then contribute new modules for future users. It is getting so popular that BusinessWeek included Dries on their list of top 30-and-under innovators for 2008. The curious name came about when Dries made a typo trying to aquire Dorp.org (Dorp is the Dutch word for 'village') The name Drupal, pronounced "droo-puhl," derives from the English pronunciation of the Dutch word "druppel," which means "drop."Drupal has a worldwide community made up of of users and developers. All you have to do is believe... I've been marveling for days at what a nice group of folks I met at the Vancouver Drupal Camp. I was particularly impressed at the community spirit and great sense of "togetherness" that was apparent throughout. Competing web development companies came together and shared.

"Open-source communities work best when its members jump in and help out..." says the Drupal Community website, "Please contribute your knowledge back to the community... edit existing handbook pages -- to fix typos, to clarify confusing sentences, or to move pages around in the hierarchy support the Drupal project, even if you are a beginner. In fact, beginners have a distinct advantage over the experts, because they can more easily spot the places where documentation is lacking...Even the most gifted Drupal developers were new once, and chances are someone has helped you at some point along the way. "

Wow. Now I really feel welcome. No longer trying to hide the awkward incompetently incompetent stage that I'm in... I'm actually feeling wanted... participating in discussions and winning door prizes... warm fuzzies... good sandwiches... mmm.

In fact, at the end of a long day full of informative and challenging sessions, many of these good people volunteered their time to help build out the Fearless City website -- a project to facilitate community participation in the creation of media and community dialogue on issues relevant to people in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.