nrrd

The Deutsche Aids-Hilfe (DAH) is the leading German non-governmental organization that deals with the concerns of people living with HIV/AIDS and helps raise awareness of effective HIV prevention techniques.
As the governing body for more than 120 local AIDS service organizations, it supports this work at many different levels.

The DAH website, aidshilfe.de, is one of the organization’s main communication channels. It offers information on HIV and other sexual transmitted infections and covers the field of counseling for private matters. The website also provides contact information for local self-help-centers, a broad selection of free information material, workshops, community features, etc.

Work on the aidshilfe.de project was supported by many partners. Christoph Schüßler designed the website, which was implemented in Drupal by Berlin-based Werk21. The new aidshilfe.de is a step forward toward a future-proof system that features an attractive new design, interactive features, user-friendly community functionality and great usability.

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As I was surfing the Internet, seeking out feminist mindporn to entertain me, I came across these two posts:

Kate Elliot, asking Epic Fantasy and the Bechdel Test, in which she asks:
How much epic fantasy passes the Bechdel Test? All, most, some, little?

She defines the Bechdel Test for those who do not already know it, but despite that people in the comments-thread that follows (on livejournal, where I have been banned, deleted, and purged… more of that later) still come up with the same old arguments, which are, in no particular order:

1. OMG WHY SO JUDGY? Or: Even if the story doesn’t have at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man, it’s still a good story!

Yes, it may well be. Lord of the Rings fails the Bechdel Test, totally utterly and completely – most of the named women in it never get to talk to each other – but it’s still a good story. It’s just a story that, in Kate Elliot’s fine phrase, “ellides women”. That’s what the Bechdel Test measures.

2. BUT SOME STORIES JUST DON’T HAVE WOMEN IN THEM. As Kate Elliot notes in the comments-thread, while the fighters of your epic fantasy may be mostly or entirely men, unless the war of which the epic fantasy is the story is being fought by an all-male group against an all-male group in deserted hills, there are going to be women around. Medieval times might have seen soldiering and ruling as a role for men, but that didn’t make armies or courts all-male environments: and the presence of women in the world of the narrative means you get to ask the Bechdel question: why are there no women who get to talk to each other about something other than a man?

3. OH I DON’T SEE THAT AS A PROBLEM, PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING PASSES THAT TEST NOW. Followed by the cite of a well-known writer with the assurance that she has LOTS of strong female characters. Lois McMaster Bujold, for example. Mercedes Lackey. Even Anne McCaffrey or C. J. Cherryh. Well, yes. But mostly their narratives don’t pass. Cherryh and Bujold both have lots of strong female characters. But mostly, they don’t talk to each other, except about men. They fail the Bechdel Test in that key respect: as female characters, they tend to have plot-driven conversations only when they are talking to male characters. (Rimrunners, for example, passes the Bechdel Test more strongly than most Cherryh novels, by two brief conversations that Bet has with her bunkmate, apologising for breaking the hygiene regs on her first night, and with the ship’s doctor, claiming she walked into a door: Cyteen, unless we count the long online “conversations” than Younger Ari has with Older Ari, I don’t think passes at all.)

4. WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Well, we’re feminists, so it does. *is judgy*

The other post was Mary Catelli’s, babies in world-building, about how SF writers “neglect to figure out Where Babies Come From and Why It Matters.” It bears almost no relation to the previous post, except in that “having babies” is always (unless you posit Unusually Advanced Technology) something that women – and only women -can do. (Even breastfeeding is feasible for a man given the right hormonal balance, but for growing a fetus from fertilised egg to baby, you need a working uterus….) I cannot help feeling that the dismissal of women from the central narrative correlates with the dismissal of “women’s work” from the central narrative.

TicketCake.com is an event ticketing and promotion start-up that recently launched using Drupal as its framework. The website features an innovative design by White Label Graphics which balances functionality and simplicity.

Because Drupal has many ways to display dynamic content, finding the right way to implement a design can be a problem in itself. To overcome this obstacle, the Ticket Cake team focused a significant amount of time creating wireframes for the project.

Drupal’s unique ability to display content in various ways made the process of developing wireframes a constant back and forth. With each iteration, the team updated price quotes, layouts, and site flow.

“Throughout the construction of the wireframes, we always looked to a keep it simple philosophy that ended up being vital,” said Joe Henriod, head of the Ticket Cake business development team. “Measure twice, cut once.”

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Grandiflora is a boutique florist based in Sydney, Australia. Although you might not have heard of them before, you've probably seen their work in the pages of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and many other fashion magazines. They've also created the floral design for many celebrity weddings and events in the Australia's premier harbour city.

Recently Grandiflora were interested in updating their identity and marketing (including their website), so they tasked the team at House of Laudanum to create a custom online shopping experience to sell their products online. The previous website was a custom CMS written in Perl and while it did have some e-commerce facilities, it required updating to be a more integrated shopping solution.

Why was Drupal chosen for the project?

Although WordPress was considered early on in the decision making process, the team chose Drupal mainly because of the Ubercart module and some other contributed modules which laid the foundation for the integrated payment solution required for the project.

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After reviewing 240 sessions submitted for the conference, the track chairs, the Copenhagen team and the Drupal Association are proud to present the DrupalCon Copenhagen program.

The total of 94 sessions is made up of 83 regular sessions, 6 platinum sponsor sessions, 3 keynotes and 2 rounds of lightning talks.

The session selection accounts for many factors including attendee votes, addressing the breadth of interests of DrupalCon attendees, and providing a balanced and compelling program. For example, some sessions were picked because they were essential for introducing new developers to Drupal, other sessions were selected because they present important local Drupal business cases, etc.

If you proposed a session that didn't make it into the program, please consider presenting it at the Unconference on August 23rd or run it as a Birds of a Feather session. We will be adding more information about these options to the website in the coming weeks.

You can either see the sessions selected for each track below, or take a look at the program overview. Please bear in mind that this is not the final program and that sessions are likely to be moved around as we refine it.

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At the Drupal Association retreat in San Francisco, the general assembly set the completion of the drupal.org redesign as its number one priority for 2010. The assembly agreed to fund five contracts to help eliminate obstacles that had prevented the community from completing the redesign.

Five key roles were identified: Architect, Solr developer, Project module developer, and an infrastructure developer. The association also elected to upgrade Drupal.org code repository from CVS to Git to help maintain Drupal.org as the hub of Drupal development.

Hiring process:

Job descriptions were developed in conjunction with both the redesign volunteers and the Drupal.org project managers, Kieran Lal, Chris Strahl, and Lisa Rex. The job descriptions were then posted to groups.drupal.org for 3 weeks. Approximately 35 applications were received and a dozen interviews were conducted by the project management team. The contracts were negotiated with Drupal Association Interim General Manager Jacob Redding, to whom the project team reports directly. Contractors work day-to-day with the project management team. The association will pay for the contract work using the funds raised through memberships, advertising, partnerships, affiliates, and DrupalCon sponsorships.

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Drupal.org will have some scheduled downtime, Wednesday 21st of July, 22:00 UTC (3PM PDT, 6PM EDT). We will be enhancing the usability of the drupal.org issue queues. Since the drupal.org database is quite large, this can take a while. We hope to be back in one hour.

PZ Myers posted I have been objectified! which is where I found out about a post I want to write about and won’t link to directly: a post on a blog called Common Sense Atheist entitled “Fifteen Sexy Scientists”, dated 16th July. All the scientists (apart from Myers himself, who’s number 15) are women: all are white. There’s also a header pic of a revealingly-dressed woman bending to look into a microscope – except she is not looking into the microscope, but at the photographer, whose camera angle is peering down at her breasts.

The man who put the post together defends his picks with “Why no men? Because I unavoidably find women more sexy, of course! ….. I’m not pandering to my male readership. I’m pandering to me. ….. Are you saying it would be nice if I were ‘freethinking’ and not attracted to women with a waist-to-hip ratio of .7, with clear skin and big eyes? ….. I’m just not aware of non-white sexy women. My favorite women in the world are actually darker-skinned Latinas, as it happens. If you can point me to some sexy non-white scientists, I will most gladly add them to the list. ….. You’re tired of women being portrayed as beautiful? I’m not. This is a post about sexy women. So it portrays women as sexy. …… Also, as it happens, latinas are my favorite. I just couldn’t find many latina scientists on a quick search.” (That last comment was directed at someone who pointed out this post was not just sexist, but racist.)

What the Common Sense Atheist did was search the web for photographs of women who identified as scientists (at least one of whom is still a student) and defended this with “I took pictures that are already online and put them together in a list. Just to be clear: is that the objection? That I took public pictures and put them altogether with the word ’sexy’ at the top?”

(I’m quoting him exactly because he claims “I’m tempted to make a list of the hundreds of ways people here and on other blogs have explicitly misrepresented my stated views, often even erecting strawmen which said the opposite of what I explicitly claim. Quite exhausting.”)

I’m pretty certain that this epMotion ad depicting a number of attractive men dancing round a scientist to sell her the automated pipette system has already been linked to from this blog (Warning: clicking on this link will start video/sound playing on an endless loop: lyrics here if you need to be reminded) because I remember discussing/reading discussion about the unusualness of an ad for something-geeky using sexy men to sell it to a woman.

Or, really, the unusualness of having sexy men being objectified for a woman’s gaze at all. The 15th photo on Common Sense Atheist’s list, P Z Myers: Myers is (from a lesbian eye view) a reasonably attractive man, if you’re into that kind of gender: I could certainly (from a slash fan’s view) pair him off with Samuel Gerard in a cross-universe adventure in which scientist and US Marshal save Chicago from anti-evolution terrorism and have hot sex, angst, and sizzling dialogue, except I don’t do RPS. But the photo of him riding a dinosaur is plainly not intended to be read as a sexy photograph – though nor are some of the other photographs in the list, of young scientists working out at the gym or on the playing field. They’re made “sexy”, “objectified”, because this “common sense atheist” presumes to put them up as if they were his pinups, his to look at and admire, in a way he does not intend to be admired himself.

Being the one who looks is the position of power. Bitchy Jones (whose blog is absolutely amazing and absolutely NSFW) wrote in Who’s a pretty boy then:
But, look, right, let’s workshop. And by workshop I mean I’ll keep hitting these keys until feel less-sectionablely-hysterical and then we can all get on with our lives. What the f*k is an out of shape submissive man all about? How does that even make sense? If you really truly are all and only about my pleasure, how come you’re not all working out round the clock and living on egg whites just to see me smile?

How come you’re not all (or an above national average proportion of you) totally buff and groomed and lust scented like gay men?

How come submissive men aren’t all about well cut jeans and tight t shirts over their lickable torsos and expensively cut knicker-dampening suits and butchy boots and dirty looks. Yeah, not all women like the same thing, but there are vague ideas, there are archetypes women find hot and until you can buy a Hot Sissy Maid 2010 calendar in my supermarket I’m betting the look most submissive men are going for isn’t one of them.

I mean, why? Why are you doing something that no women want or like? Isn’t that, like, the opposite of your entire thing?

I love Bitchy Jones. I’m probably going to be quoting her quite a lot in this post. Because there is no other way that she would ever get to confront this Common Sense Atheist, who asks in a following post (entitled) “Am I Sexist (round 2)” (yes, he ended up having to do a series):
So all that leads me to suspect the last post in this series is going to have the title “Yup, I Was Being Sexist.” But I don’t really know yet, because I’m still trying to figure out what the arguments are. Obviously, there are lots of bad or obscure arguments on offer against my original position. Researchers in moral psychology have shown that moral judgment usually happens like this: We have an emotional reaction to something, and then we invent post-hoc reasons to defend our unthinking emotional reaction. And of course that’s no different here.

This is the classic: How can I be sexist? I didn’t mean to be! But in reaction to this, let me post Bitchy Jones in response to an equally deadening reaction from the organiser of an online “Bondage Award” contest which was in principle open to all, and yet in which the only photos on display were of women being tied up: Well, before I jump up and down and froth too much (like I ever..) let’s see what the awards people have to say: they point out patiently, that right-minded, sane complaints are all very well, but really, they – the awards – are not actually sexist because they never meant to be sexist.

Yes, it’s unfortunate that in the page inviting nominations women are pictured tied up, being drawn tied up and, um, surfing the net wearing a ball gag. (WHAT? People do that? Or is it just a way of making a woman who is looking at porn still a looked at bondage-sexay thing – because, god, women can’t just look at porn without also putting on some kind of sexy pantomime for anyone looking on (who? who surfs porn for an audience)). Really, though, really, I have never seen anything so stubbornly insist that women have to be the sexual display object even when they are consuming porn. And what is she even looking at. Sites featuring sneering mandoms? Do they exist? I’m guessing no. Meanwhile the guys (who are – irrelevant aside – hot) get to be riggers (ahem), photographers, artists, retailers, owners of fetish companies, consumers of pay-for porn (yeah women only surf free sites – wearing ball gags – so no one ever make any porn for them. There’s no money in it.) In other words, the men get to be sexual agents.

But, yeah, just unfortunate. Because, the most fabulous and rigorous argument against sexist arsehattery (or other retrograde arsehattery) is wheeled out here: it is just this way because it is, okay! It just turned out this way. In fact, all representation of anything ever that seems to endorse only the majority viewpoint and tastes is just a fucking coincidence, okay, and stop whining or, you know, pointing it out.

Apparently, the guy who runs the awards just took a bunch of his favourite pictures off of his hardest drive and sent them to an artist who drew the pics. And that is just what happened, okay, so shut up. No one is trying to be sexist. Calm down, dear.

Look, why does slash make (some) men feel so uncomfortable? It takes the butchy/heroic guys they’re supposed to get to identify with, and sets them up as sex objects. Women write stories about these guys getting sexually used: describing them in luscious, flattering, sexual terminology: women are objectifying men. Men find that disturbing. At a convention I’ve been going to for some years, the first year I went they had one slash panel, held Sunday night, that was packed out: the next year they had half a dozen, attended by slash fans only: the year after, they had so many I had to miss some, and not a few were attended by non-slash fans, some of whom caused trouble by insisting we had to justify ourselves: and last year, one slash panel was convened by a man who opened the panel by declaring that he didn’t much care for m/m slash, what he wanted to know was where to find the slash stories with women in them. (And bizarrely, an audience full of slash fans, most of whom would have rather talked about m/m slash, helpfully tried to direct him to the saffic slash sites.)

P Z Myers writes in response to Common Sense Atheist:
I’m also bothered by the premise. I think it’s an excellent idea to promote the idea that scientists can be sexy, and women who are comfortable with that should be able to proudly present themselves as sexual beings. But the important concept is that women should have the choice, and their decisions should be respected. Men do not get the privilege of having the roving eye, of being able to pick individual women out of the crowd to tell them that here, they get to be object of sexual interest, especially not if they’re going to then publicly display them as clever eye candy.

There are so many things wrong with the Common Sense Atheist post, his dismissal of women trying to explain what’s wrong with it not least of them – but one of the worst is just that he’s taken pics that people put up on the Internet and decided that these real people, these scientists and students, are just to be dismissed as pinup girls. These are real people, with real careers, who may not even be aware that their pic is appearing on this blog post as this charmer’s “sexy scientist”.

I have written stories in which fictional characters get used and abused and objectified. I don’t write RPS because my imagination cannot get going on the real people – even though the vast majority of RPS is about the public persona of famous people (actors, singers, politicians), rather than the people themselves, and I’ve read and enjoyed RPS that was so clearly satire or out-there fantasy that I suspect the people named wouldn’t care if they did read it. (Blair getting screwed by Bush: is this RPS or political satire?)

The power to look is a privilege that men do not relinquish gladly, whether they express it by forcing women to cover or to uncover, by taking over BDSM culture or by objectifying scientists or by showing up at slash panels and demanding that the women present talk about anything other than the sexual use of fictional men. The power to look and the power to ensure women don’t look back.

Bitchy Jones gets the last word:
19 out of every twenty dominant women aren’t happy or comfortable with femdom as an identity or a place to live. That’s a lot.

That’s 95%.

95% of dominant women aren’t comfortable in femdom. Are being shut out of there own sexual culture.

Maybe there’s more to this than individual acts between individuals?

And I can’t pretend it’s all okay. Something is very wrong here. I’m sorry if your kink got in my way but, really, what would you do it you were me?

And that’s why I have this sledgehammer.

The Drupal Association has been working to figure out the most effective ways it can help local user groups organize Drupal camps. We quickly realized that there was a lack of data about how past and present Drupal camps were currently being organized. With that in mind, we created an online survey for DrupalCamp organizers that would help everyone understand how Drupal camps currently worked.

Over the course of about 7 weeks, we collected a total of 51 responses, with 6 duplicates and unusable, making our sample size 45 Drupal camps. In a previous article posted on the Drupal Event Organization Drupal group, I posted the results from the first 31 responses. Since that article was published (and because of it), we had an additional 14 responses, making the data that much more valuable.

Overall, the 45 camps that completed the survey had over 6,200 participants, a combined budget of almost $250,000, and were organized by over 400 volunteers.

The resulting data is extremely valuable to both the Drupal Association and Drupal user groups around the world. The Drupal Association now has an idea of how camps are currently being organized and can make informed decisions about how to help future organizers. Local user groups can use this data to help plan future events. In particular, the average cost-per-particpant and participants-per-volunteers data (highlighted below) should be considered when planning future camps.

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“There are two things you don’t want to let anyone see how you make, laws and sausages,” Leo McGarry says at some point in the West Wing.

Well, I don’t know how to make sausages.

Access policies generally begin by accident. A group of people organise an event. Someone who came (or wanted to come) had an unexpected amount of difficulty attending. The group take note and decide “oh, we’ll do that differently next time”. Eventually they decide to write it down. The result after some years is often confusing, badly arranged, and ineffective as a guideline for future actions.

Here’s what I discovered when taking one such set of time-accreted access policies and creating a standard set:

0. The Alpha and the Omega: The access policy is meant to make people feel welcome. Having an access policy is itself an access issue. Everything in the access policy should be written accordingly.

1. Use the discussions that went before, and the notes that were taken, and the resulting “policy” as a mine for data about what worked or didn’t work in the past. Use that mine for unrefined ore which you will not take out and show about in public. Yes, the discussions and results made sense at the time: yes, we were all people of goodwill and we meant well: but nonetheless, this is Leo McGarry’s rule brought to life: don’t.

2. Consider as a framework all the possible kinds of things that might prevent someone from coming to your event or make them feel unwelcome when they’re there. Discriminatory or offensive language; mobility issues; childcare issues; visual impairments; hearing impairments; dietary issues; travel costs; accommodation costs.

3. There are the things that can be done for free (or at trivial costs) and that will tend to improve the event for everyone regardless; there are the things that are worth doing providing people tell you when they book they’re going to use them: there are the things that are unaffordable. And there are the things you didn’t think of yet: and there are the things it is your legal obligation to do.

4. The things that are free/low cost should get done regardless – and, in a public access policy, say that’s what you do. (Print essential information in 14-point sans serif: mark off front-row seating for disabled-access: declare a “respect yourself and others at all times” policy on language: don’t serve alcohol at the event itself: tell the venue to provide vegetarian/vegan food options and to clearly label buffet dishes accordingly. These are things the organisation I work for has found we can do without cost to ourselves.)

5. The things that are worth doing if someone’s going to use them: ask people to specify their access needs when they book. Provide a field on the form for them to do so. Have someone whose job it is to check this and to get back to the person. (It is not worth trying to organise a wheat-free buffet for all for the sake of one coeliac, I say from personal experience, but it absolutely is worth making sure there are wheat-free cookies supplied with the tea and coffee so they have something to nibble on like everyone else, and that the venue has a clearly labelled wheat-free plate at each meal.)

6. Check local and national legislation and by-laws. If it’s your legal obligation to do it, you may as well make a virtue of necessity by declaring that you’re doing it as a matter of policy. It’s friendlier, it’s more open, and do you really want to come across as a group that’s only permitting certain people to be there because the law requires you let them be? (For example: it is unlawful, in the UK, to prevent a woman from breastfeeding her baby anywhere she has a legal right to be. It is unlawful, if someone needs a support person, to stop the support person from being with them.)

7. When it comes down to what costs money and what you can afford and what is possible given the venue, the size of the event, the time it would take to set something up: there are always going to be things that would be helpful that you just can’t afford to do. And that is the most awkward part of an access policy. But see zero, the alpha and the omega; if you’re not doing it because you can’t afford to, say upfront that’s why and you’re really sorry. If you’re not doing it because venue logistics don’t permit, well, say so and apologise. If you’re not doing it because you don’t wanna, see point zero and grow up.

8. Say on the policy that there will be clearly-identifiable volunteers at the event whose job it is to figure out solutions to access needs that didn’t come up in advance. And have those volunteers. Make sure they know who to ask at the venue (and the venue staff know them) if there’s something that can be done. Because nobody can think of everything. But you can always make sure someone is there to be helpful.

9. Remember rule zero.

Anyone want to link to/suggest fan access policies that in their view get it right?

So, I was thinking about homophobia and heterosexism and the creative process.

I was told last year (by someone who had no idea who I was, to be fair) that I had no idea how the writer’s mind works: I couldn’t, she thought, or I wouldn’t be asking questions like “Why are you writing about this?” because I ought to know that writers don’t choose their subject matter, their subject matter chooses them. And I thought, well, there speaks a writer who has never been challenged.

I’ve had discussions that started from the question “Why are you writing about this?” for twenty-plus years. I am a lesbian writing about gay men. Everyone assumes this is a choice that can be challenged, apart from other lesbian slash writers, and meeting the challenges has led me to a better understanding of how a writer’s mind works – mine, if no one elses.

A post I made a few years ago about Robin Hobb’s Six Duchies/Liveships trilogy of trilogies, The Fool, the Fitz, and Fanfic brought up a question for me in the discussion thread that followed; Why is the culture of the Six Duchies homophobic? An important plot point turns on Fitz’s being homophobic – and homophobic in an accepted, settled way, as if being homophobic is just regarded as natural and right. While Fitz was somewhat isolated from the mainstream in the Six Duchies, his homophobia is not presented as part of his being out of step: it’s never questioned at all, except by its target, and the target is not from the Six Duchies at all.

There’s a new trilogy coming out, The Rain Wild Chronicles: I just finished reading the first volume, The Dragon Keeper, this weekend. (Minor spoilers under the cut) As it turns out, Bingtown and the Rain Wild are also a homophobic culture. No explanation is offered for this, either: it’s simply presented as normal that a gay man will grow up completely unaware – and that he will be so vulnerable in his unawareness that he will be the target for a man more aware than he is.

There is a same-sex relationship in The Dragon Keeper. It’s the first adult same-sex relationship that I think Robin Hobb consciously wrote. It’s presented as that of a wealthy man dominating and abusing a less-wealthy man, a gay man marrying a straight woman without telling her he is gay, without explaining to her that he intends to move his lover and employee into the house with them. Both men lie to the woman to keep their secret. This hurts her appalllingly. As it would.

Where does the homophobia in Bingtown come from? Why is it that Hobb doesn’t appear able to conceive of a society that isn’t homophobic?

Why did Dickens invent Fagin? Not because Dickens was consciously anti-Semitic: but because Dickens had been reared in an anti-Semitic culture, that took for granted ugly stereotypes like Fagin. And Fagin is, while an anti-Semitic stereotype, also a real person – as developed a character as Dickens usually makes.

Hest is a real person: I can see why the homophobia of Bingtown, the denial and lies forced on him, have made him the way he is – as I can see how his treatment of Sedric and of Alise have warped them: and neither of them had been treated well by Bingtown’s culture before Hest came along. Alise because her scholarly fascination with dragons was treated as, at best, an eccentricity: Sedric because his sexual orientation had left him devastatingly ignorant.

But. Alise, in her story, seems to be changing – to become alive to the possibilities for a woman independent of her family. There are strong hints she’ll move on from her gay husband to be with a straight man who admires and respects her. There no hints whatsoever that Sedric will move on from his abusive relationship with his lover to be with another gay man who admires and respects him.

Maybe it’s just the circles I move in, but I like to think that, as a culture we are moving away from homophobia and heterosexism, into a culture where it is taken for granted that “some people gay, get over it”. We aren’t there yet, but every success gets us closer: in the week that the Prime Minister of Australia declared her belief that “marriage is between a man and a woman”, the Prime Minister of Iceland married her wife.

It becomes more and more uncomfortable to read novels in which the authorial background takes for granted that homophobia is normal, that assumes gay men will inevitably grow up ignorant and warped by hatred and invisibility: that leaves lesbians invisible. Especially this is discomforting in the universe I walked into, as a writer, even before I came out: because in SF, I did not need to be trapped by heterosexism.

I don’t mean to judge Robin Hobb in particular for her cultural homophobia. I don’t think that would be fair, any more than it would be fair to judge Dickens in particular for his cultural anti-Semitism. But I’m still left with this discomfort: a writer I enjoyed that I seem to be leaving behind in a trap I can’t endure.

Our fifth Drupal 7 alpha version was released a little over a month ago. Today, we're proud to announce the release of the sixth (and hopefully final) alpha version of Drupal 7.x for your further testing and feedback. The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!

This release includes many critical bug fixes, a nearly working upgrade path, and a new default core theme: Bartik!

Please see the release notes for more details.

When will alpha become beta?

We have identified several "beta blocking" issues, and itemized these at the Drupal core community initiatives page. On or about August 1, 2010 (or when the upgrade path is working, whichever comes first) we will create a new official Drupal 7 release. If this list is fixed, it will be a beta release. Otherwise, it will be another alpha release. It's expected we will have a few beta versions and at least one release candidate before Drupal 7.0 is finalized. We can potentially reach beta within the next month by focusing on this short-list of issues! Please help!

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We are proud to announce the keynote speakers at DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010: Rasmus Lerdorf (topic to be crowdsourced), Jeremy Keith (Design of HTML5) and Dries Buytaert (State of Drupal).

The State of Drupal

Dries Buytaert, Drupal Project Lead
Tuesday, August 24th

Dries Buytaert will discuss where Drupal is and where it is going. In particular, he’ll discuss the final preparations for the release of Drupal 7, the Drupal.org redesign, and the plans for Drupal 8.

Dries Buytaert is passionate about the web, open source, and photography. He is the original creator and project lead of Drupal, an open source social publishing system. He is co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for Drupal. Dries is also working on Mollom, a service that helps you identify content quality and that stops website spam.

Topic to be decided by you

Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP Project Founder
Wednesday, August 25th

Tell Rasmus which topic you would like him to focus on by leaving a comment on the DrupalCon Copenhagen site.

Rasmus Lerdorf is known for creating the PHP project in 1995 and he has contributed to a number of other open source projects over the years. Rasmus was most recently an infrastructure architect at Yahoo! for over 7 years before joining WePay in 2010. He was born in Greenland, grew up in Denmark and Canada and has a Systems Design engineering degree from the University of Waterloo. You can follow @rasmus on Twitter.

The Design of HTML5

Jeremy Keith, Author of HTML5 For Web Designers
Thursday, August 26th

Everyone's talking about the benefits of HTML5 for Web applications but the specification also introduces an extra layer of semantic richness to our Web documents. These additions aren't wishful thinking for some far-flung future: you can start using them today. That's because the design principles driving HTML5 are steeped in pragmatism. Find out how important good design principles are to any project, whether it's a website, a content management system, or the very language that underpins the World Wide Web.

Jeremy Keith is an Irish web developer living in Brighton, England where he works with the Web consultancy firm Clearleft. He wrote the books DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, and most recently, HTML5 For Web Designers. His latest project is Huffduffer, a service for creating podcasts of found sounds. When he’s not making websites, Jeremy plays bouzouki in the band Salter Cane.

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On August 23rd, the day before the main conference kicks off, you'll be able to attend training sessions facilitated by leading Drupal experts. These sessions will take place at the main conference venue.

The training sessions will cover:

• Performance and Scalability
• Drupal Powered E-Commerce
• Module development
• Security: process, code and hands-on training

It is possible to attend the training sessions even if you're not going to the main conference. If that's the case, simply buy a ticket for the training session you'd like to attend.

If you buy a ticket for a training session together with a ticket for the conference, we will subtract €30 from the price of your conference ticket (making it €249 + VAT). The discount will be applied automatically during checkout.

Check out the training page for more information on the training sessions.

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ThinkDrop Consulting and the non-profit organization MACILE are collaborating on a pilot program to introduce open-source technology and Drupal to children living in less-advantaged communities, helping them overcome the hurdles that prevent them from openly accessing and sharing information.  In July, we will travel to Itabo, Dominican Republic to teach a two-week class to 6th-12th graders and educators on Internet Technology, Open Source, and Drupal.

In addition to educating both students and teachers on Internet technology and Drupal, we will be documenting the process using OpenAtrium and releasing our curriculum under Creative Commons licensing. Our goal is to create a consistent curriculum to teach kids around the world who may have not ever even used a computer.

Donate Today!

We are seeking $8,000 in funding through Kickstarter, an innovative website that allows users to fund creative endeavors. The funds we are seeking will pay for full-time coding and project development, travel and housing expenses in the Dominican Republic, and additional computers for educators and students. As we will be working in less advantaged communities, maintaining access to consistent electricity and the internet will be a challenge, so a portion of our time will be spent developing a model approach to this problem.

Although we have set our funding goal at $8,000, we hope to exceed it. Any additional funds we receive will be used to continue expanding the Internet Technology programs of COSOLA and MACILE. 

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A couple of days ago, we announced the track chairs and published the final descriptions of the six tracks at DrupalCon Copenhagen.

To make sure that everyone has had a chance to submit a session targeted at a specific track, we have decided to move the session deadline back a week. The revised schedule is as follows:

• The final deadline for session submissions is July 4th.
• Voting will take place from July 5th until July 11th.
• The initial schedule will be published on July 18th.

We have enjoyed seeing all the sessions submitted so far, but it has become apparent that the lack of detailed track descriptions has made it difficult to categorize some sessions. Hopefully, the track descriptions will make it easier for you to target your session at a specific audience.

Please consider the following track descriptions when submitting a session proposal:

• Introducing Drupal
  Chaired by Boris Doesborg
  For users and developers new to Drupal.
• Theming, Design & Usability
  Chaired by Roy Scholten
  For people who focus on usability, user experience, and design.
• Code & Development
  Chaired by Gábor Hojtsy
  For people interested in Drupal's architecture and the future of its codebase.
• Configuration, Set-Up & Performance
  Chaired by Florian Loretan
  For people who want to spend less time coding and more time working on the content of their sites.
• Drupal for Business
  Chaired by Jakub Suchý
  For people who using Drupal as a tool for running their business.
• Providing Professional Drupal Services
  Chaired by Thomas Barregren
  For people who provide Drupal-related professional services.

We can't wait to receive your session proposals!

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Date:  25 juin 2010 - 5:00pm - 9:00pm

L'ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) est une entente de commerce international, négociée en secret depuis le milieu des années 2000. L'objectif déclaré de l'ACTA est de condamner la contrefaçon et d'imposer des mesures de contrôle sévères sur la propriété intellectuelle.

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L'ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) est une entente de commerce international, négociée en secret depuis le milieu des années 2000. L'objectif déclaré de l'ACTA est de condamner la contrefaçon et d'imposer des mesures de contrôle sévères sur la propriété intellectuelle.

À l'occasion du prochain 5 à 7 de Koumbit, vendredi le 25 juin, nous invitons Anthony Hémond de FACIL pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre pour discuter de l'ACTA et de son impact potentiel sur le partage des connaissances, la vie privée, la neutralité du Net et les droits fondamentaux.

La lecture de documents ayant fait l'objet de fuites indiquent que l'ACTA :

• autoriserait les fournisseurs de services Internet à espionner leurs clients, et à couper leur accès suite à la simple allégation de téléchargement de fichiers protégés par le droit d’auteur;
• mettrait en place un système de «réponse graduée» et de responsabilité des fournisseurs d’accès Internet, entrainant le filtrage du Net et des atteintes à l’interopérabilité des œuvres numériques, légales ou non;
• autoriserait les douaniers à fouiller les ordinateurs, lecteurs MP3, et autres engins électroniques, et à les saisir s’ils contiennent quelque chose qui semble porter atteinte à la propriété intellectuelle;
• créerait de nouvelles sanctions criminelles pour les atteintes au droit d’auteur, y compris des sanctions pour des comportements en ligne qui n'ont jamais été criminalisés;
• instaurerait d’autres mesures dans le même esprit sur des sujets aussi importants que l’accès aux médicaments.

Koumbit est très troublé par ce traité négocié en secret. Nous tenons à ce que vous sachiez ce qui est en train de se produire, et comment cela peut affecter les relations entre les gens sur l'Internet. À cette fin, la présentation d'Anthony sera filmée par nos amis de Funambules media et intégrée à la production d'une vidéo en ligne.

Details:

Date:

Vendredi, le 25 juin 2010

Heure:

À partir de 17:00

Lieu:

Nos bureaux sont situés au 6833, avenue de l'Épée, bureau 308, à quelque pas du métro l'Acadie.

• http://www.consommateur.qc.ca/union-des-consommateurs/?page_id=344
• FACIL, pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre: http://facil.qc.ca
• http://www.stopacta.info/

You may already have heard of Packt, the fast-growing publisher of hardcopy and digital books on specific technologies, due to the large number of Drupal books it has published over the years. However, you may not be aware that they recently relaunched their website, www.PacktPub.com, using Drupal as its framework.

Packt Publishing is a modern, unique publishing company with a focus on producing cutting-edge books for communities of developers, administrators, and newbies alike. Packt has so far published over 15 Drupal books and remains committed to producing practical solution-based books for Drupal developers, along with the best available online bookstore. The new website, which took 12 months from design to launch, was developed with UK-based Bluetel Solutions. The new version not only adds to the existing functionality of Packt’s original website, but now also offers a new, enhanced customer experience with an advanced design.

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We are continuing to work to make DrupalCon Copenhagen as awesome as possible, but we wanted to take some time to give you an update on what we have been working on lately:

As you may have noticed, the deadline for submitting a session has been moved back to June 27th. Voting on the sessions opens on June 28th and closes on July 8th. We will notify all speakers and post the full schedule on July 18th. The votes for the different sessions will be used by the track chairs to inform their decision of which sessions get selected.

If your session isn't selected for one of the main conference tracks, please consider doing it as a Birds of a Feather (BOF) session instead. We will post more information about how to announce your BOF sessions as we get closer to the conference.

If you are not attending one of the training sessions on August 23rd, we would love to see you at the Unconference. This will be a perfect opportunity to connect with the local open source community and to discuss issues outside of the Drupal-sphere. The Unconference will be run BarCamp-style and it will be free to attend, but please register in advance to help us determine how much coffee we need to brew.

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