New Zealand

We're really excited to announce that Mac's Brewery Bar & Restaurant will be the location of DrupalSouth Wellington 2010. The Brewery bar is right on Wellington central city's waterfront, between Te Papa and the Wellington Convention Centre. Yes, that means it's less than 300 metres from Linux.conf.au Wellington 2010 which is the week leading up to DrupalSouth!

We're also excited to announce the website for the event at Wellington2010.DrupalSouth.net.nz where announcements will be made and where you will be able to register in the near future. Subscribe to the RSS feed to get the latest news.

DrupalSouth Wellington will be on Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January 2010 – just after LCA. Note that these are not the dates announced earlier this week on Twitter and a few other places (We were were missing some information we thought we had).

The venue is in central Wellington and is amazing! It is just a few hundred metres from Linux.conf.au and the Wellington Convention Center. Keep listening for the announcement sometime in the next two weeks – as soon as contracts are signed and deposits are paid.

Our sponsors have partnered with us to help make DrupalSouth the biggest Drupal event ever in NZ. They are;

• .nz – who bring you great .nz domains like *.geek.nz
• Catalyst IT – Specialists in Open Source Technologies
• Egressive – Drupal development, Linux support and hosting

We still have space for plenty more sponsorship – please get in touch if you want to be a part of NZ's greatest Drupal event.

We've confirmed attendance of our featured and keynote speakers from overseas;

• Angela Byron (webchick), Drupal 7 core maintainer
• Emma Jane Hogbin, (emmajane), co-author of Front End Drupal, uber-documenter & Drupal evangelist
• Addisun Berry, (add1sun), Drupal documentation lead
• Liz Henry (lizhenry), Blogher.com developer – the largest community for women bloggers, built on Drupal since 2006

Experienced PHP developer needed now for some project work!

Great opportunity for you to showcase your strong PHP skills with this market leader. Your experience developing Drupal websites is of particular interest to this client. Excellent communication skills and the ability to work to deadlines are critical to this role.

This position also needs someone to be based on-site in Auckland City

To find out more, please call Paul or Patrice at Candle on 09 3096534 or email your resume and cover letter to pj@candle.co.nz.

NZ government is about to pass a new Patents Act.  In the 8-year review, they seemingly forgot to consider the impacts of patents on computer software!  Submissions on the bill are being accepted till 2 July, so we need to move fast.  Make a submission now!

Is it time to start thinking about or planning DrupalSouth 2? What do you think? Would you be keen to attend? Help organise? Sponsor? Speak? Where?

I am seeking a developer with experience integrating websites with SMS Gateways, particularly for NZ cellphones, for consulting and/or development over the next few months. Please pm me. Thanks!

Over the last week Twitter and Facebook users across New Zealand and the world, have been blacking out their avatars in protest of S92A, a change in New Zealand's copyright law that will require ISPs to disconnect any user accused of copyright infringement. No proof or evidence is required, just accusation. This is a terrible law for many reasons, which are well documented on CreativeFreedom.org.nz, and elsewhere.

The online protest stimulated and supported a physical protest in Wellington outside the Beehive (beehive.govt.nz is a Drupal website) (NZ's parliamentary buildings) last Thursday. It inspired others to follow-up with a website blackout event today, Monday 23 February. I already partially blacked out my blog last week, however this blackout will be more thorough than my website-decolouration or 'grey-out'.

I have created a Drupal module to help any Drupal websites owners quickly blackout their website, if they want to participate. Currently it's only a Drupal 6 module, however if anyone really wants it for their Drupal 5 website and doesn't have the technical skills to backport it, I may help out with this.

I created this logo for DrupalSouth, but it wasn't used. I'm making the files available for others to rehash, remix, reuse or whatever else they like.

We are also trying to get source files and permissions for the DrupalSouth logo we used.

Be The Change is brought to you by Greenpeace NZ, Oxfam and Forest & Bird Society. Design and development by Method Studios.

See coverage on TV3. I think it will be on the news tonight too. Oh, and keep an eye out for the bus!

Scoopit.

More than a year ago I picked up drupal.net.nz off an expired domains auction site -- probably Expired Domains. I have no personal nor business use for it or interest in it, but I'm not about to give it up to some {insert your favourite swearword here} domain squatter either. Some talk has occurred in the Christchurch DUG about how it could be used for the drupal community. I think this discussion should be opened up to the NZ DUG. Please contribute your ideas here.