DrupalConSF highlights

For anyone who doesn't know, DrupalCon is a biannual conference (in North America during early spring and in Europe during late summer) where people from all over the world get together to discuss all things Drupal. The most recent one was held two weeks ago in San Francisco. 3,000 people were in attendance, more than the last two (Paris and Washington DC) combined, demonstrating continued growth of the Drupal community and interest in Drupal.

There's so much cool stuff happening in Drupal right now, that I won't be able to do it justice in this post. Perhaps I'll add more comments later as I think of stuff that I'm compelled to mention. But for now, I'll just mention what I believe are two of the "you absolutely must know this" things that will change how you develop with and for Drupal.

1) Context, PURL, and Spaces: Amazing Drupal developer, Young Hahn, presented this talk on the three critical modules behind Development Seed's Open Atrium. Absolutely mind-blowing. These modules provide elegant and generic building blocks for solving some of the thorniest problems that have been plaguing Drupal developers for years. If you're a developer, watch the presentation (links to higher-res video available in the comments of the linked page).

2) Drupal 7 Fields: One of the exciting things about Drupal 7 is that (most of) CCK got moved into core. But didn't just get moved: got massively improved! Modules that were complex in Drupal 6 will become amazingly simple in Drupal 7. Warning: once you understand how Drupal 7 Fields work, you won't want to develop for Drupal 6 again, so consider that risk before watching the presentation. And after you watch it, please help accelerate the Drupal 7 release by helping us complete the remaining 87 critical issues.

There's way more cool stuff going on than just the above two. Please feel free to add comments to share what you think is cool.