NTC and Penguin Day

(cross-posted from Bryght.com)

I’m here in Seattle for a one-day free and open source technology conference called Penguin Day that is taking place as an adjunct to the Non-Profit Technology Conference. From the website…

Penguin Day Seattle will:

• build new and enhanced relationships between key constituencies in the open source and nonprofit communities in Seattle;
• empower non-profit users and support providers to better communicate their needs and serve as active partners in the development and maturation of open source technology for nonprofits;
• challenge developers to provide flexible and appropriate open source solutions for nonprofit mission-critical applications;
• serve as a venue for learning and information sharing about development processes and nonprofit software needs;
• and result in increased energy and passion to fuel ongoing collaboration.

Today is a loose open-space format for learning about FOSS tools and technologies that are useful to non-profits and other mission-based organizations and businesses. Bryght (and Drupal) have some of the best tools on the internets for these types of projects and applications, and we are committed to helping these types of organizations take advantage of the power of the free and open source tools available to them.

I’m participating in a break-out session about open source content management systems with guys from the Plone and Joomla development communities. It’s really cool to see this kind of coopetition (cooperation + competition… thank you Gregory Heller) and to sit around and work together to solve some of the issues and problems common to us all. People are really scrambling to get their heads around these tools and as we like to say around Bryght… a rising tide floats all boats.

The crowd here is fairly light on geeks and heavier than many other tech conference on actual users of the tools… people whose job it is to use these tools to raise money, activate their constituencies, win elections, grow their memberships, etc. Also, unlike other technology conference that I’ve attended recently, there are almost as many women here as men (let’s call it 50/50). There are lots of FOBs (friends of Bryght) here including the CivicActions crew, Leda Dederich, Nancy White, Andrew of Goodstorm and Zack of CivicSpace Labs, and Sarah Pullman who is leading her Yoga for Geeks class here.

Gregory Heller and the CivicActions crew is really excited about the Drupal Camp they are hosting next weekend in SF that will be facilitated by Jeff Robbins of Lullabot. The camp costs 500 bucks and is an intensive weekend of learning how to work with Drupal, specifically around setting up, confinguring, and *theming* Drupal sites. This is such a great idea and I’ll be helping Gregory pull together a Seattle version of Drupal Camp in June and will be sending a couple of Bryght resellers.

So that’s been the day here in Seattle… over and out from the land of the FREE (and open source).