The structure of Drupalcons provide a range of sources for learning, networking and information. The main sessions are the most obvious source, plus there are many vendors providing and marketing various services from development, hosting to specialist services. Less formal there are the Birds of a Feather BoFs, core conversations. I did not get to any BoFs, it is always difficult when these things run concurrently.
I'll list here some things that stood out from leaflets left on the coffee tables to BoFs that clashed (I've revisited the program). First up is a BoF that points to a useful bundled project:
Creating Graphs and Maps with SearchAPIBoFs, being informal are quite dynamic so the lesson for me is to check the program for additions and things you may have missed. I missed a BoF on
e-learning in Drupal, the Quiz and related modules - H5P that I posted about
last May. Gutted for sure, as I can envisage how I could use these tools beyond the old HTML multiple choice form.
The above BoF included a demo of
Opigno an LMS - learning management system.
As to companies, the Semantic Web Company offers
Drupal services. This lead was a flyer I picked up on the last day and another prompt to revisit
Neologism a Drupal project I came across in Drupalcon Szeged, Hungary in 2008 and
posted about. The introductory text from the DERI Neologism website reads:
Neologism is a vocabulary publishing platform for the Web of Data, with a focus on ease of use and compatibility with Linked Data principles. Neologism is free and Open Source.
With Neologism, you can create RDF classes and properties, which are needed to publish on the Web of Data. Neologism makes creating and publishing vocabularies easy and fast. It supports the RDFS standard, and a part of OWL.
Among a great many people, I met Alan Burke in Szeged back in '08 and he re-introduced himself this week in Prague. He is now
full-time dedicated to Drupal and was pleased to learn that as an 'enthusiast' I am still engaged. I qualified this - with a website still to do; but yes, I'm very much still on-board. I really appreciate Alan's coming over during the break and hearing of his progress and that of his colleagues.
Scalability is a common discussion in software. Scale is an issue for new businesses also. One of the sessions in Prague (several probably) drew attention to the complexity of the 'Drupal stack'. Is it possible for an end-user to fully master it? In our quick chat it became apparent that this was partly why Alan was pleased to learn that I am still climbing the curve. Scalability can be a problem for individuals too, as in making sense of the commercial offerings, whether semantic services or hosting.
There was a
BoF on data visualization too - but again I was elsewhere.
Dataseed sounds an interesting fusion. I also followed sessions on creating multilingual sites, Drupal 8, Symfony, plus Twig the new templating system for Drupal 8. All in all it was a great event with some sight seeing last Monday. The greatest source though is the community!
Holistic approaches to learning are agnostic as to method. Drawing from connectivist and older models, they valorize diversity and the socially distributed cognition afforded by the read-write Web and other publishing models, accepting that every learning experience is unique, and every learner’s needs are different. Connectivist approaches, for all their extensive reliance on networks of people engaging socially, are at heart focused on the individual—specifically, the individual’s learning. Holistic models embrace the fact that it is sometimes more important that a group learns, rather than an individual, especially in collectivist cultures (Potgieter et al., 2006). Holistic models recognize that, sometimes, guidance is what is most needed, that people can learn without direct engagement with others and, even that transmittive instructionist models of teaching have a place. p.61.
