Gabe "Gabbers" Witcher and the rest of the Punch Brothers did a fantastic job on this Roger Miller song at last night's concert at the Living Room.

Stay tuned for a set list and review...

(Click "Read more" for the Amazon Mp3 download link.)

Fleck to Answer Questions at Select Screenings (Heck yes)

Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck recently released an album and companion film containing highlights from his six week trip around Africa where he played with musicians from Mali, Uganda, Tanzania, the Gambia, Madagascar, South Africa, Senegal, and Cameroon. The album, Throw Down your Heart: Africa Sessions contains 18 of the 40 tracks recorded on this trip, which had been an idea of Fleck's for years.

“I developed the suspicion that some of the greatest acoustic music on earth is hidden in the small villages in Africa. Somehow it didn't seem to be making it out into my world, and even when amazing field recordings were made, how could I find out about them?”

From the 1959 album "Uncloudy Day" which was re-released with "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" as one album in 1991. This is actually more like the "track of last Monday."

Last Saturday, over 130 people gathered in Brooklyn for DrupalCampNYC6, and the event received a bit of coverage in the New York Times. This was great precursor to the 1,400 person DrupalCon this week in Washington, DC. Make sure your sound is on for this video!

From the album Handful of Beauty.

This January I'm headed out to scenic Denver, Colorado to co-teach two of three sessions of an Intro to Drupal 6.x class with Growing Venture Solutions. The course is targeted towards people who are new to Drupal and covers several levels of site administration as well as using essential Drupal modules such as Views and CCK (Content Construction Kit), image handling with Imagecache, and creating sophisticated landing pages using Panels. Then we'll cover theming/templating and finally module development, performance and security best practices.
The course happens over three Saturdays, so students can go home (or back to work), tinker around and return brimming with questions and enthusiasm about turning their Drupal sites up to eleven.
If you're thinking of attending, it's best to secure a spot at the pre-2009 discounted rate.
You can read more about the course on the GVS website.

Hope to see you there!
(photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamuraa/1162062936)

After a great ~ two years, I am no longer with the the Drupal firm pingVision. I'm delighted to say that I've joined the Growing Venture Solutions team. Stay tuned for more.

[this post was moved from the static "About" page.]

Ultra Light Startups, a New York-based tech entrepreneur's group, is
hosting a panel discussion on Open Source content management systems on Thursday, December 4.

I'll be speaking about Drupal along with experts from Joomla (Donna
Vincent) and WordPress (Steve Bruner). People often ask for comparisons between these projects but it's uncommon to find people who have a depth of familiarity in all three systems together in one place, so this promises to be a unique discussion. The panel will be videotaped and made available online.

In order to facilitate a valuable discussion, I've started a list of suggested discussion questions. I'd like to ask you, fellow Drupalers (and any non-Drupalers), to suggest questions that you think will help highlight the differences between these systems and add value to the discussion. Below is my list of suggested questions, starting with ones that seek introductory information to the platforms:

• What kinds of websites/web applications have been built on your platform?
• How large is your development community? Approximatley how many installations are there? How many modules/plugins and themes are available?
• What license covers the code in your project?