The Tossed Salad

Last Saturday saw 200+ techies coming together for the 2nd Drupal Camp in India at SICSR, Pune. Just like other camps in Pune, even this one had free walk-ins and no sponsors, unlike the previous Drupal Camp in Ahmedabad. Speaking in front of a highly attentive audience, two guys working at the Gravitech Company presented Drupal as an exciting upcoming open source developing software. They managed to strike a chord with the students present in the crowd by repeatedly claiming that one can create a fully functional website in a matter of days.

The sessions were divided in two tracks, one for the beginners (i.e. those who have never used or even heard of Drupal before) and the second for those who have some experience about it. Just before everyone dispersed for their respective tracks, to enliven the atmosphere, Gaurav and Sumit sang the Drupal Song:

‘If you’ve got a website, you need a system to manage your content, Drupal.

If you’ve got to build a web application, you’ve got to download Drupal’.

The introduction session was animated by Abhishek Nagar, a student from SICSR. The latter kept the tempo high for about one hour by explaining with such vibe and vigour the various elements of Drupal. Meticulously he went on explaining about the various modules and themes present in Drupal as well as giving an insight into how to create a website without writing a single line of code. The only negative thing here is that Abhishek didn’t give enough output or example to help the beginners on how to get a grip of the software. Ninad, a student attending the camp said that he thought that they would give more examples as he wasn’t able to grasp everything.

The following sessions included Prasad Shivgaonkar, who is the CEO of marathiwebsites.com. He passionately explained how to create a localized website using Indian languages such as Hindi and Marathi. He displayed a real keenness for his mother-tongue Marathi.

Advanced users saw the implementation of Drupal Patterns and Glycerides. Attention was drawn to the fact that Drupal won the best CMS (Content Management System) of the year 2007. At the end, it should be said that the audience, especially some students expected somewhat more from the camp. A lack of examples and proper outputs prevented many from grasping several key concepts, but someone who has a basic knowledge of programming or even usage of other CMS, will not take time to catch hold of the base.

Ashish Padaruth

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Author: Sahil Khan
Web: http://twitter.com/sahilk
Lifestyle activist, foodie, music lover, designer and an experiment of God.