The past 3 weeks where insane.
Utterly insane.
If you haven't been following the news - one of Israel's biggest civil protests has been going on for more then a month.
I won't go in to the reasons and dramas behind the protest but like many protest in our region lately social-media, smartphone use and the internet are key enablers for the transparency and organization ability of the crowd.
We have been hacking with android and drupal for quite a while but we finally got a chance to give "DrupalNews" some love.
Our inspiration for updating the app was based on Johan Falk from nodeone, who built a bunch of RSS feeds which are more fitting to the new github/sandboxed era on drupal.org.
This got us back on track integrating the new feeds and rethinking the app.
As we played with the app (and reflecting on node one's kitten killers meme) we understood that we need another feed - The culture feed.
We're very proud to see the first fruit of several months of work and several year of building the Drupal enterprise eco-system in Israel.
The first site shipped, http://shituf.gov.il is a site which exposes the latest rules and discussions from the government to the public.
That way legislators get a very short feedback loop on the current activity and the public gets to state it's opinion and vote up or down on the stream of new rules and political activity.
I'm attending Startup Weekend in TLV which is turning out to be a really great and colorful event.
One of the coolest things is that I finally got to meet Tim Cullen which is leading the development of a local Drupal community in Ramalah.
I'm a big believer in the epic power of open-source to enable communication where none exists or where barriers (technological or political) might limit communication and innovation.
I took ( a low quality and shaky ) video of Tim's presentation.
In the following week we've developed an android application to manage drupalcon oriented information.
Currently we only have the sessions info in place but our vision to the next drupalcons is to add twitter based activity streams, relevant map info and to become a one stop shop for your mobile experience using android.
To find the app search for drupalcon in the android market.
After Drupalager and Drupalager 2009 we decided to explore new directions for this meta category we've created - Drupalcohol.
Shlomi Tsadok, one of our newest recruits, who is leading the team integrating Drupal in the Israeli government, is a big wine fan - so big that he quit the computing business to open his own winery in 2003.
Sparkeo is a new e-learning platform that has made a big splash in LaWeb (One of the largest french web conferences) and on techcrunch.
The cool thing about our relationship with Sparkeo is that as it evolved it covered many of the sales pitches I give to other customers of why they should choose drupal.
This in a way is a great Drupal showcase because it walks through all of these issues sequentially.
One of the coolest events we participated in ( coolest's definition is the best ratio between price/quality of the wine) DrupalCon Paris was an after-party in "LaCantine" a collaborative workspace in paris.
AF83 one of our partners and Ori Pekelman their CTO where instrumental in building the place and it serves several startups that deal with Open source and lets them share resources and sublet a space for a reasonable (and subsidized) fee.
37 days to go and as we lift our heads from the crunch of delivering projects, working with clients, and raising families we finally have some time to outreach about what you can expect from Linnovate at DrupalCon paris...
The beer is fermenting as we speak, this timed brewed by "DrupalHager" - yhager - the guy from imagefield crop fame, and one of the most talented Drupal developers we know.
