Yes its true I do speak a little Chinese and a lot of horrible Chinese. At our last Drupal meetup in Beijing I was stuck as the only presenter and I didn't have an interpreter handy so it was just me and a room full of Chinese Drupal folks just waiting for me to speak. Very intimidating but I think I managed to get my point across.

These videos only prove one thing. I need practice!

Ok so here's an odd one. Today I was writing a module that checks link module URLs for valid links (i.e. not 404s). In order to test that my module was working correctly I entered this as a URL

http://pinkypinkypinkybraincrainornot.com

It was random gibberish that my hand simply typed out.

My link checker went through the paces and it kept telling me that the above URL was valid so I went through my code over and over again to see what was wrong. Apparently nothing was wrong the above URL really is valid. At least it is in China.....

I'm filing that URL under odd....

I'm happy to announce that I have joined the great intercontinental team of Raincity Studios. Raincity has a great team in Vancouver and Shanghai as well as awesome folks scattered throughout the world. Since moving to China last year I have been looking for a way to get more involved in the local Chinese Drupal scene and to do my little part to help it grow. Additionally when I became a board member of the Drupal Association I made a pledge to do whatever I could to help encourage the growth of Drupal-related events around the world.

I'm excited that my work with Raincity Studios will allow me to do exactly this!

My job at RaincityStudios will not only focus on China but also on the rest of the world. In China I've been fortunate to meet some great folks at the Beijing user group as well as the Shanghai user groups and I'm excited to meet new Drupal folks down in Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Hong Kong and ???. In North America I've met great folks in Boston, NYC, San Francisco, LA, Colorado and many other places. The great folks in Europe, whom are currently putting on Drupalcon Hungary are awesome as well are the folks in Australia.

In addition to working with the community I will also be providing internal and external Drupal training. I'm very excited to get back to my training roots as it was as a Microsoft, yes that's right Microsoft, trainer that I really became the geek that I am today. I love training and watching others learn it is a wonderfully gratifying experience.

My new position will have me based out of Beijing, China with frequent trips to Shanghai. I'm looking forward to meeting all of my new coworkers as well as the new folks in the Chinese Drupal community!

I was fortunate enough to be in Shanghai for their Drupal user meetup. It was great to meet all of them and see the projects that they are working on. Shanghai has a good number of Drupal developers and some of them have worked on some really cool projects. For me the highlight of the entire meetup was when one of the guys introduced himself as "ian" and just in case you didn't know how to pronounce it, it is "Ian" of Deb-ian.

Yes! There are super Chinese geeks! I love this place!

Track the group at groups.drupal.org/Shanghai, they are growing quickly.

Due to the hard work of many people Drupalcon Boston was a great success but just like how the Drupal community doesn't stop once a new version is released neither does Drupalcon. Drupalcon Europe is announced and will be held in Szeged, Hungary. Gábor Hojtsy and Kristof Van Tomme provided a solid proposal and put together an awesome team of professionals whom combined will create yet another amazing Drupalcon!

This announcement marks the end of months of hard work by the Drupalcon Boston team, Drupalcon Europe team as well as several members of the Drupal community that stepped forward to provide proposals for Drupalcon's throughout Europe. Dates were checked and double checked, venues scrutinized, budgets drawn up and revised over and over again, and the tiniest of details thought out.

This announcement also marks the start of a lot of hard work on the part of the Drupalcon Europe team as well as many volunteers throughout the community. The team is always looking for volunteers so please if you have the time step forward to help make Drupalcon Europe another great success.

Even though we are announcing Drupalcon Europe 2008 we are now planning Drupalcon North America 2009, Drupalcon Europe 2009 as well as Drupalcon ??? Please submit your proposals and ideas now.