Compassion

If you know me, you know I am a junkie for three things: interacting with young people, the many aspects of sustainability, and my job. From my work in the

Thank you, everyone!  To our clients on the frontlines of social change, to the hundreds of thousands of organizations we've not yet met but who are also working to improve the planet, to the Drupal Community for showing the world (yet again) how Open Source can change it, to the "undocumented Drupalers" who are silently expanding the install base of our favorite CMS platform one website at a time, to the networks of geeks all around the world lending their talent for a be

This past year, CivicActions has undergone a transformation in the way that we organize project teams.  We've moved from a "matrix" model (people contributing to several projects) to what we call "Pods" (dedicated teams focused on one or two projects at a time). This transformation has yielded incredible results for clients and project team members. This model also means that we can more easily scale, which we are preparing to do in 2010.

Given the highly polarised debate on healthcare reform, it is an interesting exercise to examine some of the arguments put forward.

Each year, Amnesty International releases a comprehensive report on the state of the world's human rights. Amnesty International decided on Drupal as their website platform for the 2009 report based on the successful redesign of their main site with Drupal in 2007.

Ah, admin/build/modules...I really want to love this page. It lists all of my modules. It shows version numbers. There's a lot to offer. When you work on a larger site, there are so many modules. CCK, Internationalization, and of course Core provide long lists of modules. How do I find that one module in that big list?

"Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich."

I'm feeling 100 times more inspired tonight after reading the Commencement Address by Paul Hawken's (Blessed Unrest) from Sunday, May 3rd. The text is below and speaks for itself! PAUL HAWKEN'S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there. But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation - but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

I like many others was completely blown away by Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest. The last 3rd of the book is a compendium of non profit and non governmental organizations around the world that are working on social justice, human rights, sustainability, environmental and indigenous people's issues as well as many others. Hawken's describes these groups collectively as a movement, the largest movement in the history of the world. A movement that is decentralized and global.

This Saturday the Seattle DUG is hosting a one day DrupalCamp. We are calling it a MiniCamp, because we usually manage two day events. This one is a little different. In true BarCamp style, we are not specifying speakers or topics. Heck, a schedule barely exists. The intent is to bring people together, to cooperate and learn more about Drupal. I am really excited about this, because there is more opportunity for everyone to participate.

Just ran across this on the Witness Hub. When a young teacher is found dead outside her apartment building in Ruian, the police report concludes suicide, but her family and students suspect a cover-up. Over a thousand people take to the streets in protest, and are met with police violence. Protestors film the clashes on their cellphones, and upload the clips to Chinese video-sharing sites, but the clips are rapidly taken offline - only to re-appear on other sites, as respected English-language Chinese blog Danwei reported.