Building community online

Community building is more than just software, and more than just people. The nature of online communities is changing, no longer defined exclusively by bulletin boards or superblogs.

This is a session for everyone where we can discuss what it is that makes for a rich and robust community -- from the perspective of web developer, designer, evangelist, organization, member....

What have you done that has worked well? What have you seen elsewhere that you liked? What are people buzzing about? What Drupal modules (and/or other CMS or social networking tools) have you used in community sites?

Taking a broader approach, what do we mean when we say "community"? Can we even limit the concept to single sites?

The idea behind this is obvious to most: If you build it, will they come? And if they do, will they stay and participate?

I'm hoping that, should this proposal be accepted, a lot of people with rich experience in building and/or administering community sites will come and share their insights, especially about where we see things going.

If you're going to the Summit, maybe you'd like to express whether you're interested?

Greg, Ezra and I have also submitted a proposal for a session on theming for Drupal.

Theming Drupal: techniques, approaches, philosophies

A presentation panel on ways to implement web design theming in Drupal.

Drupal and its resplendent contributed modules push content of all kinds out to the web page. This session will start with a run-down on some of the various tags and pre-formatting Drupal generates by default, and easy ways to spruce up what comes "out of the box."

Next will be going over ways to change and customize the content presentation in more aggressive ways, using phpTemplate overrides and CSS. (And Javascript?)

Also addressed will be newer concepts of CSS usage and implementation, including semantic naming conventions, microformats and Transcending CSS when facing the challenges of coping with wide varieties of dynamically generated content in a CMS. (E.g., why, when and how to split up your theme into different stylesheets for different browsers and media.)

Finally, we will look to the future and where Drupal 6, 7, etc. are taking us in the next generation of Drupal templating.

The balance of focus between these areas may shift with questions, expressions of interests and levels of expertise in the room.

Related but probably not covered: Usability and Drupal.

So far, the voting on this has been favorable. It's more geeky in focus, which in a way makes me more nervous and yet more excited. I'm truly hoping for some help from others on this, especially when it comes to plans for the Drupal 6+ ways of templating, which I know enough about to be very intrigued but hesitate to speak about in any leadership capacity.

The last note in the description, about usability, really breaks my heart, as it has become a major passion of mine over the past year. Fortunately, theming wizard Steven Wittens has proposed a session on just design "from a geek perspective," where I can get my fix and we OSCMS geeks can (hopefully) collectively fill the gap in usability coverage.