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Are we a Cover Band?

One of my band mates in Federator N*1 recently asked me "are we a cover band?", which I thought was a very interesting question. That immediatly spun me into tons more questions. To whit:

What is a cover band? Were the big bands of the 1930s-60s cover bands? Would they ever describe themselves as such? Does simply playing repetoire that was originally written by other people qualify a band as a cover band? Do artists who play songs written for them qualify as cover bands? 

After a while, I reframed the question as something that I wanted to answer (old politician's trick), which was "What kind of band are we?"

To which, I had the answer! 

We are a dance band. That's our primary goal. We are a political band. That's our secondary goal. And we are a band where the priority on internal experience is one of brotherhood and enjoyment (which one may argue is tied to the second part - enjoying one's activities certainly can be seen as a political act*).

As a dance band, our goal is to get people on the dance floor, keep them there, and engage them with love, light, joy, and awesome music. If that music is written by a band member - fantastic.

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Drupal Training & India

I'm going to wholesale copy & paste from an interesting article/interview with Acquia Founder & CTO Dries Buytaert. It is very interesting to me to see how different parts of the world approach training in a new technology. Especially when it directly impacts what I'm doing on a day to day basis here at Acquia.

Drupal and India…

How do you plan to expand your training program in India?

We have already been doing some training in India. One of the reasons for this trip is to understand the state of Drupal in India and what the needs of the community here are. One of the things we have discovered from the interactions we had is the strong desire for training, both from small Drupal shops and the large SIs. Everybody has expressed a desire to get expert training in Drupal. We work with a lot of training partners as well. We have a lot of small Drupal shops. We have found that the demand for trained Drupal professionals does not match the supply at all.

So do you offer a certification course for Drupal?

Right now, we have some full-time staff at Acquia to build and maintain the training curriculum. We provide expert training in all Drupal aspects.

Drupal Training Down Under

PreviousNext is both an Acquia Enterprise Select Partner and an Acquia Training Partner. They are also the primary sponsor for the DrupalDownunder conference in Melbourne, Australia on January 14 & 15, 2012. (Yes, they are a busy and productive bunch!)

DrupalDownunder is a community-driven event with presentations by a large range of developers and organisations using Drupal in Australia, and will certainly provide great value to those who attend.  

PreviousNext will be running many Acquia Drupal Training courses before and after the conference with up to 40% discount on normal prices. Register now to get your discount!

Courses include:

As part of his ongoing global tour (India, Singapore, Brazil, and now Australia), the founder of Drupal and Acquia, Dries Buytaert, will be the keynote speaker at DrupalDownunder, so this is also a fantastic chance to meet him in person and hear what's next for Drupal!

 

 

First Mali Pix

I've got the first bunch of photos from our trip to Mali during the summer of 2011 up on flickr.

More to come... sorting through 1800 photos, and picking the best ones.

Here is one of my absolute favorites. A portrait of a friend of Sharon & Alex's (and now ours), Issiaka Kane, aka Siakaba:

 

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