He was supposed to take me with him and introduce me to adorable nerds

My little brother returns tomorrow from his first trip abroad. He’s been in Barcelona (probably the number one city on my To Travel list) for about a week to attend and present at DrupalCon 2007. It’s a conference for people who use Drupal software for web development.

According to Drupal.org, “Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites.” That include everything from corporate web sites to personal web sites and blogs to community web portals and social networking sites and even internet applications. As far as I understand it, the software is capable of providing the framework for almost any type of online content, including blogs and podcasts, photo albums and forums.

I also know that it is an open-source software, which means that users can become developers and contribute modules and patches that add more features and functionality for others to share. You’re already familiar with the open-source concept if you’ve added certain applications to your Facebook profile, or installed one of the homemade widgets that Mac users share on Apple.com (I like Clockish and Moody).

I use WordPress to power my blog and there are thousands of plugins that other users have developed, based on the core of the open-source software, to add useful and fun features to WordPress sites. Automattic has some of my favorite WordPress Widgets. Their Google Search Widget has even become a standard feature of the most recent versions of WordPress.

I think the idea of open-source software development is so exciting. The technology is way over my head, but I do understand sharing, and that’s really what open-source is, in the sentimental sense. I’m so glad there are creative, generous, computer nerd-types (like my brother) out there who are willing to share their smarts and make blogging and web design more fun for me.

Photo of Will in Barcelona by jsmiccolis.