Bob Hinrichs's blog

This week many of us at ISL are at DRUPALCON. Drupal is open source software that powers a large number of Web sites. Five years ago, this conference had 40 people. This one, held at Moscone Center in San Francisco, has 3,000 attendees. We are seeing logos of CapGemini, Accenture, IBM, and Microsoft (they are buying the beer at the parties). There are innumerable startups, enterprises and public organizations that employ this technology. If you want to see one prominent example, see the new Whitehouse.gov. A few years ago, my company decided to use Drupal for a couple of our projects. As of now, we are a Drupal company.

At the conference yesterday, the founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, pointed out that pretty much all software moves through a cycle, where a dominant player continues to add features until it over-satisfies its market requirements, to be replaced eventually by a nimbler player, usually with a smaller feature set (an idea from The Innovator's Dilemma), which then runs the course of its predecessor. Those who work with Drupal are hopeful that this software does not follow this pattern, because its functionality is completely modular, and its features are determined and developed by its community driven by real-world requirements. In turn, this allows distibutions to be created to serve specific markets. All this sounds like a great strategy to make a lot of money from this software. Keep in mind however, the software is entirely free. It is a little strange to talk about Drupal's "competitive edge" in the marketplace keeping this fact in mind.

We have been stuck with the mouse since the popularization of personal computers. I do wonder why we have not yet moved beyond them. Perhaps shortly we will. These devices, and their family, are destined to replace the humble mouse, perhaps very soon.

Here the WSJ depicts the brave men who valiantly saved the Internet. In this action rescue shot, the Internet can be seen being secured into a stretcher. Now if you don't mind I need to go suit up and get in the helicopter. There are websites out there in trouble...

In the weeks to come, I will unfold a series of ideas that will transform the Internet.

This is not one of them. But it will serve as part of the preface. The things we are going to discuss will require tenderizing your mind like a piece of sinewy tri-tip.