I remember five years ago trying to explain the Bryght / Hostmaster (I worked with Adrian at Bryght on Hostmaster billing and testing and making things work on production!) vision of building your own network of Drupal websites at the push of a button at many Drupal gatherings. All Drupal sites working together, easily updatable and working in your own cloud (or Bryght's cloud if you wanted to pay Bryght). People thought I was crazy :-). Only a few folks like Ethan Kaplan of Warner Brothers Records and Jonathan Lambert of WorkHabit (and others who I have forgotten, forgive me) got it.
Now in 2010 with Aegir coming to fruition and multiple commodity clouds from build-your-own to using others' like Amazon's cloud and RackSpace's cloud, it's finally making sense to many many people (e.g Emma Jane Hogbin's vision of a cloud for every town)
Thanks to Adrian for continuing to implement the vision! Thanks to Adrian's collaborators and funders over the years: Koumbit, Raincity Studios, Chapter Three, the list goes on and on. Thanks especially those who continue to fund Adrian (go Development Seed and others go!) and the team of Aegir open source implementors, documenters and testers. The reality of open source is that code doesn't get written, documented or tested if there's no funding for it directly or indirectly.
More shaky backlight video from the fantastic combo of the E75, Qik and 3.5G. this time mobile and web related pontifications from Boris Mann of Bootup Labs (and fellow co-founder of Bryght). Check out the video after the jump or read my stream of consciousness pseudo-transcript :-) !
Bryght - the first hosted Drupal, first Drupal as a service, 5 years ago
Bryght partnership with Workhabit - 50 servers, Cisco routers, pre cloud, we had DOS
attacks and Workhabit's awesome Gary, Aaron and Jonathan fixed the routers
DOS cannot be fixed completely but it can be minimized through various means including taking out the DOS IP addresses at the router level, taking your site down is not a solution, shows
that real hosting companies need to own their infrastructure or have DNS separated
Bryght didn't use Drush, we used python for lots of historical reasons
To upgrade 1000 Drupal sites e.g. from Drupal 5.1 to Drupal 5.2 sites I ran hmupdate.py (or was it hmupgrade.py? it's fuzzy now!) in a for loop over the 1000
Bryght Drupal web sites
Aegir has commoditized Bryght (former Bryght guy, Adrian Rossouw,
developed Aegir; Adrian rocks)
The entire Bryght Drupal as a service is available in a box i.e. commoditized
The awesome Emma Jane Hogbin has advocated a web infrastructure e.g. a Drupal cloud for every town
A Drupal cloud for every town is a way to attract businesses because
you can spin up a free (government pays for it, far better than bogus tax breaks) scalable, modern, SEO optimised website for a business or non profit
in 5 minutes
Dreamweaver doesn't cut it - Technologists have failed because there
is still no Dreamweaver for 21st century but wordpress.com is close and Acquia Gardens when it's 1.0 will be even closer
Does Qik have a business model? Yes bundling with handset
Schmap is annoying and irrelevant
Iphone 4.0 is highly relevant :-)
Apple Gaming network is huge - Could Tiny Speck use it for Glitch? Yes! How
porous will Apple make it? i.e. will it play nice with other social networking sites? probably not in the near term but maybe in the long term
iAds - based on HTML5! Big ! Will make HTML5 "the voice of the new web
dev generation"
Multi-tasking - it doesn't matter, it comes down to UX; area where
Nokia is lost (except possibly Maemo! go Maemo go! p.s. I hate the
name Meego much prefer Maemo!)
User Experience of multi-tasking is what's important and having to
install a 3rd party task manager to make Symbian multi-tasking work is a really,
really bad user experience
Yet another shout-out to Jan Ole Suhr for the awesome Gravity Twitter App - best mobile Twitter app on ony platform, only available on Symbian for the moment
Took Boris "83 clicks" to pay for Gravity, sad but true :-) ! Nokia,
please fix!
Maemo potential is so much greater than Apple iPhone and Symbian
because it's Linux and because it's truly open from the get go rather
than openness being bolted on like Symbian :-) !
May 15, 2009 was my last day of work for Raincity Studios and with it of course my involvement with Bryght ended as well. It's been a great ride! Thanks to all the Bryght Gals, Guys, customers, investors, friends and of course the folks at Raincity Studios. I am certain that the "Bryght Children" will in their own way (in a small "Fairchild children" way, haha!) continue to make their mark (e.g. Rilli, Bootup Labs, and I predict many many more). My next post will be about my new job but for now a few random thoughts and reflections (apologies to the great people I have omitted!):
I'll never forget moving day into the first Bryght offices at 525 Seymour with the folks at EQO (also gone).
Bryght Light developed by Adrian and the rest of the Bryght team was and is a Drupal milestone. I can't to see what the fine folks at Lullabot and Acquia and WorkHabit and the other fine folks doing Drupal hosting come up with. Not to mention what happens with Development Seed, Adrian and the other folks developing Aegir. Aegir definitely ups the proverbial Drupal hosting 'ante'.
Speaking of WorkHabit, I will always be impressed by their VPS hosting partnership with Bryght. As far as I know Bryght VPS was the only Drupal-centric VPS hosting from a Canadian company, one of the few in the world and probably the first. Nobody did it better. Thanks to Richard, Gary of WorkHabit, incredible system engineers and sysadmins: Narayan Newton and Ben Holt. Learned some great lessons:i.e. always iterate, automate and listen to the market!
Herewith some random Bryght photos to end it off in a visual style! Ciao Tschüß!
I am glad I can finally announce that Raincity Studios has acquired Bryght. Needless to say I am stoked and already enjoying working with my new colleagues. Working with Bryght has been great, the best job of my life and I am sure it will be the same at Raincity.
We can finally take the wraps off something we have been cooking up for a while. Raincity Studios has acquired Bryght (press release)! The expanded company will operate under the Raincity Studios banner and the Bryght name will live on through the hosting products (i.e. Bryght Light Sites and Bryght Virtual Private Servers will continue). Raincity Studios will also continue Bryght's work in leading edge technology like Jabber / XMPP and OpenID. And of course, all Bryght guys are now Raincity guys!
Socialtext'ers are descending on Vancouver as part of their annual migration to meet, hack, and plan. They came up with the idea of bringing the Bay Area-based Super Happy Dev House to Vancouver.
Bryght is providing the venue and BBQ space. Edit the wiki page to let us know you're coming (also, upcoming.org).
Come one come all! There will be lots of hacking of all languages and environments and fun including Drupal hacking and making and improving some Drupal websites!
Here's an N93 video of Introductions at Vancouver League of DrupalersJanuary 2007 meeting last night (8 minutes 28 seconds; I missed some people because the N93 crashed and a few were late):
After a long and taxing process on the BarCamp Vancouvermailing list, we've decided to increase the number of allowed participants to 120. Again, if you can't make it, please remove your name from the BarCamp Vancouver Registry. I am blown away by the breadth and depth of the topics and people who have signed up. See you Friday August 25th at 1 Alexander at the new Bryght office.
As of today the following 120 have signed up (we'll send an email next week reminding people about BarCamp, some ground rules and reminding them to remove themselves if they can't make it and an update to the folks on the waiting list):
Roland Tanglao - roland AT rolandtanglao.commy blog - ShoZu vs. filemobile vs. AmbientVector, etc. for mobile phone photo and video sharing, low production value video of pictures taken by campers, like to participate in some of sort of Google Maps mashup and a Kris Krug PhotoCamp
Darren Barefoot - darrren AT darrenbarefoot DOT com - www.darrenbarefoot.com - Changing the World in 30 Minutes
Dale McGladdery - dale AT group42 DOT ca - www.group42.ca - Drupal lightning talk, maybe even throw in some thunder
Gillian Gunson - gunson@gmail.com - Blog - tbd, I have to make up some bs to talk about
Joy - joy DOT boyson AT gmail DOT com - ditto on the bs, tbd
Brian Aker - brian AT tangent DOT org - MySQL stuff
Alexandre Brabant - abrabant AT Gmail DOT com - Search Marketing stuff
Bruce Byfield - bbyfield AT axion DOT net - the free software media: its credo, how to get along with it, its relation to blogging -- some or all of the above
Andre Charland - nitobi, Captain Ajax, DogLotion. AJAX, Usability, User Experience, Screen Casting, Design Patterns and Bidness.
John Grantham - NotionLab - Notion Lab - social software for everyone.
Lucian Savluc – luciansavluc AT gmail DOT com – cianblog.com - presenting the Romanian Open Source and Free Software Initiative (ROSI)
Markus Frind Mfrind at Plentyoffish . com
Crystal Williams - cleverclevergirl at gmail.comRaincity Studios - Who am I kidding, I'll be conference wrangling. :-)
John Ounpuu – jounpuu AT gmail DOT com – obviousness.net (blog) sutori.com (project) - the social customer revolution
Dethe Elza - delza at livingcode dot org - [http://livingcode.org/] (blog/site) - Programming for the fun of it: OS X, Python, and Kids
James Cogan - james at dailypixel.ca - [http://www.dailypixel.ca/] (blog/site) - tbd, visiting from out of town, hoping to demo a new site we're working on
weston triemstra - sxip - why and how to implement identity on your site
Marius Scurtescu - marius at sxip dot com - sxip - tbd
Jonathan Lin - jhslin at gmail dot com - Working Title - Print publishing at the precipice of online tech
Megan Cole - my blog / Raincity Studios - megan@raincitystudios.com - How To Be A Sponge... or... How to embrace this new, very public life... Considering my fellow comrades, I am but a wee rookie. I'll be the one soaking up all I can and blogging and vlogging it all. Oo - I'll show y'all how to put back 12 Guinness in a single sitting.
Steffani Cameron - peripheries@shaw.caCL, the last ditch | both are blogs ] With my (CL) blog in the top 9,000 in the world, it's amazing how little tech know-how I have, and I am now being bankrolled to do a podcast but know absolutely jack about that, and I'm hoping this can not only help me learn more, but help me network with locals. I'd be happy to be a subject in a thingie, but doubt I know enough to lead anything.
Dave Johnson - (nitobi/blog) ajax, fixies and politics. nuff said.
Chani - chanika at gmail - website - I'm a sponge too... although there might be things I didn't know I knew.
Mark Thomson - mark at yotophoto dot com yotophoto - tbd
Dave Olson - dave at uncleweed dot net - podcast-laden webpage will only there friday 'til latenight - i would like to do some teaching on making quick and easy enhanced podcasts from scratch and publishing for the people (will need to borrow a mac laptop with new garage band), I then plan to spend rest of time practising stout drinking skills with Megan and learning how to bankroll a podcast from Steffani
Marcelo Barth marcelo.barth aht gmail dawt com
Colin Chudyk - website - questions: how do others collaborate online with their team when they are spread out all over the country? what are the essential tools/sites/resources for independent professionals?
BorisMann - blog - I believe I'll be doubling as your BBQ chef for the event - (Boris, remember to cook them this time! ;-) phil)
Tarry Giannakos - blog - I'm new to this - so I can hold up the screen or bbq or talk about the domain space and domaining.
Bre Pettis - blog - I'll show off my new Kite Aerial Photography rig I just hacked together. Or I could teach how to make a duct tape wallet, or I could show how to make a pinhole camera, or I could blab on about video... How about all four?
Alex Williams - blog - Talk about events, music, indie culture.
David Gratton - Website - Talk about music self-publishing
Aaron Wheeler - aaron at raincitystudios.comWebsite - The virtues and limitless possibilities of the post card
Laurence Girard - website - me at laurencegirard dot com - Freelancer
Scott Hadfield - website - hadsie@gmail.com - A session on adding openid support to your webapp, if there's interest.
Sarah Pullman - my website Yoga for Geeks website - I could lead a little Yoga for Geeks session, space permitting (doesn't have to be a full class, could be tips and tricks). I can also liveblog, and am interested in talking with other people who have an interest in the applications of technology for social change.
Mike Cantelon - mcantelon AT gmail.com - Vancouver Open Business News - A presentation on Django: High-Performance Rapid Development of Web Applications
Adam Bouskila - website - abouskila At gmail Dot com - Freelancer, enthusiast. I could liveblog, and help out
Jason Chimney - jchimney At gmail Dot com - total noob, willing to help any other presenters... also willing to stick around for clean up :)
Will Pate
Gordon Withers - myfirstname At fathomconsulting dot c a - Communicate effectively with your clients (tbd)
Troy Angrignon, troy at troyangrignon dot com, http://www.troyangrignon.com, interested in leading a session to map out current technology and business trends that the BarCamp crowd are familiar with...or just participating in the other sessions.
Steven Wittens - website - steven AT bryght dot com - Drupal / Bryght
Mark Yuasa - Website - mark at raincitystudios.com, looking forward to my second Barcamp, first in my hometown
Thierry Guégan - thierry_guegan_dhaliwal AT yahoo.ca - www.arvoriad.com - drupal, open source, networking, tbc
Peter Gordon - site pbg at superwebdeveloper dawt com - php developer. Ill write about this event on my blog...
Audrey Foo - website audrey at foopicks point com - open source empowers people. I will gladly speak my mind and add my opinion to the fray.
Shane Korytko - shane at somatix dot net - drupal and grassroots organizing
Caryn Cameron - cgc at sfu dot cs students.sfu.ca willing to blog - cool thing, this
Lisa Mighton - Believing Impossible Things, active participant; willing to laugh at jokes and applaud when prompted
Scott - Overheard in Vancouver, There would have to be something to overhear in the discussions that I can add to the site.
Colin Chudyk - website - questions: how do others collaborate online with their team when they are spread out all over the co
John McDonald of Rampworth Capital Services – jmcdonald@rampworth.com ( www.rampworth.com ). I often conduct Podcast interviews with CEO’s and I’d love to facilitate a group (or panel) discussion about Podcasts impact communications and how they can be monetized (if there is an interest).
Sacha Peter - sacha.peter@gmail.com - doubleblind.ca - Possibly a brief on prediction markets, how social networks can be harnessed to make better decisions.
Ryan Cousineau Metroblogging Vancouver and Wired Cola - I'd like to talk about how everything is wrong. Blogging is overrated and misunderstood. Podcasting is hardly ever worthwhile. A local orientation is probably a mistake for "serious" bloggers. Flickr isn't too bad.... I promise to take on all comers with more or less skill.
