Debbie Does Drupal

For an hour, my toes touched bottom no more than for a few fleeting moments and, my ego is relieved to report, I was not alone in the deep end. Repeated blank looks were the only answer to the presenter’s occasional, “Are there any questions?”

Apparently seeing that his hour-long display of super-nerdiness had sufficiently cowed all us newbies, he deigned that someone else would now be permitted to take the keyboard of presentation and, with it, do something else.

After a little floundering amongst the second tier, one of them suggested we review someone’s list of “30 modules you can’t do without”.

Aha, I thought, I sort’a know what a module is - it’s a piece of software that does something useful like collect a password or display a calendar - and the “you can’t do without” status, after mentally untangling the double-negative, made them sound, uhm, useful.

Eager for change, the head nodding was enthusiastic.

And sure enough, thirty minutes later I had three pages of notes and a dozen questions ready but it was 8:30PM and apparently time for the super-nerd’s Mom to take him home for bedtime Oreos and milk. The meeting ended.

It would be entirely accurate to say that I picked up no more than a few valuable nuggets but, since they were some of the “nuggets” I was actually hoping to find, the evening was profitable even if disturbingly humbling.