Oklahoma's very first Drupal Meetup is happening tonight!  We have a relatively small Drupal community here, but we are getting together tonight to meet each other, and discuss how we can further the Drupal community in Oklahoma.  We are guessing between 5-10 people will attend at Panera Bread for an informal gathering.

We can definitely feel the year winding down here at The Worx Company.  Holidays always seem to be slow, everyone busy with their own personal lives.  With Thanksgiving in November and Christmas and New Years this month, things have been more relaxed around the office.  This has been a great time to catch up on things.  Here are some things that has been going around here:

As some of you might already know we have been holding classes in our office to teach our new guys the ins and outs of Drupal.  After a short time we had reached a crossroad of sorts though - and a decision needed to be made.

Drupal has won the Packt Publishing 2008 Open Source CMS Award, Overall and in the PHP category!

The Worx Company is a Silver Sponsor at Drupalcon DC!  We are excited to be sponsoring what looks to be a fantastic Drupalcon.  Of course, with the sponsorship, our attendance at Drupalcon has been confirmed - I will be attending, along with Kris, Kurt (President of our company), and maybe Sue (CEO).

Kris has been busier last week than any other week I can remember in the recent past.  The Worx Company has been involved in the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce this past year, working with them to get several websites up in Drupal.  There are several branches of the Chamber, I've learned, and we are working on two branches and the main Chamber of Commerce website.  Ultimately, the goal is to get their web manager fully trained in Drupal, so they will be self sufficient, and will be able to manage all of their websites.

FOWYDB - almost looks like a "bad word", doesn't it?  Well, it is something we have been telling ourselves the last couple of days.  Focusing on what WE do best.  The Worx Company started out as an .asp shop, and when it merged with Meridian Data, well, not much changed.  For several years, we stuck with our .asp content management system.

What was it Dries said at Drupalcon? Top two "most difficult things" for both novice and expert Drupal users were 1. finding skilled Drupal designers and 2. finding skilled Drupal developers. We have noticed that as our company grows, we are running into similar issues. Especially #2 - finding skilled Drupal developers has been difficult - in the Oklahoma web industry, Drupal isn't a common platform. Most people have never even heard of Drupal, so we have put much of our efforts into "evangelizing" Drupal in the community.