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DrupalCon Portland is over and many of us left feeling excited about Drupal 8. There will be a lot of changes from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, and if you are wondering about what is new, one of the best ways to learn is to get involved with Drupal 8 development right now. Until recently, I had tried a couple of times to get involved with Drupal core, but became frustrated when I couldn't find an issue appropriate for me or I worked on a patch that got stuck in "needs review." While there are many ways to help out with Drupal core development, I would like to highlight three areas where I think you will have success -- the first is an ongoing effort for new contributors, the second is for frontend developers, and the third is for backend developers.

These days I find myself splitting time between OSX and Linux, but when I'm on a Mac I like my development environment ready to go without having to do much clicking around. While I have tried a few times to get away from using MAMP, I find that it is just more convenient than configuring everything manually. However, I prefer to use the command line and have it run in the background without having to see it there in my dock and making me feel guilty for not configuring everything myself.

Over the weekend, I was sitting in my office watching an episode about Beethoven's 3rd ("Eroica") symphony from the excellent PBS series Keeping Score, when Michael Tilson Thomas said something about the symphony that intrigued me.

[Reprinted from opengoldberg.wpr.org]

On June 24, 2012 Wisconsin Public Radio, in partnership with Open Goldberg Variations and MuseScore, built on its tradition of innovation. For the first time in history, radio listeners were able to follow the digital score of a broadcast recording as it was broadcast.

If you missed the opportunity to hear on the radio and watch online the new public domain arrangement of Bach's Goldberg Variations, you can still:

Few musicians or music scholars would doubt the value of a well-researched, historically-informed scholarly (a.k.a. "historical" or "critical") edition or music score, such as those produced by G. Schirmer, Bärenreiter, A-R Editions, G. Henle Verlag, and others.

A few days ago I offered my version of an introduction to open-source music and suggested a few reasons why I think public media organizations should be proponents of open-source recordings and scores. Here are 10 more reasons why this would be a good idea for public media:

Open-source music is a hot topic right now, and it is in the best interest of public media stations to help promote it. This post is meant to serve as an overview of open-source music, and in the coming weeks -- leading up to a special broadcast at Wisconsin Public Radio on June 24 -- I will explore this topic in more depth.

On Wednesday this week (May 30), I will be taking part in a "first of a kind webinar" about the state of audio and video on the web. I consider myself very lucky to be speaking beside some esteemed leaders from the public media technology community.

I met Robert Douglass in person for the first time at DrupalCon Denver this year. We immediately hit it off due to our shared interests and background in both music and Drupal.

In the coming month or so, I will be giving a number of talks concerning Drupal and public media:

February 2
"Open source software in public media"
Wisconsin Public Radio (Madison, WI)

Febraury 22
Drupal in Public Media
Twin Cities Drupal User Group (Minneapolis, MN)

February 27
"How ttbook.org makes use of Drupal"
PRI: Public Radio International (Minneapolis, MN)