For the past couple weeks there has been a long discussion thread happening on the Net Tuesday San Francisco Meetup list serv about people wanting to form a Drupal for Good group in the Bay Area.

Joshua Wiese set up a Drupal for Good San Francisco Bay Area Google group to help get it organized.  You can join the group by clicking here, and anyone can view any of the group's activity, without joining, by clicking here.

Not in the Bay Area?  Here is a link to the Drupal for Good discussion group that anyone can join wherever they live.  You also might want to check out the Drupal Dojo.

Many NGOs are good at forming strategic alliances to achieve their objectives (they're usually also good at competing each other nearly to death, often at the same time, but I'll keep that for a different post maybe). Yet, at the level of web technology, this usually seems to be limited to the level of exchanging tips and tricks, perhaps some RSS feeds, and referring each other to providers and vendors.

Two major developments are changing that situation now:

As there seem to be so many projects at N2Y3 that involve a mapping component, I though I would introduce myself and make some connections.

My mind is rather blown with some of the latest developments in online mapping, having just returned from Where 2.0 in San Francisco.

My background is in Drupal development, and I've done a lot with the Google Map module. You can see some of the stuff at the beta of Green Map's project for N2Y3 - the Open Green Map. If anyone has questions about how to do this, I'd love to get a mapping session going in the hack room at N2Y3.

{Cross posted in various forms at Vancouver Drupal Camp Group, Urban Vancouver and Now Public - please spread the word}

First there was an idea, then we chose a date (May 9-10), set up a relevant Drupal Group, now there is a location (SFU Wosk Centre and Workspace) and finally a Drupal Camp Vancouver website.

Indeed, the rag-tag band of volunteers is steadily working to wrangle Drupal Camp Vancouver into a knowledge-sharing fest of unparalleled fun and untold benefits.

Consider this notice that DrupalCampVancouver.org is alive and slowly percolating up with the relevant details and useful information including Sponsor info (and checklist), Volunteer info (and organizer props), and the important Call for Speakers.

Registration will open this week so keep your eyes open for details to be among the chosen.

For those who don't know, Drupal is an open source Content Management System which powers many of your other favorite community driven sites like Now Public, Net Squared and Urban Vancouver plus activist minded projects like desmogblog, happyfrog.ca and many many more.

How can you help?

Great question! 'Tis a busy time for all (including many involved with Open Web this week) so volunteers are important to spread the work around. Big thanks to those who've signed on so far. Have a bit of time? Then consider signing up by Contacting the organizers to help out (no big deal eh) and see ya at DrupalCampVancouver.org.

The Polar Bear Conservancy is a creative nonprofit here in Seattle. The ExDir
asked me to put the word out for a good Drupal contractor to help them migrate
their Web site platform. They basically have a simple iWeb site right now
(http://www.polarbearconservancy.org).

Their mission is to migrate three thousand polar bears to Antarctica in a
bipartisan effort to save the species -- the first drop goes South on Earth Day
in just a few weeks!

If you're interested, you can contact them at info@polarbearconservancy.org.

You can read more about them here:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/31/155730/362

I'd appreciate it if you could spread the word! Thanks!

Today, I'm excited to announce the Drupal Newsroom Module beta powered by NewsCloud. The Drupal Newsroom provides an excellent way to add dynamic current events and news to your Drupal-powered Web site. It's also a great way to stimulate involvement and discussion in your online member community.

The Drupal Newsroom module provides a page for your Drupal-powered Web site with news stories based on specific topic(s) from NewsCloud.com or populated by your staff or site members. The newsroom module allows your members to browse headlines, read stories, vote, comment and post new articles.

Check out Part 1 of this article for tips 1-5!

6 – Enlist Top Technology Bloggers

There are likely a few technology bloggers in your community that many local developers subscribe to and read on a regular basis. Because you have a social change mission, these bloggers may be willing to help you get the word out about your web idea. A featured post about your project could be a huge boost to your campaign to find developers!

I have been playing around with Twitter tonight, trying to see how well this can integrate with Drupal. There is alot of buzz starting to brew about how Twitter can be used as a tool for advocacy, political campaigning, and possibly even fundraising. I was personally looking for an easy way to do some micro-blogging from the road. To be completely honest, I am not a huge blogger (as you can see from the frequency of my posts), because it requires me to take time out of my busy days to sit down and formulate coherent thoughts into posts like this one (ugh).

Earlier this month, NetSquared was generous enough to fund my attendance at the Lullabot Drupal Intensive workshop in Providence, Rhode Island. Drupal is a free, open-source content management system that allows non-technical users to update your site and is capable of powering blogs, community sites, action-oriented campaigns and social networks along the lines of MySpace and Facebook. Lullabot, a Drupal development firm that involved in much of the Drupal development, has a keen interest in Drupal for nonprofits.

In return for NetSquared's generosity, I wanted to post some tips for nonprofits thinking about using Drupal for their sites. I'm convinced that, under most circumstances, Drupal can be a powerful resource for online advocacy and social change.

As part of the NetSquared Innovators Support Network, Social Signal will choose to work with one of the 21 featured projects on a pro bono basis, providing them with their choice of a customized community participation plan, a recommended community feature set, or complete specifications for a new custom Drupal module. But like a lot of the folks here, we got really excited about quite a few of the projects that didn't end up in the top 21, and we started thinking about how we might support their work.