As I stated in my last post it has been a rediculously long time since I have written anything on my blog. This is particularly bothersome to me given the fact that there are many important issues that I feel I could contribute to. However, if I continue to wait until I have time to write up the whole shabang before I even start, I'll simply never do it. So I figured I should at least start by throwing together a list of things I would write about if I had the time. Who knows, perhaps you'll end up telling me what I should write about first.

So, apparently, I've been a little lazy with respect to my blog. It's not as though I haven't been busy though. Anyway, I'm about to go on a little vacation so I thought I'd bundle up a little news...

1) The Koumbit project is really picking up steam now even if the current website still really sucks. A whole series of contracts have come through and we have half a dozen geeks working near-fulltime at the moment. We are working on a new site too. It'll be a multilingual Drupal site using the internationalisation (i18n) module. It had been a long time since I had tried the i18n module... things are coming together nicely... except that it still requires patches to the core files. WTF!? I don't get why the Drupal community hasn't rallied around this module. In my circles, the innaquate management of multilingual content is the most prominently recognised limitation remaining with Drupal. Anyway, Koumbit is going strong and the contrats are pilling up. It is just a matter of time before we upgrade our infrastructure from a one-server to a four-server configuration and get in touch with the other principal players in the Drupal sphere to figure out how we can all collaborate more effectively.

2) We have started work on a voting module for Drupal that will enable groups to take decisions via the web and evaluate the representativity/validity of these decisions. I have been talking about this idea for years now and it is finally getting underway. While we are still at a very preliminary stage, i.e. we have almost no code to speak of, the idea has matured through a series of discussions and planning exercises. You can find out (a little) more about this project at voting.gnuvernment.org. The coolest thing is that Koumbit now has some $$ to reinvest into R&D and this project is likely to get a piece of the pie.

3) And finally I'll mention that I have been working on tons of Drupal sites even if I haven't yet listed any of the recent ones in the "websites section" of my blog. Probably the proudest moment recently was successfully upgrading a site from Drupal 4.2 to 4.6. This is pretty key as a whole bunch of my/our older clients are going to be needing this very soon... especially with the recent security holes found in Drupal and the fact that the older versions are no longer being supported.

Anyway, that's all for now... not because I don't have more news to share... I just need to get some real work done before I leave. :-)

(First, if you don't know anything about Koumbit, you should read this and then check out the Koumbit wiki.)

So the question is... Do you think there is a big need in the non-profit/community sector for affordable and decentralised accounting infrastructure? Do you know people or organisation that could benefit from this?

Some people at Koumbit are thinking of providing just that by installing SQL-Ledger and providing access to server-based accounting infrastructure for small distributed organisations.

The most significant project that I am involved in at the moment is the creation and consolidation of an activist-geek-worker's-coop in Montreal called Koumbit. The ultimate goal is to have two legal entities: a non-profit that allows organisations and individuals to pool resources and influence the development of the communications technologies that we are all increasingly dependent on; and a worker's coop that enables geeks to make a living while working within a technologically sophisticated AND progressive context. So far, we probably have a dozen or so highly skilled geeks involved in the project (a hard core of a half-dozen at any given point in time) and we have legal status in Quebec as a non-profit.

So what is Koumbit? Well, it depends on who you ask, but one thing is for sure, it is a project worth watching.