fidzu : php

Chris Kelly links the board candidacy to a question now facing Drupal: how the project can make installation and upgrades easier without weakening security, independence, or open-source safeguards.

20 Jul 2026 3:50pm GMT

Michael Kinnunen and Steve Wirt share how they each got started with Drupal through higher-ed jobs and stayed for the communit. They compare those community values to FIRST Robotics, explaining FIRST's K-12 programs (FRC, FTC, and FIRST LEGO League), kickoff-style challenges, and the "coopertition" culture where teams help competitors with parts and repairs. Both mentor highschool robotics teams in the US.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/cafe019

Topics

• Cafe Catch Up
• Drupal Origin Stories
• Why Drupal Community
• What Is FIRST
• Mentoring Journeys
• Team Names Numbers
• Kickoff Build Sprint
• Coopertition In Action
• Awards And Impact
• Drupal for Team Ops
• Trying Recipes and Canvas
• Time Investment and Module Fixes
• Getting Students into Drupal
• Mentor Load and Teaching Java
• Student Run Team Culture
• Robot Ecosystem and Everybot
• Team Roles and Onboarding
• Adversity and Grit Lessons
• FIRST Programs and How to Join
• Wrap Up and Good Luck

Steve Wirt

Drupal Developer for CivicActions by day, FIRST Robotics mentor by night Steve has been a Drupal Developer for 19 years and helps government agencies build tools that help improve their mission. He is founding mentor of FRC team Compass Robotics.

Michael Kinnunen

Backend Engineer for CivicActions Michael has been working with Drupal for about a decade, starting with Drupal 7 in 2016 as a Web Developer at Northern Michigan University. He has also spent the past six years as a mentor for the Negaunee Minerbotics FRC team, where he has helped students build technical skills in programming and engineering.

Guests

Steve Wirt - swirt

Michael Kinnunen - mkinnune

Resources

FIRST Robotics Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition Michael's team

• https://github.com/minerbotics
• https://www.facebook.com/MinerBotics4827/

Steve's team - Compass Robotics

20 Jul 2026 2:17pm GMT

Drupal is not named in the HTML First paper, but the argument lands close to home. It gives Drupal teams a useful test for deciding when server rendering, Twig, components, and JavaScript should each carry the frontend load.

20 Jul 2026 1:37pm GMT

This week, Symfony published Symfony UX 3.3, which adds support for Symfony Reprise and includes several improvements to the toolkit. In addition, SymfonyCasts announced a new course on upgrading to Symfony 8. Finally, the upcoming SymfonyCon Warsaw 2026…

19 Jul 2026 7:23am GMT

SymfonyCon Warsaw 2026, our next annual international Symfony conference, will take place on: November 24 & 25 with two days of hands-on workshops to learn, practice, and enhance your skills in small groups. November 26 & 27 with three English-speaking…

15 Jul 2026 8:00am GMT

Symfony UX 3.3.0 is out. This release brings first-class support for Symfony Reprise in StimulusBundle, two new Shadcn components for the Toolkit (Sonner and Combobox), and a batch of quality-of-life improvements to the ux:install command and to how component…

15 Jul 2026 6:17am GMT

Last week I helped the folks at ezSystems debug some APC problems they were having. The problems ended up being a 64bit architecture problem (they have uber-fast Opterons) and the bug is now fixed in 2.0.3.

Today I received Python & XML from them (off my Amazon wishlist). Thanks guys!

On a side note, my wishlist seems borked. The list I get when I search on my email address or name is not the same one I can edit when I log into the site.

01 Apr 2004 6:53pm GMT

1st of April 2004 get's to it's end and I guess it's time, to summarize the recent April fools a bit. Not that I think anyone in the world believes in them, but some were quite funny:

1. Changes to case sensitivity in PHP.
Alan Knowles announced that PHP will change to the studlyCase API and therefor will get everything broken by changing established functions.

2. IBM takes over Zend.
Myself hacked a little article about IBM taking over Zend to make PHP a compete of Java.

3. The first PHP virus has been seen.
Wasn't there one last year, too?

4. PHP has been overtaken by Micro$oft.
Mhhh... a little bit unreliable, if they had been taken over by IBM this morning... Maybe one should first look, what others wrote...

5. And finally, PHP4 and 5 showed their real faces...
Take a look at a phpinfo() output!

I guess I missed some, so feel free to comment on this entry, if you found another!

01 Apr 2004 5:49pm GMT

Symantec have a report of the virus here. I've yet to see any of the PHP news sites picking up on it but, using a virtual host account, managed to deliberately expose some PHP scripts to it. From examining the infected scripts, what's disturbing is once infected, every tim...

01 Apr 2004 12:19pm GMT