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Welcome to Annertech's DrupalCon Amsterdam blog: Day 3. What did we get up to today? As it turns out, lots ... but more importantly (at least for me as the blog editor), we were at Cory Doctorow's keynote speech and then Annertech's Alan Burke's presentation on "Grid Style Sheets" (GSS).

So, here is the second "daily" Annertech round up of DrupalCon Amsterdam (we forgot to write the first blog post, so bear with us!).

Annertech have always been Ireland's pioneers and thought-leaders when it comes to Drupal and open source technology. We have consistently had a new live version of our website ready on the day that a new version of Drupal was released: Drupal 5, Drupal 6, Drupal 7. This time however, we've surpassed and surprised even ourselves: we have a new website - launched today - months in advance of an official release of Drupal 8.

This year, in an effort to encourage as wide an audience as possible, the Drupal Association of Ireland rebranded Drupal Camp Dublin as Drupal Open Days Ireland. We wanted to give a sense that it was a multi-day event, an event for the whole of Ireland, and that, true to the open source philosophy, it was open to all. Judging by the number of people and energy present, we think this was a good move. 

Annertech was very privileged to have the opportunity to work on such an exciting project as the “Inspiring Ireland” website which was funded by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and coordinated by the Royal Irish Academy. This first phase project is a pilot which marks the beginnings of a much larger programme to digitise, preserve, and share Ireland’s culture for public viewing, educational use and scholarly research.

As part of our efforts to enhance our Drupal 8 knowledge, we have been running an internal competition called #D8in8 (don't worry, you didn't miss it on Twitter; it wasn't trending). Basically, each Annertechie had eight weeks to “do something” with Drupal 8 – port a module, build a theme, migrate a database, anything. After 4 weeks we all previewed our work in an internal Q&A session and tried to help break any blockers anyone had. Then, on Monday (23rd June) we premiered our “finished” products.

You built a website waaaaay back. It's still okay. Actually, it looks good. Quite good. (But not great.)

Drupal Dev Days this year found its way back to the location of Drupalcon 2008 - Szeged, Hungary. A particularly picturesque city, Szeged made a wonderful location for a great conference, and Annertech was there to enjoy it all.

Transparency – everybody is talking about it at the moment. Transparency in government (allowing citizens access to what decisions were made and how those decisions came about), transparency in the non-profit sector (allowing donors to know where their money is being spent), transparency in computer software (allowing users to know what code is being installed on a machine/website).

Annertech is Ireland's leading Drupal development company. We have built many, many large websites for charities and non-profits. This is an area that we understand intimately and are ready to use our accumulated knowledge to ensure that your organisation grows to become (or remain) the great oak that it deserves to be.

We've just learnt that the website we built for Oxfam Ireland last year has been nominated in the upcoming Eircom Golden Spiders awards. They're shortlisted in the "Best Social Entrepreneur, Charitable & Non-Profit Organisation". Both myself and Alan will be accompanying Oxfam on the night.

I hope you'll join me in wishing Oxfam Ireland every success in bringing home the award.