Asymptomatic

At Drupalcon, there was a recurring theme of "do-ocracy". Simply explained, a "Do-ocracy" is Drupal's version of a meritocracy. Well, it's not even so much Drupal's version, as how people perceive the way that Drupal works, or how they choose to explain what a meritocracy is. Being involved with Habari and our own brand of meritocracy, I'm glad that they've come up with their own ridiculous term to explain how their project works.

As part of the definition of meritocracy on Wikipedia, you have this:

In a meritocracy, society rewards (by wealth, position, and social status) those who show talent and competence as demonstrated by past actions or by competition.

That's the ideal scenario. But what the folks presenting do-ocracies at Drupalcon are advocating is something slightly different. They're giving wealth, position, and social status (or whatever the open source equivalent is) to people who simply "do", not by people who show talent and competence. That is, your work needs to be of no merit, you simply need to do it. That's not right.

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My Home Owner's Association has a web site that's pretty sparse. I thought that I would take a bit of time to create a new site for them using Drupal, and increase my Drupal skills. There's nothing like throwing yourself into the fire to get out of the comfort of the frying pan, you know? So I was thinking about some features that I might like as a home member of the association, and how I might accomplish them with Drupal.

The first thing I'm going to want to do is get a theme that pleases by aesthetic sensibilities. It's not that the Drupal themes are ugly per se, but they all seem to offer the content in the same way - with the admin stuff exposed for anyone to see. I think that I want the full administrative side of the site to look different than the typical member-facing side. Rather than providing all of the functionality of Drupal the way Drupal does, I would like to select specifically what features appear on the site, and display them in an appealing fashion.

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