There's nothing like waiting until the last minute to get started on something, but when I woke up this morning, I finally picked a challenge for my 30-day blogrimage.
The annual blogrimage was started by Pradeepan Jeeva and his friends in 2010. In its first three years, over 60 people participated by simply selecting a 30-day personal challenge and blogging about it each day. This year, over 100 people will participate.
I'd considered a few options for participating this year, but couldn't really decide on anything until this morning, when I spotted the link to the Drupal 8 #PatchADay challenge that Dries Buytaert posted on Twitter. This interested me, and I almost chose it, because I've been thinking about getting involved in Drupal Core development, and had already considered something like this for the blogrimage.
Then I saw the link to #1day1patch in a tweeted comment. I think this fits me a lot better. Getting people involved in Drupal Core development is really important, and getting Drupal 8 completed will be a huge benefit, but as I've blogged before, massive attention on Core sometimes leaves Contrib languishing as key modules go unfinished, unpatched, or mired in bikeshedding debates about how things will work in the next version of core.
I did not build by first Drupal 6 site until eight months after the D6 release because of the wait for key contributed modules (primarily CCK and Views) to be rewritten. This was essential, and held a lot of community attention, and I'm not complaining about it. However, it was over a year after release before I launched my first Drupal 7 production site. As of today's count, I maintain only 10 Drupal 7 production sites, but am responsible for 33 Drupal 6 sites. Many of those sites still cannot be updated because of missing support in Drupal 7 contributed modules.
Dual Blogrimage?
As it turns out, I may also be embarking on a double blogrimage. Pradeepan sent out a call last night for help creating a roll-up site that aggregates as many individual blogrimages as possible, and I offered to help. That project may also take the full 30 days to complete, and I plan to work on it at least daily until it's up and running, too.
Join the Blogrimage!
The blogrimage is open to anyone. Challenges can be anything, and don't have to be technical in nature. Check out http://pradeepan.com/blogrimage for history, information, and ideas. Even though the blogrimage starts today, it's not too late to join!
#blogrimage