PRESS ROOM

Structure Interactive Participates in Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting

GRAND RAPIDS, MI–March 2, 2005—Jonathan Chaffer, an Applications Developer for Structure Interactive, presented at the 2005 International Drupal Conference, part of the FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) in Brussels, Belgium, on February 26.

This two-day event was held to promote open source content management software such as Drupal, a web site platform that allows individuals or communities to create software tailored to their specific needs. The conference allowed participants, like Chaffer, to meet from all over the world to work together, face-to-face, on Drupal and other open source projects. "Meeting everyone for the first time was great and really allowed us to put some momentum behind the projects," says Chaffer.

Mr. Chaffer spoke about how to manage structured content, which is a method to easily organize Internet web sites. Chaffer and other developers at FOSDEM are trying to find a way for organizations to create their own templates for web sites. Off-the-shelf software can do this, however, a programmer must install it. The goal of Drupal is to make it so anyone can create a web site template and drop in content such as a biography page, or an image gallery.

Developers were given a chance to speak on a wide range of topics, in addition to brainstorming for rapid development of open source tools. "One of the most exciting new developments was a workflow system, so content can be routed to reviewers, email notifications can be sent, and similar tasks can be automated," says Chaffer.

Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS), which is maintained and developed by a community of developers from all over the world. It is also free to download and use. Drupal can be implemented for many different purposes, with features including web logs, collaborative tools, and discussion based community software.

Structure Interactive is West Michigan’s leading and largest interactive communications agency. SI develops communications strategies and tools for Fortune 1000 companies. Clients include Alticor Inc., Delphi, Dow AgroSciences (web agency of record), Dow Corning Corporation, Johnson Controls, Inc., Michigan Medical, P.C., Möllers North America, Pfizer Inc., Priority Health, Quixtar Inc., The Dow Chemical Company (web agency of record), Universal Forest Products, Inc., Viking Corporation and Zondervan.

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