For the third year in a row, the East Coast Music Association has accepted submissions for the annual Industry Awards using a Drupal mini-site. The simplicity and extensibility of Drupal has allowed the ECMA to accept submissions for 17 different categories using a basic installation of Drupal combined with the popular CCK and Views modules. Association members can conveniently apply from the comfort of their homes, and organizational efficiency is buoyed by a paper-free process.

Updates are easy, hosting and backup costs are minimal, and the overall development budget was much less than a custom or proprietary solution. I really wonder what advantages custom/proprietary content management systems provide businesses and organizations of any size. Drupal, for example, is good enough for the Whitehouse.

Want to try out Drupal 7 but you're scared of CVS or just don't have the time to setup another environment? You're in luck.

I've setup a Drupal Sandbox built from the HEAD CVS version (I'll rebuild it frequently as the functionality and security of the code is still in flux). Check the playground to see when the last build was. There are daily tarballs of Drupal 7 available here.

Head over to drupal7.socialconstruction.ca and create a new account to start playing.

The default authenticated user accounts have the permissions of your average content creator, with full create/edit permissions for all of the core content types.

Differences you'll notice from Drupal 6 will be predominantly on the UI side of things. As I can't safely give out admin permissions, you'll have to build your own environment to see the admin UI. Let me know if you have any trouble or spot any security holes.

We are looking for the opinion of Canadian professionals, managers, and owners. To thank you for completing the survey, you will be entered in a draw to win one of two $50 gift certificates at Amazon.ca.

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The survey ends on Monday, September 28, 2009 at 5:00PM Eastern.

Many so called Web2.0 sites have a strong focus on one type of social function: popularity. Content can be dugg, voted up, liked, starred, etc. Primary views into the community are then generated with lists of popular content, with algorithms used to decide what is most popular at a given time (Twitter's trending topics is a fine example, when data reaches this level of popularity, it loses a bit of its intrinsic feedback/metadata value and often becomes popular because of its popularity, let's call it the Paris Hilton effect).

The problem with this methodology is that what is most popular on average really has no connection to a single individual user. A user is complex and nuanced. Furthermore, these popularity algorithms are generally known to be easy to manipulate. The result is that many visitors aren't drawn into a web-based community because what the site presents to them is of little interest. Some people even reject popular content automatically, with disdain for the "wisdom of the crowd."

The next generation of social web software has to get to know each user and scrape around to find content that will be novel, interesting, and engaging. There have been a few baby steps in this direction. Facebook tries to recommend people and pages you may be interested in. Digg has a recommendation engine. Sadly, one of the most promising prospects disappeared in 2007. Read about Findory.com and how it has shaped future recommendation engines on the web.

What are the ethical concerns for an organization working on marketing optimization? Optimization is usually done to increase the bottom-line, get more revenue from less cost. But from the user's perspective, does a better tuned service mean they are happier clients or just more inclined to do what the marketer wants?

Let's look at A/B testing for instance. A/B or split testing requires some variance in the way things are presented to the user, to determine on average which permutation satisfies users more often (and by satisfies, I mean they buy something, or click on something, they generate a conversion). So by its very nature, someone may feel that they are randomly getting lower quality content/service than possible. It is the marketer's responsibility to make sure that each testing permutation meets some standard of usability and accessibility. Tests shouldn't be shots into the dark, they should be well-researched and contemplated for their impact on the user. You can start this research by asking your clients directly for feedback. Don't waste a user's time on frivolous tests that are very unlikely to improve their experience.

To measure success in A/B testing also means that users are being tracked. The optimizer has to know which permutation was presented to the visitor and if the desired conversion took place. At a minimum, users must be able to determine that they are being tracked. Generally this is done in the privacy policy of a website.

The benefits of testing are evidenced in many of the web's most useful sites, but is there more to consider? When does testing cross the line and become manipulation? I would love to see some comments on this.

While I was working at ScreenScape, I conceptualized and developed a Facebook Application to promote and aid the activities of the marketing street team. Recruitment, training, feedback, and tracking were all performed within the app, it completed the business loop in an environment the target audience were quite comfortable with. While the concept seemed confusing to some colleagues, the target audience seemed to understand it quite well. (Note: Try, however hard it is, to think in terms of the user. Your intuition and expert opinion may need to be checked at the door.)

ScreenScape built a Facebook application that allows all street team members to take photos of every poster they hang as proof that they should receive payment. So, not only did ScreenScape use Facebook to recruit members, they also use it as their sales compensation system -- it does everything but actually cut the check.

Now you might think that ScreenScape has stumbled on a wonderfully cheap way to do marketing, and it has. But ScreenScape also benefits whenever a street team member decides to spread the word, via a blog or other social medium.

Internet Evolution - Mike Moran - A Little Guerilla Marketing Among 'Friends'

While the merit of a Facebook Application today is debatable, the point I'm trying to drive home with this posting is that your clients are extremely nuanced. Try different ways of engaging with them; unless you are reckless, the risk is small and your brand will surely survive a small foray into alternative platforms. The upside is huge.

Let's start with Drupal. Drupal is an open source content management system. It is free to use because a community of thousands of volunteers continually develop and refine it. A content management system is basically a web site structured in a manner in which documents or nodes are the main functional unit. A CMS can provide the base for almost any website when it's conceptualized this way, since we usually think of websites as "pages."

So out of the box, Drupal gives you a system to blog, create pages, receive comments from visitors, have community forums, plus a wide-range of free themes and tools to manage the appearance of your site.

Drupal modules extend the functionality of a Drupal site, in an atomic manner. They let you do the "cool" things with your site by integrating Drupal with other open source software and sites. There are hundreds of free Drupal modules available at Drupal.org. Think of any way you want to spice up your website, there's probably a Drupal module that at least tries to do it; video, photo, community tools, e-mail, mobile, e-commerce, and 3rd party social media are popular mediums Drupal modules help with.

Let's look at a simple application of using Drupal to engage your clients. Maybe you sell sporting goods online and allow your customers to review and rate the goods that they buy. This could easily be extended to allow your customers to upload videos and photos of their use of the sports equipment. Have physical storefronts? Use SMS to send coupons, product availability, store locations, or product SKUs to your clients' mobile phones. Check out the Drupal community to find examples of these modules or comment below on various hypothetical site configurations, it's more than likely easy to accomplish on a modest budget.

If you want to be a leader in your industry online, Drupal and the open source family can get you there painlessly.

When you can't find something already in the community, want a core Drupal function tweaked, or want to combine functions in novel ways, that is when you need a custom module. If this is the case, contact us to get started, we are experienced Drupal module developers and site optimizers and members of the Drupal community and Drupal Association. Your project is probably exciting for us too!

Thanks for dropping by the blog. Here, we'll share news, ideas and tips gathered from the web and the minds of the folks at Social Construction Web Solutions.

Of the websites we follow for solid, pragmatic ideas, the following are consistently original and informative:

Palmer Web Marketing - Justin Palmer: Well-written and thoroughly researched marketing advice.

John & Cailin Tech blog: Drupal, scalability, cloud-computing, and new technologies; this blog is a must read.

2bits.com articles: Drupal, performance, scalability

MDLog:/sysadmin: Linux sysadmin, virtualization/cloud-computing.

Nadeau Software: Drupal, performance optimization, and Java.