Update on Lynda.com course, Panels 2, and tomgeller.com

The last few days have been busy, and I’m sorry if I’ve been slow in correspondence. Here’s what’s up with reviewer access to the Drupal Essential Training videos.

• I believe I’ve sent email to everyone who contacted me. If not, please let me know.
• According to Lynda.com, reviewers will receive their two-month passes soon. Hooray! They give you access to the whole site, in case you want to learn Photoshop, Illistrator, and Joomla as well. 😉
• I’m very sorry that I wasn’t able to get review copies for everyone who asked. I understand Lynda.com’s decision to limit how many go out, even though it’s unfortunate for those who can’t get them.
• But please do continue to spread the word! I’d particularly love to see reviews outside of the Drupal community, for example in Web design magazines. I’d appreciate any ideas or contacts you could suggest.

In other news:

• The course was the subject of Lynda.com’s weekly video podcast. (And let me tell you, it’s a really odd experience to hear someone else say your name repeatedly.)
• The DVD is now available! It’s $49.95, available directly from Lynda.com — look in the bottom of the right-hand column. It should be available from Amazon.com soon as well, and I’m looking into selling them directly.

Now I’m working on rebuilding the tomgeller.com site in Drupal, to be a Drupal resource. (I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t make the conversion before the videos came out.) Like the gellerguides.com site, it’ll be built on Drupal 6 — and will be my first time using the new version of Panels 2. [/fingers crossed]

(By the way, may I just give a shout out to Earl “merlinofchaos” Miles, creator of Panels 2? He just released an alpha version for D6, and I’m lovin’ it.)

Thanks again for your interest in the course: It’s really encouraging. The Drupalsphere has a feeling of emerging greatness that I haven’t sensed since the late ’90s, when I was involved in Linux communities. That experience, together with being on the wrong side of several losing ideas during the dotcom bust, taught me to recognize qualities of a winner. I’ll talk about what those qualities are — and how I think Drupal does (and doesn’t) exhibit them — in a future blog post.