Larry Garfield wrote an interesting article overview about Drupal's ladder of engagement. The short version is

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I agree 100% on his article and it inspired me for this issue. Annoyingly, you can use this quote for nearly every strategy where people are involved. I think the right mix is important. Sometimes you have to go fast, sometimes you have to stop and think about your behaviour and sometimes you have to go together.

At the moment I am writing a Joomla! 1.6 beginners book. It's fun and I hope it will be ready at the end of the month. While writing I get in touch with lots of things happening around Joomla!. The project and the people behind the project are going in so many directions, sometimes alone, sometimes together, sometimes they return, they discover something new, they tease and love each other, they are fighting about bloody details - maybe you understand what I am trying to express - the normal human behaviour.

All these processes are running in parallel and sometimes the common goals prevail. If that happens, a project is particularly strong.

The useless discussions about which system achieves world domination does not matter for a customer. It is the wrong question from the customer's point of view. Which system you use depends on the needs, abilities and wishes of the client and, of course, on your capabilities.

It is still not possible for us to use the Joomla! software package in every business case we have to solve (the same is valid for Drupal and WordPress). And it is not necessary, there are so many possibilities to solve our clients' problems. Monoculture is the end of evolution - ask the other Steve!

What happened last week?

WordPress:

• WordPress 3.0.5 (and 3.1 Release Candidate 4) was released
• Nokia Conversations runs on WordPress. "Welcome to the official Nokia Blog. Here we’ll tell you a little more about Nokia Conversations and the team behind it"
• Byrne Reese, the former Product Manager of Movable Type and TypePad wrote an interesting article on "How on Earth did WordPress win the battle over Movable Type?" How did WordPress win

Drupal:

• OpenAtrium has a cool new feature called Ideation. It was developed for the US Department of Education by Development Seed.
• Dries wrote a retrospective summary of the Drupal development process. I suggest everyone, especially the Joomla! leadership team to read the article AND the comments carefully.
• Tesla Motors runs on Drupal

• The team behind Drupal Government Days in April is calling for session proposals. The event is organized, besides the usual suspects, by the Chancery of the Prime Minister of Belgium and the Federal ICT (Fedict) of the Belgian government. Good to hear, that a Belgian government still exists :-).

Joomla!:

• Joomla! Community Magazine | February 2011 was released
• smart Italia runs on Joomla!
• ipubfinder.com runs on Joomla!. The mission of Irish Pubs Global is to support the Irish pub diaspora around the world by showcasing them worldwide, while highlighting their offerings.