The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) of the British Computer Society (BCS) held a one day workshop yesterday on Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) for Social Networking. Since Miles was unable to be there, I attended on behalf of Open Source Schools.

The workshop attracted some 25 people from a wide range of backgrounds. Regrettably none was from education. Although not able to be there in person, the first presentation of the day was from Miles who had prepared a video illustrating, with examples from his own school, the different ways in which Moodle, Elgg, Drupal and Wordpress can support social networking.

The second presentation was from Alan Milligan, Convenor, Open Source SIG, NSW chapter of the Australian Computer Society, who outlined the social networking features of Plone ECN.

The final presentation was from Robert Castelo, Director Code Positive Limited, which has organized various events in London for Drupal (http://www.drupal.org.uk). Robert provided an excellent introduction to Drupal focusing on social networking, in particular the concept of Organic Groups which has recently started to be introduced to our site. During his presentation it emerged that the Comic Relief website had run on Drupal - amply illustrating its robustness and scalabilty.

Together with Sun Microsystems and Acquia, Code Positive is running a half day event focusing on the benefits and challenges of using Drupal in education on 14 May.