The O'Reilly School of Technology was built as a place to give aspiring programmers and administrators a ladder into the Information Technology and Systems industry. With unique, online, hands-on courses leading to certification from the world-famous University of Illinois, OST will help you gain an edge in your career -- on your own time, at your own pace. When you have completed our courses, you will not only have certification, but you will also have a portfolio of completed projects to show for your effort.

The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation, by Jono Bacon, is a new source of knowledge about building strong, cohesive community. It could be the catalyst for many effective communities. In this book, author Jono Bacon offers a collection of experiences, observations, and thoughts from his decade-long involvement in building and managing communities for open source software. Currently, he's the Community Manager for Ubuntu, arguably the largest community in the open source software arena. His relationships with other community managers, along with his own experience, provide a rich and deep well of expertise.

O’Reilly Media, a highly-respected technical publisher, offers to members of our user group a generous 35% discount on all titles. Enter discount code "DSUG". In addition, any orders over $29.95 qualify for free shipping in the United States.

Happening June 9–11, 2009 Burlingame, CA, at the San Francisco Airport Marriott, Found 2009 will change how developers create web applications so that search connects their sites to their potential customers. The way to online success is through being easily found in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search. While developers have historically thought of search as a marketing activity, technical architecture has now become critical for search success. Found is the authoritative place to discover best practices for this industry and gain a thorough understanding of why search-friendly architecture is absolutely mission-critical to businesses of all sizes. No spammy tricks.

OSCON 2009 is happening July 20-24, 2009 in San Jose, CA. It is at the crossroads of all things open source, a deeply technical conference that brings community ideals face-to-face with business practicality. Come together with 3,000 of the best, brightest, and most interesting people to explore what's new and to help define, maintain, and extend the identity of what it means to be open source. OSCON is the place to be inspired and challenged, renew bonds to community, make new connections, and discover the most relevant projects and products to help you do your best. The 2009 edition of OSCON will be in San Jose, California. We look forward to engaging in new activities, and to welcoming the participation of new projects and local open source communities that the new location will bring.

InsideRIA is the premiere community site for rich Internet applications (RIAs). It is an online community developed by O’Reilly and sponsored by Adobe Systems Incorporated, whose goal is to create an invaluable resource for information on the ever-changing state of design and development of RIAs. InsideRIA brings some of the leading members of the RIA community together, where you can engage with them in an ongoing narrative about where RIA technology is headed. We hope InsideRIA will become your first-stop resource to stay on top of news, events, opinions, and learning.

This user group now has a brand-new Web site, built from scratch using Drupal, by Web developer Michael J. Ross (SDWTG's webmaster). The site is kindly hosted by SDWTG member Ryan Belong of Studio 3-G.

There were several reasons that prompted this effort. While the old site was adequate for the group's needs, it was based upon the CMS Joomla, which in August 2008 had a severe security hole, which allowed countless Joomla-based Web sites to get hacked, including ours. Also, the redevelopment was a good excuse to learn more about Drupal and its capabilities!