If you are an experienced developer ready to dive into Drupal, then take a look at the pre-conference training session “Making the Switch to Drupal.” This March 19, day long course is led by Jeff Beeman, Josh Brauer, and Chris Porter - three experts from the Drupal powerhouse Acquia. With years of experience in both Drupal development and training, you can be confident that you’ll leave with a great perspective on what Drupal can do for you - and you’ll have a great time in the process.

Through hands-on activities, several key topics in Drupal site building will be covered:

• Identification of skills needed for Drupal development.
• Strategies for building maintainable, scalable web sites.
• Module selection, configuration, and customization.
• Explanation of the different Drupal data types and when to employ them - including content types, taxonomies, and views.
• Best practices for Drupal code development.
• Navigation of the Drupal community and how to find help.

Although no prior Drupal experience is required, it will be helpful to have knowledge of CSS, HTML, as well as a programming language such as PHP, .NET, or Java.

This pre-conference training session is held on Monday, March 19, 2012 - the day before the conference begins. Therefore, you won’t have to worry about missing any valuable conference events if you decide to enroll in this course.

Visit Acquia’s blog for more detail, or visit the bottom of the registration page if you’re ready to sign up.