How best to optimize a Drupal for use at a Conference

Alex and Arvind's NYCIST'06 Drupal

http://www.nycist.net/d/

We used a base installation of Drupal 4.7.4 for the above conference site. No extra modules.

We set up the site -- with authentication so folks need to be approved before they are allowed to blog because regular users can use the blog.

We did this -> Administer >> Settings >> Users

We used the blog api so that everyone can post in Access Controls.

We used taxonomy for a free form and formal tags on all posts. This allowed us to add the link at the top of the site for the NYSAISEDTech2006 posts as well as the 'right link' to keynotes.

I added a feedburner feed for the rss and podcast feed from the site. We heavily used the Aggregator module to aggregate del.icio.us, flickr, and technorati rss feeds.

Lots more to add, but this is a start....