Drupalcon Planet Feed

The Coder track for DrupalCon Chicago is looking for Drupal Geeks. Submit your Coder track session and show the Drupal developer community (and the world) what you can do with Drupal right now.  

Coder track sessions can show Drupal developers how they can extend and control Drupal.  We would love to see a variety of sessions which provide in-depth technical knowledge as well as help new developers get started.  

We're thrilled to announce a very full gathering of training seminars this year at DrupalCon Chicago.

We've got the robustness of Drupal covered, with training sessions on Drupal 7 Module Development, Using Features, Performance and Scalability, E-commerce, Upgrading from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 and Security for the Real World.

We've also got offerings for those who are just dipping their toes into the waters of Drupal, such as introductions to Drupal, site building, and module building. Expanding out further, we have jQuery Bootcamp for developers who want to grow further, and Hands-On SEO for making marketing happen.

As for getting your hands dirty with design and theming, we have great offerings there too: Design 101, the Non-Themers Guide to Theming, Beginning Drupal Theming and HTML5 for Web Designers. User Experience comes in with Designing for Content-Rich Sites, and What Users Really Want.

We had an amazing amount of training seminars to choose from this year, thank you to everyone who submitted.

We'd love to see you there, seminars are on sale now. Just make your selection when purchasing your ticket!

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The Drupal Association and the European Drupal community are pleased to announce that DrupalCon Europe will be hosted in the United Kingdom in 2011. We are inviting engaging speakers and are planning over 75 sessions that appeal to everyone from beginners to top level developers, designers and architects. This is the perfect opportunity to network, gain new skills and share your passion for Drupal. Please support this great event.

The venue is located just 15 minutes from the center of London. We have 24 hour access to all rooms in the venue for the entire week. Drupal never sleeps, and at DrupalCon, you won't have to either. If you do, we have hundreds of modern hotel rooms and apartments, all with free internet at a fraction of the cost of central London. We also have genuine British pubs.

If you would like to volunteer to help organize this DrupalCon, please post a comment on our event planning website: http://drupalcon.org.uk/public/blog All volunteers are welcome. You don’t have to be in the UK or even Europe.

Tickets will go on sale in Spring 2011.

DrupalCon Europe 2011
21-26 August 2011
Fairfield Halls - London
http://london2011.drupal.org

We are anticipating the biggest and best DrupalCon Europe, ever!

DrupalCon Chicago is only months away and full of goodies. There is the Drupal Tower, the hotel holding the conference that attendees can also stay at. The early round of sessions has been announced and has some real rock stars in it. We have keynotes that will expand you mind. A Core Conversations track to plan the future of Drupal. An opening night party at the Field Museum. I could go on and on. DrupalCon Chicago is shaping up to be the best DrupalCon so far. But, there is more we can do to make it better. DrupalCon is about the idea sharing. It opens up possibilities to new people. Much of this happens though great sessions. We need your great sessions.

The sessions at DrupalCon Chicago are broken down into six tracks plus Core Conversations. After all, what we do in the Drupal community isn't just about the code. The tracks are:

• Business and Strategy
• Coder
• Drupal Community
• Design and UX
• Implementation and Config
• Theming

For these six tracks we are looking for your great ideas. Submit them now as the window is short and sessions submission is only open to December 10th.

There are some perks to being a session speaker not available at past DrupalCons. Here is a rundown on the accepted speaker perks.

• $100 off the lowest ticket price is you entry cost.
• Free admission to the speakers reception.
• Free admission to the opening night party.
• A fancy speakers badge.
• A registration line just for speakers.

If you have a great session in mind or one your just passionate about sharing, submit your session. The window for sessions is small. The opportunity to speak is great.

Registration for DrupalCon Chicago just opened last week, and we’re pretty excited about it! With the recent launch of the redesigned Drupal.org, the impending launch of Drupal 7, and the upcoming tenth anniversary of the project next year, the Drupal community has a lot to celebrate, and we’re looking forward to welcoming everyone to Chicago March 7-10, 2011 for the festivities!

Tiffany and I are the DrupalCon Chicago co-chairs, and Palantir is also a Diamond sponsor, providing hundreds of hours of company time (on top of that being volunteered by many of our team members and others in the Drupal community) in order to ensure the success of the event.

Along with the opening of registration, we also opened our call for session submissions! We’re looking for great speakers willing to share their knowledge on a variety of topics, including design and user experience, coding and development, implementation and configuration, theming, business and strategy, and community. We’re interested in hearing from Web experts of all stripes, even those who don’t work with Drupal!

Of particular interest to me is the Business and Strategy track, which I’m chairing. This is a non-technical track for business owners, evaluators, project managers, and other decision-makers who want to learn more about how others have leveraged Drupal and associated technologies to succeed in solving business problems.

At DrupalCon San Francisco last spring, nearly one in five attendees described themselves as project managers. That’s more than the number of people who identified themselves as designers or themers! As Drupal is increasingly used for larger and more complex Web projects, effective project management becomes more and more important, and this is a subject I’m hoping gets good coverage at DrupalCon Chicago.

Another challenge that the Drupal business ecosystem faces is driven, ironically enough, by its own success. Not that long ago, there were only a small number of companies that specialized in Drupal solutions, and most of those had very close ties to the developer community. Today, many more companies work with Drupal, many of whom are not connected to the community.

In that environment, it’s more difficult to ensure that everyone is working with the software in a way that’s consistent with established best practices. DrupalCon is an opportunity for those companies, organizations, and institutions who have deep knowledge and experience with Drupal to share it with others. In this way, they’ll not only ensure more successful Drupal projects, but generate more positive contributors who understand the value of giving back and helping make the software even better than it is today.

We’re also interested in hearing from folks who are doing innovative things with Drupal and leveraging the platform in envelope-pushing ways that will inspire those looking for new and creative ways to utilize Drupal as a cutting-edge Web solution.

You can keep up-to-date with the latest information about DrupalCon Chicago by going to http://chicago2011.drupal.org/ or following @drupalcon on Twitter.

We hope to see you there!

We are happy to announce that registration is now open for DrupalCon Chicago, which will be held March 7-10, 2011 at the Drupal Tower in downtown Chicago! You can sign up and purchase your ticket today at http://chicago2011.drupal.org/

DrupalCon Chicago will feature dozens of curated sessions and panels from some of the most influential people and brightest minds within the Drupal community and beyond, as well as countless opportunities for networking, code sprints, conversations, and more.

The conference will be held at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, located in downtown Chicago. During DrupalCon, the Sheraton will become the Drupal Tower, your one-stop location for all conference activities and accommodations.

When you register, you'll have the opportunity to purchase your event ticket, reserve your hotel room in the Drupal Tower, and sign up for pre-conference training sessions as well as the official March 8 after-party at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History! If you already have a drupal.org user account, you can use it to automatically sign in to the DrupalCon website.

We're also pleased to announce our open invitation for speakers at DrupalCon Chicago. This is your opportunity to share your knowledge with DrupalCon attendees. Find out more at http://chicago2011.drupal.org/speaker-application

Sessions that have been confirmed so far include speakers on design and user experience, coding and development, implementation and configuration, theming, business and strategy, and the Drupal community.

In addition to the regular session programming, DrupalCon Chicago will also feature keynotes by Dries Buytaert, Clay Shirky, and Jared Spool. As some of the leading minds in today’s ever-expanding new media landscape, these speakers will inform, engage, and inspire DrupalCon attendees.

DrupalCon Chicago will also include a number of events new to DrupalCon, including a Day Stage, the Drupal Means Business track, and Core Conversations, in addition to the traditional after-conference sprints.

Those interested in helping sponsor DrupalCon Chicago can download a copy of our sponsor prospectus, but don't delay as sponsorship slots are limited and going fast!

You can keep up-to-date with the latest information about DrupalCon Chicago by going to http://chicago2011.drupal.org/ or following us on Twitter @drupalcon

Session submission for DrupalCon Chicago is now open and we are looking for another fantastic round of sessions! If you have a session in mind, get it submitted soon as the deadline is just weeks away. For DrupalCon Chicago the session programming is happening a little differently than past DrupalCons. So, whether you're thinking of submitting for the first time or if you’re a DrupalCon regular, there are some session ins and outs worth perusing:

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Did you see, the Chicago DrupalCon website launched!? After conducting an open RFP process the Drupal Association hired us to build the site, with Palantir.net handling theming and content. It's been fun working on this project since it's so important to the community to create a solid, reusable platform for future conferences. We're working towards that with Drupal's Conference Organizing Distribution (or COD).

We want to give the Drupal community some insight into how the site was built, why some decisions were made, and get your feedback on which features should be moved back into COD.

COD is an install profile and set of modules and features that make it easy to build robust conference websites. COD is currently in Alpha2, and already provides features such as:

• Rich session submission workflow
• Themeable schedule grid
• Personal session schedules
• A system for collecting sponsor information and displaying it on the site
• A smooth registration and checkout workflow

Several DrupalCamp sites have been built on COD, as well as a non-Drupal conference. usecod.com has COD news, list of sites built on COD and the the entire downloadable COD package.

DrupalCon Chicago uses many of the features from the COD Support suite of modules, and building upon those features made it easier for the teams to focus on the features and design that makes the Chicago2011 site unique, rather than starting by re-building the same features as other conference sites.

Once most of COD Support was enabled, we set about making enhancements and customizing it to match the needs of the Drupal Association and specifically the DrupalCon Chicago team.

We put a lot of work into the Drupal-based Single Sign On Bakery module. You can now login or register directly from the subsites like chicago2011.drupal.org and groups.drupal.org. This keeps people who are new to Drupal.org in the flow of registering and logging in all on the same site, and means that eveyone who registers for an account on the conference site has a single login that connects them to the rest of the *.Drupal.org sites.

We also added new fields to Drupal.org user profiles (such as LinkedIn profile) and enabled syncing of those fields with the DrupalCon Chicago subsite and future DrupalCon sites, reducing the need to answer these same questions on future DrupalCon sites and manually maintain the same profile across the drupal.org subsites.

Based on concerns from previous experiences using Ubercart for ticket sales, the Drupal Association required the use of the RegOnline registration system. Specifically, some of the benefits of using RegOnline are:

• Great, ad-hoc reports that can easily be created by non-technical users
• Financial data that can be reconciled between the ticketing system and DA bank accounts
• Out-of-the-box workflows for sponsor, scholarship and other discount coupons, ticket transfers and refunds
• Tight integration with hotels for booking rooms, which is increasingly important as our DrupalCons now depend, in part, on selling blocks of rooms to keep the ticket cost of the event low

GVS had hoped to improve how Ubercart works in all the ways needed for DrupalCon sites instead of integrating with RegOnline, but the Drupal Association felt it was more important to use a tool like RegOnline first. We were happy to work with them to help make the best possible DrupalCon site and to make sure that the project still resulted in great community contributions.

While it might seem contrary to the spirit of open source to use a proprietary, closed-source system like RegOnline, we feel that doing so still made Drupal stronger in the end, even if we would have preferred to build the site using Ubercart.

We built and contributed the RegOnline API module which integrates Drupal with some of RegOnline's API. By increasing Drupal's compatibility with RegOnline, we make Drupal more appealing as a go-to option for the many RegOnline customers who want a richer conference site outside of the ticket selling process.

Our integration connects RegOnline registrations to signups with Drupal's Signup module, ensuring that once data is imported from RegOnline, we can work with it similarly to how we would with any other Drupal events site. This approach allowed us to roll, review and commit several patches to the Signup module.

Working with RegOnline also allowed the GVS team, DrupalCon Chicago team and Drupal Association to become more familiar with RegOnline's features, which informs how we can make Ubercart (and Drupal Commerce) a stronger option in the future.

That said, we did build an automated sponsorship sales system in Ubercart for the Chicago site, and will be contributing it back to COD. This feature has already resulted in new patches, reviews and commits to the UC Node Checkout module.

We remain confident that the Ubercart & COD combination can handle all signup and e-commerce related needs, and we think that its smooth registration workflow is one of its greatest strengths. Still, both COD and Ubercart need some work to handle other important aspects of event management as smoothly as RegOnline does.

If you are contemplating using COD with either RegOnline or Ubercart for your site, we recommend Ubercart, although RegOnline is a strong second option. Putting your user registration workflow onto a third-party system means you have less control over the user experience and checkout process, and in the case of RegOnline, less access to user data.

We have already included the new scheduling tool in COD. This was developed initially for our client at the MeeGo project, the MeeGo Conference 2010. We enhanced the tool greatly for the Chicago DrupalCon.

For everything else, we're open to suggestions. For example, our preference is that voting on sessions should be done via a Flag instead of Fivestar. The concept of one through five ratings on a session seems overly complex compared to "I like this one" and "I don't like that one."

If we think it's generally useful to the world, we will integrate it back into COD. If it seems specific to DrupalCons then we will simply have a DrupalCon-specific install profile or set of features that is based on (or complements) COD.

So, which DrupalCon Chicago site features do you want incorporated back into COD? Tell us in comments below!

The DrupalCon Chicago 2011 website has now started selling tickets and opened up registration for speaker proposals and other community areas. The striking design was provided by Palantir, and looks great!

We'll be launching the DrupalCon London 2011 site in the next few months, and need creative talent to get involved NOW.

It's a great opportunity to show what you can do centre stage on one of the most prominent Drupal sites, and to work with some of the most skilled people in the Drupal community, including Mark Boulton - who has generously offered to help in a consultative role providing advice when needed.

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We are happy to announce that Early Bird registration and the public call for speakers for DrupalCon Chicago is now open! This is your chance to be one of the first to reserve your spot at this one-of-a-kind event and guarantee your hotel room at the Drupal Tower, the one-stop location for all conference activities and accommodations from March 7-10, 2011.

Sign up now at http://chicago2011.drupal.org/user/register

When you register, you'll have the opportunity to purchase your event ticket, reserve your hotel room, sign up for pre-conference training sessions, and the official after-party at Chicago's Field Museum! Plus, anyone who reserves their hotel room at the Sheraton via the website before the end of 2010 will receive a free pair of Drupal pajamas available nowhere else!

We're also pleased to announce our open invitation for speakers at DrupalCon Chicago! This is your opportunity to share your knowledge with DrupalCon attendees.

Sessions that have been confirmed so far include speakers on design and user experience, coding and development, implementation and configuration, theming, business and strategy, and the Drupal community.

In addition to the regular session programming, DrupalCon Chicago will also feature keynotes by Dries Buytaert, Clay Shirky, and Jared Spool. As some of the leading minds in today’s ever-expanding new media landscape, these speakers will inform, engage, and inspire DrupalCon attendees.

DrupalCon Chicago will also include a number of events new to DrupalCon, including a Day Stage, Drupal Means Business track and Core Conversations, as well as the traditional after-conference sprints.

Those interested in helping sponsor DrupalCon Chicago can download a copy of our sponsor prospectus, but don't delay: sponsorship slots are limited and going fast!

DrupalCon is an international event that brings together the people who use, develop, design, and support the Drupal platform. DrupalCon Chicago 2011 will feature dozens of curated sessions and panels from some of the most influential people and brightest minds within the Drupal community and beyond, as well as countless opportunities for networking, code sprints, informal conversations, and more.

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On 15th of January 2011 Drupal will be 10 years old, and one of the ways the community is celebrating this momentus milestone is with two great DrupalCons:

• DrupalCon Chicago (7th - 10th March 2011)
• DrupalCon London (21st - 26th August 2011)

Preparations for DrupalCon Chicago are well underway, and it will undoubtedly be a huge and suitably awesome event.

DrupalCon London has only just been confirmed, and we're looking for people to volunteer their time and talents in the comming months.

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I'm pleased to announce that DrupalCon will be in London 21st - 26th August 2011.

We have secured the Fairfield Halls, 15 minutes from the centre of London, with access to 24 hours a day, for the entire week. We can hold sessions by day, code sprints by night. There are many great hotels available right across London for varying budgets.

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The past 6 months have been very lively, mixed and full of travelling.
I was the lead organiser for DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010 from May until September (and yes, I loved doing it a second time around after DrupalCon Paris), especially with a Viking team!
Then, I enjoyed some days off in the South of France and travelled far north to start working at NodeOne, where I have been now for a week (feels like a month already) and also attended DrupalCXO in Brussels the past weekend. You can read an extensive summary here.

As announced in the closing session of DrupalCon Copenhagen, we're getting the word out about DrupalCon Chicago by passing out stickers at upcoming DrupalCamps and other meet-up events around the world! We've already passed out over 1,000 stickers in Copenhagen, and starting this weekend, if you're an attendee at DrupalCamp Torino in Italy, the Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit in Vancouver, Canada, or Drupalcamp Atlanta, you have the chance to get one of your very own! We've mailed out hundreds of stickers to these events, along with some information about DrupalCon and some of the cool stuff planned for Chicago next March.

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As announced in the closing session of DrupalCon Copenhagen, we're getting the word out about DrupalCon Chicago by passing out stickers at upcoming DrupalCamps and other meet-up events around the world! We've already passed out over 1,000 stickers in Copenhagen, and starting this weekend, if you're an attendee at DrupalCamp Torino in Italy, the Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit in Vancouver, Canada, or Drupalcamp Atlanta, you have the chance to get one of your very own! We've mailed out hundreds of stickers to these events, along with some information about DrupalCon and some of the cool stuff planned for Chicago next March.

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Back in April, after DrupalCon San Francisco, Kieran Lal wrote a post for this blog with some ideas for how to effectively grow DrupalCons without losing our soul as a community. One of the key items he focused on was improving session quality. As Kieran put it,

"In order to grow Drupalcon, we need to focus on the quality of the main program. Drupal sessions are still wildly hit or miss, both in session quality and session attendance. As a community, we need to take a hard look in the mirror and raise consistency and quality of every Drupalcon session."

These thoughts have been echoed by many other folks within the community, including Mike Anello, Heather James, and Larry Garfield.

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The video of the 'Aegir - one Drupal to rule them all!' session from Drupalcon Copenhagen has finally been uploaded and is available from archive.org

Below is an embed of the video.

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Did anyone else get a Drupal EyeGrow (or Druplipets as they seem to be known) from DrupalCon CPH?

I started growing mine around a week ago and, as you can see, it's coming on pretty well!

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This year's European Drupal conference has sadly come and gone. Ezra Gildesgame, Ben Jeavons, Lisa Rex and Carl Weidemann were in Copenhagen representing Growing Venture Solutions. Here are a few of our highlights. Links to the videos will be added when they are available.

Carl presented Theme Preprocess Functions: an Introduction, where he showed a packed room how to bring and flexibility into the hands of the themer. Preprocess functions are a key component of Drupal theming and when first learned, open up a whole new world of possibility. Carl received some positive feedback on the session and hopes to continue to give it at future conferences, adapting it to stay current with future versions of Drupal.

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A few weeks ago, I embarked on my first overseas trip to go to Copenhagen for this year's European DrupalCon. It was my 4th DrupalCon to date, but I've been wanting to attend one of the European ones for a while, as they have a reputation for having a different vibe than the North American ones (and of course so I could finally see some of Europe!)

Like the last conference in San Francisco, it was prefaced with the Core Developer Summit, which is a full day of presentations, discussions, and code sprinting on the core Drupal platform. The Core Dev Summit is the single day (twice a year at this point), where a good number of the people who work on Drupal core come together to take a step back and discuss in-depth any ideas or concerns. This often leads into some dedicated sprinting on core related issues (as well as some of the most crucial contributed modules).

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