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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

RT @drupalcon: Submit Your Session Proposal for DrupalCon Chicago Today! http://is.gd/gLdZd

Interested in proposing a #WYSIWYG / #ATAG session for #Drupalcon Chicago? - http://groups.drupal.org/node/104089 #drupal #accessibility

Submit Your Session Proposal for DrupalCon Chicago Today! http://is.gd/gLdZd

Just purchased my ticket for @drupalcon Chicago! Will I see you there?

Submit your session proposal for DrupalCon Chicago! http://is.gd/gLdZd (RT @drupalcon)

RT @drupalcon: Submit Your Session Proposal for DrupalCon Chiago Today! http://is.gd/gLdZd

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:

read more

Planning to present at #DrupalCon Chicago? Session submissions close 12/10/10. Voting starts thereafter http://bit.ly/9Jb8zd

Just launched a #DrupalCon Chicago 2011 page. It's a start. Submit ideas here http://www.duoconsulting.com/drupalcon-chicago-2011

@JoomlArt WoW soo cools tamplate! #JDT3 #drupalcon http://cot.ag/a4THE9

RT @JoomlArt: JD Event #drupal Events Theme Demo & Beta Download released. #JDT3 #drupalcon http://cot.ag/a4THE9

JD Event #drupal Events Theme Demo & Beta Download released. #JDT3 #drupalcon http://cot.ag/a4THE9

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.

What is Conference Organizing Distribution (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.

Bakery means smoother login and registration across drupal.org subsites

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.

Profile fields sync across 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.

Using a third-party registration system

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.

RegOnline integration benefits Drupal

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.

What does RegOnline support mean for COD?

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.

What features are headed back to COD?

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!

Thanks for the retweet @chrisbrookins ! I don't think we've met yet. I worked w/ Acquia when I was event planner for @drupalcon 2008 :)

Me too! RT @murgeys: in #drupalcon London 2011 meeting

in #drupalcon London 2011 meeting

RT @drupalcon @ryanszrama we'll have site swag soon! There will be special badges for attendees, speakers, and sponsors.

@drupalcon is there a "Banners and Community Logos" ready help ? looking for dc chicago banners, any help ?