Planet Drupal

On Saturday the 24th and Tuesday the 27th of May, we hold the first presentations of our promotion roadtrip for Drupalcon. We're doing these events to raise awareness about Drupalcon Szeged and to convince people that this is the perfect time to take a deep Drupal plunge...

It is great to see all the 30 (yes, that's thirty) logo suggestions which already came in the past three weeks in our Drupalcon Szeged 2008 logo contest, as there are quite a few amazing logos there. I can only say it will be hard to choose from those both in the community voting and for the final decision. We only have one week left for submissions, so to those cooking up their ideas, I'd like to suggest to complete it sooner then later, so it would get in for community voting. And, again, thanks for all the entrants so far! Great job!

We just published a few image galleries, so you can familiarise yourself with the hosting city, our venue and (if this is going to be the first for you) the Drupalcon feeling. These are of course no substitute for being present at Drupalcon.

At Drupalcon Szeged we would like to have a couple of pre-conference workshops/trainings. These events would be independent from the conference and would have a separate pricing and organisation.

If you or your company want to hold such a workshop, please let us know before the 30th of April so that we can include a checkbox for your event into the registration form. That way you can get feedback from potential attendees.

Recently, we have received some contact mails from people, who are looking at cheap options to travel, especially from North America. We'd like to draw your attention to an update we made to the travel page lately:

For attendees coming from out of Europe, the option of coming to a major flight hub somewhere in Europe and transferring to a budget flight there might get you considerably cheaper flight prices.

This results in a bit longer travel time, but could dramatically cut down on flight costs. The travel page has links to explanations of European budget airlines and the search sites we recommend.

Another recent addition to our site is the travel sharing overview (accessible through a block on our travel page as well). This lists people, who indicated their interest in sharing some vehicle to travel to Szeged. We already have people coming from Romania, Germany and Hungary open to share their car, while others from Romania, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands among others are looking to hop into a car. There are already a few possible matches there.

A few hours ago, we pushed out the user registration and the biography form we worked out based on feedback from the Boston Drupalcon and our own experience. This means that we are now welcoming your user registration, and providing possibilities to discuss travel, side-programs and anything else you might like to talk about. Congratulations to Peter Bartsch for being the first to register (not counting organizers and our little test user)! Feel free to use your OpenID account to log in for easier registration.

We love to continue on the tradition of asking you, dear designers and aspiring artists in the community to help us design the Drupalcon Szeged 2008 logo. The logo contest will run for a month and community voting will follow for a week, so that we can select the best incarnation of the Druplicon for this event.

Please note that this Drupalcon is again not a free to attend event, and your user registration is in itself not a valid entry for the conference. We will open conference registration later and will include accommodation reservation. C&T, the company we are working with already booked hundreds of rooms in different types of accommodations, to ensure that we put or hands on most of the capacity we need. You will have options ranging from deluxe hotel rooms through pensions to hostels.

Also of note that while we worked on all these, George Papadongonas kindly opened a Facebook group for Drupalcon Szeged 2008. Hang out there with like-minded Drupal folks and grow your network already.

We are happy to inform you that since Drupalcon Szeged was announced a few days ago, we enlisted more then 20 (mostly local) volunteers who are already discussing and planning restaurant reviews, plotting important and useful sites on the Szeged map, ensuring good WiFi coverage at the venue among other things. For the first time in Drupalcon history, we are using a project management website set up and fine-tuned exclusively for this event, separately from the Drupalcon public website. Thanks to the people and the technology, we worked on some exciting things since the announcement, so I figured I'd better let you know:

• Our team built up a Frequently Asked Questions page complete with location, date, visa requirement, language, accommodation, registration, price estimate and even power plug and mobile coverage information among other details. It contains very important tidbits, so please check it out.
• We also collected some valuable information for your traveling. When you organize your travels, please note that we plan on a code sprint day after the four session days.
• Drupalcon Planet is setup and includes each blog post from and near Drupal Planet that mentions Drupalcon. All automated.
• Follow us at twitter.com/drupalcon as we are already using this to spread more informal news on the event. Also mark your tweets with #drupalcon to appear at hashtags.org/tag/drupalcon/.
• We also got a hold of the #drupalcon IRC channel on freenode, which just means that we got the channel topic updated now. Feel free to hang out there and discuss. You might or might not find organizers there.

We'll keep the information pages up to date (and even included a "Last updated" mark at the top to let you know the freshness of the information at any time). If you have any questions not (adequately) answered in the FAQ, by all means contact the team. We would also love if you could help us get the word out about this event. Let's grow the Drupalcon Planet!

Ps. We are working on making it possible to register on this site, but we would like to save you from the hassle of going back and forth updating user profile details, so thanks for your patience in the meantime.

This next Drupalcon, we're transforming the small town of Szeged, Hungary into Drupaltown!

The Drupal Association is pleased to announce that the next Drupalcon will be held in Szeged, Hungary from August 27 to 30, 2008 in the Library and Conference Center of the Szeged University. With a thousand Drupal enthusiasts expected we'll be turning this picturesque student city into a true Drupaltown!

Drupalcon has been a major success for the Drupal community, with every conference reaching out to more and more people. Like Boston, Drupalcon Szeged will again provide ample opportunities both for business people, developers, themers, designers, and users in the community: there will be a code sprint, plenty of space for BOF sessions, a job fair and, of course, plenty of opportunity for networking. Start planning, buy your tickets earlier and be prepared to meet your Drupal community in Szeged, Hungary; Drupaltown!

Szeged city view from the Tisza river

Some of the new things at this Drupalcon will be:

• Accommodation service. We are organizing this conference in collaboration with C&T, a local event organizer. As part of the registration process they will help you find accommodation - near the action - that fits your needs.
• Any budget. We have already reserved the city's finest hotels as well as the local hostels. There are accommodations to meet everyone's budget.
• Central European talent. Drupal is big in Central Europe. This Drupalcon will let you meet developers, designers and other upcoming talent from the region. It will also be an excellent opportunity to make first contact with some of the local, as well as foreign companies that provide consulting, design, development, or outsourcing talent. We will have an exhibition area with focused one day exhibitions as well as a partnering system to help you find the right people and schedule meetings.

The Drupalcon Szeged 2008 team is working hard to finalize conference details before opening registration and the session proposal system. We will also soon announce the sponsorship packages. You can follow us at szeged2008.drupalcon.org (or drupaltown.org). Only the most important announcements will appear on the drupal.org home page. In the meantime, make sure you are available on these days (we will provide you with travel tips and facts on the website) and gather your ideas for discussions and sessions.

Inside the venue

Bring the family! C&T, our partners in organizing this conference, is also a travel agency and can help you plan a family vacation to Budapest, Vienna, Prague or any of the other beautiful cities within the region. Given sufficient interest from the participants it is possible to organize a collective post-conference trip; please let use know what you think!

Check back soon and register early so you don't have to miss out on Drupalcon in Drupaltown!

Drupalcon 2009? We are currently planning the 2009 Drupalcon in North America and Europe. Please submit your proposals and ideas now.