60 minutes

Overview

There are numerous tools to help you translate the interface and content of your Drupal websites, and there are obviously (still) missing items in the implementation. This session will show off Drupal 6's capabilities and the latest developments with contributed modules, such as i18n module and l10n_client.

Agenda

* What do you need vs. what Drupal does
* How to get closer the two with core features and contributed modules
* Translating the interface live with l10n_client, contributing to an l10n_server
* Content translation, listing, filtering and administration
* What's missing, and where projects are going

Goals

I intend to provide you with an understanding on where Drupal core and the contributed modules fit with your needs and goals, and where should you still expect some custom coding required for your top-notch multilanguage site.

Overview

The formal user tests at the University of Minnesota and Baltimore have got quite some attention. They also had a common bottom line: Drupal is quite hard to get into for novice users.

We want to improve this. But how can we make sure we really tackle the major issues? And how do we find out if improvements are really improvements?

Repeated testing is the answer. Make sure to find out how the user experiences Drupal for our own attitude cannot be but biased. How is someone who is not accustomed to the workflow and UI able to perform a given task?

And how to make user testing fun? I'll try to depict how this can be done utilizing the
Usability Testing Suite (UTS).

Agenda

• Tests in U of Minnesota and Baltimore: have there been reliable results?
• A bit of theory: how is user testing generally carried out in other projects and companies
• The Usability Testing Suite (UTS): A way to go?
• A plan how to encourage and organize constant testing

Goals

Find a way to make user testing an asset to Drupal. Just like code testing has got a key role in Code Quality.

The talk will have an ensuing BoF to discuss the further steps in user testing. If we could come up with a plan that feels feasible, this would be wonderful.

Resources

Usability Testing Suite
In dev state,
maintained by boombatower

Overview

Come up with a plan how to encourage and perform constant user testing in Drupal. The BoF continues on what has been said in the Session "User Testing in Drupal".

Agenda

• User testing is tedious, what can we do to make it more fun?
• The main problem is that in a test, you question your own work. This is unpleasant, because you might find out it has issues. Or is this no issue?
• One needs testing persons. How can one make it easy for them so they may participate in testing Drupal again? Who are the people we need for that?
• Generally two ways of testing can be done: completely remote, or with you directly watching the Tester. Which one is better?
• There is also the "big solution" (formal Studies like in Minnesota and Baltimore. We also need those. What role do they play, and what role play smaller ones?
• How can we utilize existing Infrastructure to minimize redundant work? Maybe the DROP program can be used and extended? Do the issue queues help?

Resources

Usability Testing Suite
In dev state,
maintained by boombatower

This is a BoF for librarians and library technologists.

Agenda

* What libraries need from Drupal
* What libraries and librarians bring to Drupal
* Version migration issues and challenges
* Integrating with library systems

Overview

Drupal is very modular "horizontally". You can add modules that inject themselves all over the place to add to the workflow of the page request. However, too many subsystems are inter-related, making it very difficult to separate out and modify one part of the system. Drupal is simply not as modular as it could be, nor as it needs to be.

Better separation between systems would allow for more rapid development, easier testing, greater flexibility, and at least 23% more awesome per square meter.

This hybrid lecture/brainstorm session will examine one proposal for further modularity, Handler objects. Working module code will be included.

Agenda

* Discuss the benefits and limitations of Drupal's hook architecture.
* Introduce a new extension mechanism, handler objects.
* Demonstrate existing uses for handler objects, including inspiration from Views and Panels.
* Discuss a broader vision for where Handler objects could go to transform Drupal.
* Open discussion.

Goals

This session is essentially a meat-space RFC. If all goes well, attendees will come away with lots of new ideas and the presenter will come away with lots of feedback. Best case, we'll have an awesome new roadmap for Drupal architecture. Worst case, attendees will get to see a nifty new module they can use.

Resources

Handlers as discussed in this session are an evolution of the concept documented in this article, after further discussion with other Drupal gurus. Familiarity with that writeup is encouraged, but not required.

The module is now available if you want to look it over before the session!

Overview

Local and regional communities are mostly raised and supported by a handful of people or even a single individual, while the Drupalcons are the result of many (not so mythical) man-months of planning, lobbying and teamwork.

We'll use this session to explore how people around the world are building the Drupal community on a local, regional, national and international level. Wel'll take the Parisian/French community as a starting point for our group discussion.

Next, we'll explore the different kinds of community events that are held around the world: their strengths and weaknesses, goals and results. We'll discuss how to start organizing these different types of event from scratch: the hows, the whys, the whos and the whens.

We invite you to show your battle scars and share your ideas and lessons learned. We'd love to find out from you how your environment, culture, religion or language influences your community and how it can inspire others.

Goals

* discuss the process of community building around the world
* learn from other cultural perspectives, and different forms of social interaction
* distill best practices, help avoid common pitfalls
* lower the barrier for new initiatives by demystifying the organizational process

Audience

Developers, testers, end-users, marketeers, analyists, ... anyone who wants to help grow the Drupal community on a local/regional/national/internation level.

References
Kristof talked about a great resource for management resources, you can find them at:
http://manager-tools.com/

Overview

Running a Drupal business, especially with responsibility for staff and balance sheet, requires a shift in the way you support Drupal open-source.

There is less opportunity to focus on drupal.org, and the result is that SME Drupal enterprises are often in the dark about is happening in similar businesses - even though the attitude towards open-source (knowledge sharing) has not changed.

To be effective, a company must make compromises: the move to D6 will come later, employees are not always open-source enthusiasts, and the lead developers need to justify what they consider best-practice (and document it) rather than 'just doing it'.

This session is based on a review of Em Space's current practices. We seek up to 2 additional companies (5+ employees) who are willing to share and compare.

Agenda

* Preferred contrib modules
* Using a code repository
* Managing live sites
* Ready for Drupal 6?
* Design and theming best practices
* Working with Design and Advertising companies
* Support and training
* Contributing back to Drupal

Goals

To get a clear sense of how other Drupal houses are using Drupal, to un-earth many varied and successful techniques.

Overview

Drupal's growth is exploding and business and organizations are struggling to meet the growing demand. This panel will discuss best practices on attracting & retaining Drupal talent during this time of rapid growth.

Agenda

*Tiffany Farriss from Palantir*
Tiffany will share stories about how Palantir's core values of transparency, collaboration and "fit" have enabled the firm to grow and embrace change over the course of its 12-year history. She will talk about how Palantir made the transition from a CMS-agnostic firm to a devoted Drupal shop. Topics will include: project selection, company culture, recruiting, professional development and community engagement.

*Robert Scales from Raincity*
Most drupal shops come to life out of the collaborative desire of a few people working together with hopes to build a stable work place! Raincity Studios is no different.

Scales will be speaking about growing Raincity from small collective to a multi-national firm with operations in 3 countries and a growing team of nearly 40 staffers.

A reflection on Raincity's past 5 years; from startup to building our Chinese operation, working with the community and acquiring Bryght in 2007... What can you learn from our mistakes and experience to help you become a more successful drupal service/product provider.

*Eric Gundersen on: make mistakes faster*
From two guys in a basement to a team and clients spread across two content, Development Seed has taken a MBA crash course over the past years. co-founder Eric Gundersen will share a 20 minutes brain dump covering how Development Seed has grown and grown and retained it's awesome team by being able to quickly learn form it's mistakes after each project. Eric will cover communications, management, and business process that help to make an awesome working environment, specifically:

* Finding work: How to position for the projects that people like to work on and the art of turning down work

* Doing work: Constantly refining the process from agile development and GTD systems to benefits of sitting around the same table

* Getting paid for work: contracts, client communications, and cash flow

This talk specifically targets anyone starting their own Drupal shop.

Goals

This presentation is intended to help build capacity among shops looking to grow or people starting their shops.

Resources
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/01...

Overview

Over the past few months, we've seen a number of major drupal site rollouts that make extensive use of Panels2 (See, for example, http://drupal.org/node/241344 and http://drupal.org/node/242993). We've also seen a few modules implement the Panels API in rather different ways - most notably, Advanced Profile Kit and Organic Groups Panels - that hint at how flexible Panels can be.

We'll start this session by highlighting these different Panels implementations and providing a birds-eye view of how Panels' moving parts work. We want to make sure attendees have a good sense of what Panels2 can do now - because the second half of the presentation is all about the future of Panels - otherwise known as Panels3.

Panels3 isn't so much about changing the data model (that part already works pretty well) as changing the API and interface. One good way to think about this difference is to consider Panels2's limitations on who can use it. Right now, it's very difficult to scale down the power of Panels to a level that's appropriate for normal users. Panels3 aims to break down that barrier. We'll spend the remainder of the session overviewing some of the current plans for how Panels3 might do that, as well as noting attendee suggestions for some of the large-scale directions we might consider.

Agenda

* Briefly overview Panels2 to bring everyone up to speed on the most recent developments.
* Provide some concrete examples of ways that the Panels API is currently being implemented.
* Present some of the current plans for the future development of Panels
* Gather participant reactions to the proposed ideas, and take general input on possible directions to go as well

Goals

Participants should expect to leave the session with a grasp of Panels' capabilities in the present, and a sense of what to expect in the future.

Resources

None needed. Just bring yourself!

Overview

This session presents a replacement for the existing aggregator module in Drupal 7 core. It is not just geared towards coders but to anybody who's dealing with aggregation in Drupal. We'd like to show you what's exciting about the new aggregator, talk about new possibilities it opens up and ask you for your feedback.

Background:

Drupal core's aggregator module wasn't designed with a wide range of use cases in mind. It supports aggregation of RSS and Atom feeds to a configurable set of categories on your Drupal site. But there is much more that users want to do with aggregation in Drupal aside from simple news aggregation, e. g.:

* Import iCal feeds to events
* Import to complex content types with custom fields
* Support workflow, access control or commenting on feeds or feed items
* Import special feed formats like NewsML

These and other demands have lead to a plethora of aggregation modules in contrib land: aggregator2, leech, simplefeed, aggregation and feedapi are just some of them. Most of them satisfied specific use cases and failed to cover the wider field of scenarios, hence none of them made the breakthrough to being the prevalent solution.

After a first attempt with FeedAPI in 2007 Aron Novak did it again for Google Summer of Code 2008: he took on the task to come up with a solution fit to replace ye olde aggregator. The result is a simple yet extensible and efficient architecture that should serve us well as a basis for the coming years.

Agenda

* Give an overview over existing aggregation modules in Drupal and its properties
* Explain why a new aggregator in core is better than the module-that-fits-best out there
* Present architecture of new aggregator for D7
* Present important features and explain specific design decisions
* Real world examples of what the new aggregator does or enables us to do:
** aggregate lightweight feed items or nodes
** lazy instantiation of feed items
** high performance setups
** (more to be announced when presentation is ready)

Goals

* Give you a good understanding of what's in the box
* Get your feedback on specific design decisions
* Do another step away from "many similar incompatible modules that do the same thing but slightly different" towards "many compatible modules that give you more flexible and better options"
* Inspire you to think beyond the current boundaries in aggregation

Resources

This is not mandatory by any means, but if you want to prepare for this session, we recommend to

* Test drive the new aggregator: http://drupal.org/project/new_aggregator or http://drupal.org/node/236237 (patch)
* Read the architecture outline http://groups.drupal.org/node/12772
* Have a look at the code