Growing Drupal track

Overview

Acquia cofounders Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson will describe Acquia’s vision, preview the upcoming launch of Acquia’s distribution and subscription offerings, and discuss how the company functions as a member of the Drupal community.

Agenda

• Overview
• Product offerings – distribution and network services
• Support philosophy and approach
• Partner program
• Community participation
• Q&A

Goals

To provide an overview of Acquia’s business plans, the value Acquia offers to both Drupal users and Drupal companies, and how Acquia collaborates within the Drupal community.

Overview

Leslie Hawthorn from Google will be coming to Drupalcon to talk to us about various open source stuff.

Agenda
In this talk, Leslie will explore the past, present and future of the Google Summer of Code program, with an emphasis on Drupal projects. She will also cover the genesis and results of the Google Highly Open Participation Contest and future plans for this initiative. She will also briefly cover Google's use of Open Source software, the role of Google's Open Source Programs Office and how & why Google supports Open Source.

Leslie does not speak Magyar, but will definitely make up for her lack of domain expertise there with amusing anecdotes and, possibly, shadow puppets.

Overview

A panel discussion, that walks through the countries in the region and makes a short sum up of the current community status: the events that are being organized, the localized resources, the member bases and the events that will be hold in the near future.

Agenda

Goals

Get an overview of the "state of Drupal" in Central Europe. Open a dialog between the different communities that might lead to concerted efforts to grow Drupal.

Resources

An interest in growing Drupal.

If you are interested in being part of this panel, please send me a message using my contact form.

Recap of the conference, farewell until the next Drupalcon.

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

The DROP program is an ongoing program that aims at helping people learn Drupal through small, bite-sized tasks that are never too intimidating. This session will discuss the DROP program, including past achievements, future plans, and how you can help and/or participate in it.

Agenda

* Past achievements: what has been done through DROP?
* How can I participate in DROP as a mentor?
* How can I participate in DROP as a student?
* Where is the DROP program going in the future?

Goals

You should leave this session knowing what the DROP program is and how to participate in it. As a result, the DROP program should receive a boost of attention and effort, and many new Drupallers will have an easier time learning Drupal.

Resources

http://drop.cwgordon.com/

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

The Drupal association is non-profit organization that provides support for the Drupal community via events such as Drupalcon, marketing of Drupal, and support for Drupal.org.

Agenda

* Update on Drupal.org improvements
* Discussion about Drupalcon North America 2008
* Legal update from Bert and Larry
* Marketing from Kieran
* Drupal association permanent members elections Jan 2009

Goals

The purpose of this meeting is to share progress in supporting the Drupal community and to learn about emerging issues in the community that need support.

Resources

Bandwidth for remote Drupal association members.

An update on the State of Drupal.

Overview

The design firm that will be selected by the Drupal association will be selected and invited to present at Druaplcon Szeged. This session will explain their design concepts and processes for involving the Drupal community in the design process.

Agenda

* Update on the design process
* Presentation on the design firm
* How the designers will engage the Drupal community
* Presentation of the UX Toolkit for Drupal.org

Goals

The purpose of this session is for the designers to meet the Drupal community and the community to meet the designers. The goal is for the designers to help transfer ideas about the ongoing design improvements for Drupal.org to the community.

Resources

The RFP for Drupal.org redesign. The results of the UX toolkit, and other inputs shared with the design firm.