Drupalcon Szeged 2008 Program

This August we've planned the most intense Drupal event on the planet!

Together with the track chairs we've been working hard to provide you with four compact, coherent session tracks full of pure Drupal goodness. We'll have a lot more place for the BoF's in Szeged, so that everybody can enjoy a pleasant and fruitful unconference. New this conference are the four thematic exhibitions: every day a fresh exhibition for a different topic to keep things interesting and efficient.

On the first two nights we're organizing evening programs and we plan distributed networking events on the third. If your partner, family, friends or customers are accompanying you we even got a couple of suggestions for side-events worked out.

And if that wasn't enough of action, we are expecting you on the code sprint where you'll be able to live out all that creativity you built up in Drupaltown.

Sessions

Drupalcon Szeged is focused on the site builder, design, user experience and developer community, with an eye on growing the ecosystem and our horizon in different directions. The conference runs on four tracks, each having sessions in parallel in a total of four rooms. The tracks are:

• Drupal core, contributions and trends which will focus on Drupal 6 and 7, as well as killer and upcoming contributed modules with some spice added on trends we follow (like the semantic web effort).
• Showcases, user experience and design will focus on the site builders, themers and those interested in delivering a killer user experience both for Drupal itself and for their own sites.
• Code development is our hardcore developer track on topics like simpletests, coding practices, scalability, deployment and so on.
• Growing Drupal will be our business and marketing oriented track with a good amount of local community building and focus on efforts such as the Knight Drupal Initiative, Google Summer of Code and GHOP.

Each track has associated track chairs, who are field experts and well known names in the area. The session suggestion system is now closed, and track chairs take care of selecting the right mix of sessions, ensuring quality and good coverage of the topic areas. The program will be published soon.

Unconference!

According to good tradition, Drupalcon will also have its full fledged (unmoderated) unconference in the form of BoFs. This year we'll make it a bit easier to submit and schedule your sessions online. Since this is a true unconference, all proposals are by definition accepted. We are going to have the usual round table open spaces to collaborate but we will also have three bigger workshop rooms for people to schedule bigger impromptu (or pre-planned) meetings and discussions. If you want to get a hold of one of those rooms you should start building an audience well in advance.

BoF suggestions are open! Please read our call for papers page before you fill in your BoF proposal form.

Exhibition

This Drupalcon will be the first to have a full fledged exhibition in parallel to the customary conference program. A series of companies (including the sponsors) will be exhibiting. Posters will be available for any bypassing people all day long (e.g. underway to a BoF workshop room) but there will be specific time points in the agenda (including the session breaks) when exhibitors will be at their booths.

The program for the exhibitions is as follows:

• Job fair (day 1). Companies that want to hire exhibit, we also invite job seekers and university students from the region.
• Service providers (day 2). Hosting companies and other internet service providers (e.g. newsletter providers, special website related services,…) exhibit. In the evening there will be wine tasting in the exhibition area, so if you have something to sell, this is a great opportunity to get considerable visibility.
• Regional companies (day 3). For companies from Central and Eastern Europe that are working with Drupal (or at least PHP). If you are looking for partners in the region, this is your thing.
• Designer exhibition (day 4). A chance for free-lancers and design companies to show what they can, there is a limited number of free booths available for qualified design companies.

Are you potentially interested in exhibiting on the conference? For 1000 EUR you already get a bronze sponsor package which includes a booth on your exhibition day of choice (and some other great benefits). In August it will also be possible to buy any remaining booths outside of a sponsor package. Don't worry if your company does not yet have "real" booth equipment to bring, we are providing poster panels so all you need is 1 or 2 posters.

Check out the sponsor page for sponsor packages and benefits. Contact us on the exhibitor contact form if you are only interested in exhibiting.

Evening events

So far, we planned the following evening activities for the four conference days:

• Welcome party (day 1). The first evening we are offering a welcome drink at one of the best "terrace squares" of Szeged. We booked one of two adjacent bars that have a great summer terrace, so that you can really appreciate the great evenings of sunny Drupaltown.
• Wine tasting (day 2). We asked a Szeged company to organize a wine tasting in our exhibition area. While enjoying some great Hungarian wines you'll be able to look around and talk with the companies that have a booth on the service provider exhibition.
• Your parties (day 3). This is the evening that you can organise company parties or industry networking evenings. Just figure out a location (we can't organise this for you, but we'll have some tips available on a couple of great locations), invite your customers/partners and have a great networking time.

You can propose an event on our forum.

Code sprint

This Drupalcon we will again host a code sprint day right after the conference, where like-minded Drupal developers will meet and code together to fix issues and develop new and exciting features. The shuttle buses to Budapest will leave from the venue, so there is no reason why you shouldn't come hack with us before you leave Szeged!

We found that more focused groups can work together better, so we suggest you bring out your code sprint ideas in the forums.

Side events

We have asked our volunteers to put together a couple of program ideas, for family members or other non-attending companions. Check out our side events forum for existing tips, and submit your own.