I was the first woman at any DrupalCON, the only woman in Antwerp. Until the brouhaha over the keynote, I never really thought about why I went there in the first place. But the decision to travel there was triggered by a tiny and important event, so I'd like to share it.

I had been communicating back and forth with Matt Westgate about some e-commerce functionality. At the end of one of his emails, he tacked on the following:

PS - You headed to Belgium?

This question wasn't a part of an outreach initiative to involve women in open source. I doubt he questioned that my interest might be affected by my gender. It was simply, "we're having an interesting conversation that would be even easier to have in person". Before I read that email, the thought of traveling to DrupalCON hadn't crossed my mind. But my response to that simple question was to make it happen! And thus my life was changed.

But five years later in San Francisco, when the number of women in attendance had risen from 1 to 300, I was settling into a BoF session when I was presented with another innocuous question:

This is a technical BoF. Are you sure this is where you intended to be?

This question was not intentionally harmful. It was an offer of help, in a tone of "hey, do you need some help finding your way to a session you might enjoy more?". But this "help" was based on the unconfirmed likelihood that I might not belong in a technical session. If I was new, I might have doubted my own aptitude and diminished my participation.

This post is not about lambasting the BoF guy or calling out the similar encounters we encounter every day, such as asking if I'm on the documentation team, a designer, or just there with my partner. This happens regularly and quite cordially, usually perpetrated by someone who you wouldn't call 'sexist'. But good or bad, tiny exchanges make up our community as a whole, and have a much broader impact. What if Matt, without any derogatory judgment, questioned my interest in showing up in Antwerp? What if he hadn't bothered to ask? Five years later, would I be contributing to Drupal, running a company that employs other Drupal contributors, and helping to support the local Drupal community?

More importantly, what if more people reach out to others in similar ways? How many others would there be out there doing more good for Drupal? Setting aside the topic of what is/isn't "offensive", how do we focus on being more inspirational, and asking questions instead of making assumptions?

Drupalchix

Start:  2010-10-02 08:00 - 09:00 UTC Drupalcamp or Regional Summit Organizers:  Mediacurrent

Drupalcamp Atlanta 2010 (www.drupalcampatlanta.com) is now open for registration, and will be held on Saturday, October 2nd from 8am – 5pm at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Our mission and purpose is twofold: (1.) we want to educate people about Drupal and (2.) further evangelize Drupal within our geographic region. The 2nd annual Drupalcamp Atlanta is an attendee driven, completely volunteer initiative modeled after the open, participatory nature of barcamps. We are offering four tracks this year: (1.) Drupal for Beginners (2.) Design, Theming, and Usability (3.) Development and Performance and (4.) Drupal for Business and Services. If you are new to Drupal we definitely want you to come – in fact, during registration we have carved out space and time for a “Drupal Installfest” before the sessions start.

This year’s venue at Georgia Tech will be spectacular. The main auditorium offers stadium-style keynote seating, power outlets in every other seat, and a reliable wifi set-up. The schedule will involve high-quality breakout sessions, an attention-grabbing keynote from a to-be-determined speaker, a coder’s lounge, sponsor booths, and an executive boardroom for special Birds of Feather (BoF) type gatherings. Want more? OK, when we are done we are going to have a party from 6-9pm at a nearby, soon-to-be announced restaurant where the networking and good times will be sure to follow.

Amazingly, this year’s event will cost a modest $25 for an all-day conference badge and will include breakfast, lunch, and snacks. For an extra $25 ($50 total), you can become an individual sponsor and we will provide you with an official t-shirt and recognition on the DCA website. Many thanks to the 13+ organizations who have already signed on to become a sponsor – sponsorship opportunities are still available.

How can you help? We need more volunteers, particularly those who would be willing to loan us video equipment, take pictures, or shoot footage of sessions– contact us and we will get in touch. Next, we need presenters to submit sessions. After being inspired by kick-ass Drupalcamp sites like Los Angeles and Colorado we added a voting component and commenting feature this year to allow potential speakers more attendee input leading up to the camp. The ability to submit sessions is now open and will close on September 10th at MidnightEST. Let me state the obvious, but the earlier you get your session submitted the more opportunity for votes and feedback.

Finally, here is the best piece of advice I can give you – REGISTER NOW. Due to venue constraints, we are capping attendance at 225. Last year’s event sold-out two months in advance, so do not risk getting shut-out.

Follow Drupalcamp Atlanta on Twitter @Drupalcamp_ATL

www.drupalcampatlanta.com

triDUG

One of the big goals of the drupal.org redesign is to make it easier for end users to find the right modules for the site they're trying to build. With over 5,000 contributed modules, many of them providing similar functionality, it can be extremely difficult to choose. One method is to try to assess the "health" of the module, by how actively it's maintained, used, supported, etc.

One approach to gauging health is posted at Project ratings and reviews for drupal.org redesign. While that proposal deals with subjective factors, this post addresses objective facts about a module that can be computed and displayed for all projects hosted on drupal.org. While no single metric can tell you what module to use, and some knowledge will be required to make the best use of this data, it's important to make these statistics more readily available on drupal.org to empower users to make better decisions.

The redesign prototype for project pages includes the introduction of a sparkline showing the "Activity" for each project.

The details of this activity chart weren't specified at a technical level during the design phase, but the spirit of the design is that they wanted more ways to visualize the health of a project. As we're implementing the redesign, we've been empowered to provide as many charts containing specific data we think will best help end users make sense of what's going on with a project. Read on for our specific proposal, including what metrics to compute, and some ideas on how those are going to be visualized on the new drupal.org

Specific metrics

There are literally dozens and dozens of metrics that could be captured and displayed. We've already got support for the usage of any given project and we're working on support for download statistics. Beyond those, we believe the following are important to assess the overall health of a project at a glance:

1. Issue activity: Each project category (bug, feature request, etc.) -- number open vs. number fixed/closed
2. Number of issue reporters (unique users filing new issues in a defined time period)
3. Number of issue participants (unique users filing issues or comments in defined time period)
4. Total number of issue comments posted over a week (ideally with a separate total for the number of comments by any of the project maintainers, both of which can be graphed on the same sparkling).
5. Release activity: Number of releases in each time period

We're proposing to normalize all metrics to a weekly granularity. This would both simplify the storage (so we're not trying to store daily metrics) and the UI (since it'd be best if all the charts used the same granularity to make it easy to compare them).

Additionally, the following metrics could be useful, but we might not have time to implement them for the initial launch of the redesign:

1. Commit activity (This would be great, but it's not worth our time to add this for CVS with the Git migration imminent).
   • Number of lines added/removed
   • Number of commits
2. Total number of tests and percentage of tests that pass
3. Total lines of code vs. lines of comment
4. Average length of time that issues are open
5. Number of unique users
   • submitting patches
   • reviewing patches

We're trying to strike a balance between what's relatively easy and sane to compute, implement and display visually, and things that will help users find the best project for their particular needs. Given that, if you have suggestions for other metrics we should be considering, please comment below!

Enter the project_metrics module

We looked at a lot of Drupal charting modules (see below), but basically none of them handle the storage for you. So, no matter how we end up displaying this data, we need somewhere to compute and store it. Enter the project_metrics module.

This would be a new sub-module included directly in the Project project. While the project_usage module is really only relevant to sites that are using Project to manage releases of Drupal code to track update_status usage, the project_metrics module could be useful for just about anyone running the Project suite. It would be responsible for computing the metrics and storing them.

To compute, the idea is we'd write a series of drush commands that would be run periodically to do all the heavy lifting to compute the right statistics for a given week. These commands would insert records into the project_metrics module's DB tables. Then, project_metrics would provide various ways to access and display the data (see below).

The basic architecture of the module is that it would invoke a hook to allow other modules to advertise what metrics they want to provide. The project_metrics module would then be responsible for invoking the appropriate functions in the other modules at the right frequency and storing the results. So, project_metrics itself wouldn't know how to query the issue database tables looking for statistics. That'd still be the responsibility of the project_issue module. However, project_issue wouldn't have to worry about invoking itself via cron, wouldn't have to manage its own tables to store the historical data, etc.

Front-end display

So how would all this data be visible on drupal.org? The key metrics would be exposed via sparklines on the project page itself. Depending on how many metrics we end up with, we might need to add a tab off project pages (or use JS to show/hide the full list of metrics) so that it's possible to drill down and find as many statistics as we provide, without overwhelming the user with all of that data directly on the default project pages. My vision is that there's an easy way to see 5 - 10 sparklines, each with datapoints at 1 week granularity, all vertically stacked so the weeks line up. That way, you can see how the different metrics correlate. So long as the scale of the horizontal axis is the same on all graphs (so they line up and are easy to compare), we can use a different scale for the vertical axis for each sparkline so that they all make the most visual sense (e.g. the number of releases in a week is probably going to be 0-4 most of the time, whereas the number of issue comments or lines of code added/removed could be in the hundreds or thousands). With the charts stacked so the weeks line up, you could easily see for example that one week the "number of lines of code added/removed" sparkline goes nuts, and the "number of open bugs" chart started climbing soon thereafter. ;)

There are some metrics and statistics specifically about the issue queues that are already on drupal.org, they're just mostly hidden. For example, you can view statistics about the Drupal core issue queue. This page will probably get some much-needed attention (it hasn't been touched in years). Although none of the UI parts of this proposal are set in stone, it's likely that we'll update these per-project issue statistics pages to include more of the issue-related metrics discussed above. The idea is that we'd put the current week's raw data in the tables near the top of the page, and then provide sparklines below to see how those values have changed over the weeks of the last year.

Additionally, we're going to expose some of these metrics to Solr to make it possible to filter and sort projects by various metrics. We've already done this with the project usage data (for example, this is the default sort order when you browse module projects on drupal.org). So, in addition to being able to sort by "Most installed" (and hopefully soon, "Most downloaded"), you might also be able to sort by "Most active issue queue", "Smallest % of open bugs", "Most commit activity", etc.

However, when it comes to visualizing the data that the project_metrics module would be providing, we've investigated a few possible ways to generate the necessary charts:

Sparkline-aware views display plugin

We could expose all of the project_metrics data to views, create views for whatever we care about, and write a Views display plugin that knows how to render our results as a sparkline. This could potentially be done as part of the Views charts project, or as its own new "Views sparkline" contribution. Either way, we'd hope to make use of the Sparkline module. The Views display plugin would simply be glue to take the data from the results of the query that Views ran and format that data in a way that the Sparkline module expects to be able to generate the sparkline itself.

Charts API

We could potentially use the Charts API to handle our charting needs. We'd still probably drive the queries via Views and have a display plugin to render the results via the Charts API. So, this is more an alternative to the Sparkline module itself -- either way we'd probably be exporting the project_metrics data to Views and writing a display plugin.

Quant

We looked at the Quant module, but it doesn't really seem like it gets us very far. It can do really complicated queries to try to figure out the historical data for you, but that's going to probably kill the d.o database server. It doesn't do any storage for you. And, we'd have to write some code to expose our data to Quant. At that point, we might as well just expose it to Views since that seems a lot more flexible and powerful.

Implementation roadmap

From now until around August 20th, we're just going to gather feedback on this proposal. To prevent the discussion from getting fragmented, please add comments directly on this post.

Starting around August 23rd, we're going to begin implementing the project_metrics module, and any changes to the rest of the Project suite, to make it possible to compute all these statistics. We expect all the backend work to take approximately two weeks.

Starting around September 7th, we're going to evaluate the front-end options and pick one to roll out on drupal.org. We're aiming to get these metrics visible on project pages and in the ApacheSolr index on the live drupal.org independent of the launch of the redesign theme (which is called "bluecheese"), unless it involves significant work in the existing drupal.org theme ("bluebeach").

Background reading

Interested readers can check out the following threads for more on this juicy topic:

• Project Quality Metrics on Drupal.org (meta document)
• Automate gathering of quality metrics
• Project module's hidden project metrics

Drupal.org redesign implementers

We are getting ready to unveil what we've been building into Pantheon over the past couple of months. But before we do, we are reaching out to a number of Drupal free-lancers whom we see as the initial target market for our service.

We want to ensure that the things are focused on building meet their real day to day needs and address their pain-points in site deployment, hosting, and scaling.

We are looking for Drupal developers that:

• Work as freelancers
• Are responsible for a large part of the Drupal website life cycle (development, PM, deployment, etc.)
• Could use some help with Drupal development infrastructure, deployment, hosting, scaling
• Would be willing to talk with us for 20 - 30 minutes

Please contact Zack Rosen zack@chapterthree.com if you're interested!

Thanks!

Greg

Pantheon

The DrupalCon North American Regional Organizing Group is looking for input from the Drupal community to help pick the location for DrupalCon North America in 2012 and beyond.

To do so, we’ve put together a brief “straw poll” intended to gauge community interest in various cities that have either expressed a desire to host a North American DrupalCon and/or been suggested as potential good locations by our event management company. This list is not intended to be exhaustive, and community members are welcomed to suggest alternative options.

You can make your voice heard by going to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/drupalconstrawpoll now!

The poll takes less than five minutes to complete, and we’ll be accepting responses until 11:59pm PDT on August 4.

After that, we’ll analyze the results that we’ve received and share them with the DrupalCon event management company, which will then conduct an in-depth assessment of several leading cities, weighing factors such as cost, venue availability, and transportation. The results of this study and any recommendations from the Regional Organizing Group will be submitted to the board, who will then make the final determination. Our goal is to have a location picked and begin negotiating venue contracts for DrupalCon 2012 this fall.

While we will be as open and transparent as possible with the community about this decision-making process, neither the list of finalist cities under consideration nor the selected location will be publicly announced until after a venue contract has been signed. This not only provides maximum flexibility when negotiating venue contracts, but also ensures that the selection process doesn’t result in unnecessary competition between different local communities.

We will work closely with the community in the selected city to help make DrupalCon 2012 the best event possible. Finalist cities that are not selected for 2012 will be given strong consideration to host DrupalCons in 2013 and beyond.

This new process is designed to ensure that future North American DrupalCons are run in a sustainable manner that results in high-quality, profitable conferences. Many community initiatives and events are funded with the proceeds from DrupalCon.

The voting members of the North American Regional Organizing Group that are leading this process are Tiffany Farriss (farriss), Cary Gordon (highermath), Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane), Greg Knaddison (greggles), Earl Miles (merlinofchaos), and Jacob Redding (jredding). Assistance is being provided by George DeMet (gdemet).

Drupalcon North American Regional Organizing Group

Start:  2010-08-07 09:00 - 2010-08-08 15:30 America/Los_Angeles Organizers:  Chris Charlton mike stewart jromine christefano rainbreaw nbluto thund3rbox DrupalShark snelson

Registration is now open for DrupalCamp LA 2010. Mark your calendars for Saturday & Sunday, August 7-8th, 2010. Attendance is free. The camp will be taking place in the same great venue from last year - UC Irvine in the city of Irvine, California. The campus has housing available if you wish to rent rooms to stay overnight.

If you registered last year then your account is already setup and you just need to login and edit your profile to mark what days you plan to attend.

Free to attend. Parking costs about $8-12 per day. Lunch is not provided but you can bring your own or buy a food pass from the cafeteria on campus (which people liked last year). Nighttime private camp party on Saturday 7PM-MIDNIGHT sponsored by MediaTemple.

SPONSORS

Warner Music Group

Media Temple

Achieve Internet

Volacci

Tropo

Stauffer New Media Development

Monstrositee

Commerce Guys

WHAT PEOPLE LEARN EACH YEAR AT DrupalCamp LA

• Drupal 6 & 7
• Drupal Basics
• Business with Drupal
• Administering & Maintaining Drupal
• Building with Drupal
• Drush
• PHP & SQL
• Designing & Developing for Drupal
• Drupal Themes & Modules
• Contributing back to Drupal, and more!

http://2010.drupalcampla.com

ADDITIONAL SPONSORS & CONTRIBUTORS

The Henry Samueli School of Engineering University of California Irvine
Acquia
Intrinsic Web Designs
SunRain Productions
Cherry Hill Co
Development Seed
Sage Tree Solutions

New site design provided by SoCal's premier Drupal agency This By Them, creators of the 2009 site.

http://2010.drupalcampla.com

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

By sponsoring our camp you get exposure and praise from our community mixed with networking possibilities during the entire camp. Due to budget cuts recently experienced by state schools in California, however, UC Irvine's costs have gone up, meaning our costs for the camp have also risen. We are charged with the task of raising upwards of $10,000 this year in order to fund the event our community has come to expect. Please consider sponsoring. Contact an organizer today.

Sponsor get their names/logo/link on our camp site, camp signs, maps & pamphlets, videos, our tweets - anything we can think of. If you want to make your presence known in the SoCal Drupal community then you want in on this. Visit http://2010.drupalcampla.com/sponsorship for more details.

RAFFLE PRIZES

Each day a dozen winners will be announced and each will get to choose a Drupal related prizes.

• Book publishers currently sponsoring the camp prizes are O'Reilly, Apress, and Packt Publishing.

• Two special winners will win full 1-month passes to Lynda.com on behalf of Drupal author & community leader Chris Charlton, author of Drupal: Creating and Editing Custom Themes online video training.

• Creators of the jQuery & Drupal plug-ins for Adobe Dreamweaver & Eclipse IDE, XTND.US are providing two awesome "CSS Ninja" shirts, check out the shirts below or at: http://www.zazzle.com/css_ninja_style_class_tshirt-235091799113607617)

DrupalCamp LA APPAREL

At the camp we will be selling awesome new t-shirts for only $10! That's 50% off the online price. Our 2009 camp shirt is also (still) available and you can order yours before the camp!

This is the shirt being raffled off by XTND.US. You can order your own online.

Get more info about DrupalCamp LA

http://2010.drupalcampla.com

Sponsorship information available at http://2010.drupalcampla.com/sponsorship

Drupalcamp or Regional Summit Ventura Drupal

Want to help migrate drupal to git? Great! This page overviews the different parts of the migration process, with a focus on making it easy for you to jump in wherever you'd like. See the Migration Roadmap for a more in-depth overview of what the migration entails.

Phase 2 of the migration has a lot of work to do, and it's spread all over the place. Being so spread out makes it hard for folks to know where to jump in and help. So instead, we've come up with these three loose avenues for participation - "Developing, Documenting, and Deciding." If you'd like to help, you should read through the stuff below and then ping sdboyer over email, twitter, or irc, saying, "I'd like to help with Development/Documenting/Deciding!" He'll get you squared away.

Develop

If you're a code monkey, we can definitely put you to work. There's modules to develop, a migration path to test, test sites to debug, and server settings to tinker with. The modules are the lowest-hanging fruit, and these are ones that really need love right now:

1. Version Control API
2. Version Control Git Backend
3. Version Control / Project integration

Getting the latest branches of these modules finished and working is an absolute must for the migration. The 2.x branch of vc api is what this whole system will be based on, and we're trying to finish it up.

There's LOTS of other dev work to be done, too, including work on the migration path, experimenting with server setups, and work on the packaging script.

Document

It's been soundly agreed upon that documentation is just as essential as code for the success of this migration. Of course, 'documentation' covers a wide range. Here's the general picture of what we want to accomplish:

1. Create a 1:1 analogue of the CVS Handbook. There's a prototype, and an issue to discuss it.
2. Create a 'Git Instructions' module, analogous to the CVS Instructions module.
3. Develop an "open source training curriculum" that will prepare new drupallers/git users for using git to contribute to and work on Drupal projects. (will provide a link here to that discussion once it's kicked off)

Decide

Want to be heard, but not do any work? This is for you! (kidding :P) There are a lot of things about the way d.o works, and the way we work with d.o, that are being decided by this migration - for example, we need to decide how commit statistics should work, and on how we'll replace $Id$ tags Some of these are decisions that can be taken now, while others we'll only realize as we run across them well doing other work. In both cases, though, we need to sort them out as a community for the migration to proceed. So if you're too strapped for time to offer anything but your voice, that's ok - just make sure you follow the migration gremlin, as crucial decisions are primarily be announced there.

Drupal.org Git Migration Team

What is COD?

COD stands for Conference Organizing Distribution and the goal of the project is to facilitate coordination of and participation in conferences via the conference website. COD can improve the efficiency of setting up a powerful website for both Drupal and non-Drupal conferences and events and provide value to non-developers and developers alike.

Work on COD documentation has started at http://groups.drupal.org/node/79003 .
If you like, you can vote for the DrupalCon Copenhagen session about COD.

COD existed as a group of modules for Drupal 5 and the Drupal 6 version is a rewrite with similar goals.

While COD draws on patterns used by other Drupal event websites, DrupalCamp Colorado 2010 was the first event to specifically use the Drupal 6 version of COD, and volunteers from that event contributed a great deal back to the project, specifically to the COD Support project which has been the main development focus thus far.

Key modules used in COD are the Signup module for managing lists of attendees, Ubercart for accepting payment for registration, and the UC_Signup module for simplifying the process of registering for an account on the site, entering attendee profile information, and paying registration fees.

The short term development goals for COD include developing a proper fully packaged Drupal distribution for COD that includes the COD_Support and other required modules for the project in order to facilitate easier installation and collaboration in the issue queue, so that we can improve COD as a community.

The chart below lists features that COD currently provides and could provide in the future, the level of configuration required to use those features, and the level of documentation available for each feature. These features are organized by general user role on the site (not necessarily a Drupal user role in the technical sense). For each role, a "user dashboard" is suggested, with the goal of making it easy for users to access information and perform tasks relevant to them.

ND = Needs documentation. Most of COD ND, though having a COD-specific document that points users to the documentation for the underlying modules will be appropriate in many cases.

Below this chart is a list of miscellaneous tasks and their related Drupal.org issues, where applicable.

"Needs more roadmap!"

The destination, briefly: "Fully featured, easy to use."

Yes, it's true that this document is more of an overview than a traditional roadmap. Right now, COD has several useful features, and is somewhat easy to use for site builders and developers who are familiar with Drupal. The overall goal for COD is to make it very easy for non-developers to build a fully-featured event management website. Therefore, the immediate direction for COD should be to add and improve the key features listed below in ways that make COD powerful and easy to use.
A critical short-term goal is to make COD and the COD_Support modules available as a fully packaged Drupal.org installation profile.

How can I get involved?

You can get in involved by:

• Working on "Getting Started with COD" documentation.
  Right now, folks can install COD but it might not be clear what they can do to set it up and start using it. Documenting the basic setup steps for the features in the chart below would be extremely valuable to helping folks who are new to COD get it set up.

• Identifying a feature below and opening an issue in the queue of cod_support or a dependency module to discuss how the feature should be implemented, and ideally provide a patch.

• Using COD and providing feedback :) Download distribution here.

Key COD features, based on user role

Attendee

Use-case Setup required Documentation? Notes View basic event information (what, when, where, etc), official hash tag Basic content creation ND Signup and pay Add user profile fields if paying, remove signup.module form field ND or work for removing signup.module default form field on sites where registration is free Provide contact/profile information Fill out core profile fields ND View Session proposals Provided by cod_session ND Submit sessions Provided by cod_session ND Vote on sessions Provided by cod_session ND Based on Flag. Submit session & conference surveys online Not currently provided. Requires configuring Webform. ND Create a personalized session schedule Provided by cod_session ND Based on Flag Check in quickly and easily Some View building required. Better default views could be provided ND Connect with other attendees through profiles and forms Enable forum module, configure profile fields ND * Potential dashboard: o official announcements o sessions, forum posts with tags I subscribe to * As the event draws closer easily change homepage from sessions to announcements and include BOFs, Food, maps front and center

Checkin Administrator

Use-case Setup required Documentation? Notes Turn attendee data into badges Attendee views could use a CSV export ND Find attendee records by email, name, username Adding custom fields to attendee admin view. Could use better defaults ND See who has paid UC_Signup has Views integration that connects signups to orders, but could provide a better default admin view. UC_signup could store the signup ID in the order ND Easily mark attendees as checked in, have an accurate count of how many people attended Signup allows admins to mark users as checked in or not checked in. Could use an ajax toggle link for faster processing. Signup.module provides a count of who is attending ND

Session Organizer

Use-case Setup required Documentation? Notes See submitted sessions, votes Provided by COD_Session. Needs a view for accepted nodes ND See number planning on attending Provided by Signup module. Could be made more visible and placed in a dashboard. ND See self-described skill levels of people who plan on attending . Core profile field configuration ND Schedule sessions Requires configuring room and timeslot fields and then placing them into a view. This could be streamlined further. ND View session surveys Full configuration of webform. ND Mail users by session acceptance status Could be added using Views Bulk Operations and additional view exports. ND Mail users by proposed sessions last year, not yet this year Could be provided by VBO ND. * Potential Dashboard: o sessions proposed o most popular sessions by comments o most popular sessions by votes o recent session review submissions

Event Sponsor

Use-case Setup required Documentation? Notes See sponsor benefits Submit content ND Sign up, pay for sponsorship We could facilitate this process better * ND Profile sponsor info (Logo, blurb) Partially provided by cod_sponsor ND Get coupons to sign up other people in company UC_Signup + UC product kits for sponsorship + event attendees is one solution but coupons are not currently provided but could be with a UC discount module. ND

Sponsor Admin

Use-case Setup required Documentation? Notes Receive sponsorship info Sponsor content type exists, but we could make it easier for sponsors to enter info directly and admins to approve it ND Easily create coupons for sponsor benefits Not currently provided but could be provided with a UC discount module ND

Attendee relations/Event organizer

Use-case Setup required Documentation? Notes Add profile fields Add core profile fields ND . Send e-mails based on variety of factors (below) Partially provided by Signup and UC ND o profile fields o order status o previous event attendance and current event status

Misc Tasks

• Make into an actual packaged distribution for easier installation + setup
• Move from Context to Panels

• Re-export features from DrupalCamp Colorado 2010 site, compare changes (and commit back to the project)
  UC_Signup/Signup improvements

• * better locking of signups

• Better default theme than Garland (For admins and attendees)

• Store SID (Signup ID) in the UC order

• Better support for free events (don't use signup template form, add option to sign up on user registration form)

Assorted Ways to make things especially awesome:

Schedule

• Clearly label session tracks and skill level

Sessions

• Embedding videos after the event, making it easy to browse videos
• Selling access to the embedded videos
• Subscribe to sessions submission to a particular tag/track?
• Session surveys via sms (twilio)
• Provide responses to questions like "Next sessions" via sms

Checkin

• Automate checkin process

Other

• Provide rich(er) profiles and easy tools to navigate profiles and contact people for pre-event networking
• Enable working groups to create and manage their own discussion area for pre-conference and post-conference discussion (i.e. OG)
• Profile pages with links to relevant content (sponsor affiliation, presentations proposed by the individual, presentations where the person is a speaker)
• Dashboard and reporting tools (probably a bunch of views) -- What kind of reporting do folks need?
• Ability to hire/advertise availability for services
• show attendee origin maps, distance traveled
• Make it easier to switch between modes of the event and prioritize different information on the site:
  -- 1 Button to end session submission, enable session voting (by changing user permissions)
  -- Make it easier to offer earlybird pricing

Conference Organizing Distribution

Start:  2010-06-24 08:30 - 17:00 America/New_York Drupalcamp or Regional Summit Organizers:  swacktacular dougvann

g.d.o/libraries is proud to present a pre-ALA Library DrupalCamp at the Arlington (VA) Central Library. This event is supported by DuoConsulting, and it is free!

Please visit our signup page!

Arlington (VA) Central Library
1015 N Quincy St.
Arlington, VA 22201

Libraries

Start:  2010-06-24 08:00 - 17:00 America/Indianapolis User group meeting

After months of planning it is official:
On Thursday, June 24th, Drupalers from across the country are gathering together at the Arlington Central Library Google Map Here for a full day of DRUPAL LIBRARYCAMP.
We strategically planned the event right before the American Library Association's Annual Conference in DC. Event site here This has allowed people from very far away to join us for a smaller sized Drupal event before they dive into the whirlwind of activity with the ALA.

We chose to follow an UNconference model where we all show up, make a list of what every one wants to either learn about OR speak about then break off into ad-hoc groups; each seeking the group that meets the individual's needs. A WIDE range of people are coming to the LibraryCamp; some with years of Library experience, years of Drupal experience, or both. This is going to be a RICH time of sharing and learning for sure!

We're all looking VERY forward to meeting each other and sharing our knowledge and skills as we seek to leverage the awesome power of Drupal for Libraries!

Libraries

The issue of renaming Organic groups (OG) to Group was raised in several places, but it's probably a good idea to have it in a central place which is accessible to many.

There are very good reasons for renaming the module, but just as good to not renaming it. Following the suggested Drupal Code of Conduct (#DCOC):

When we are unsure, we ask for help

I have created a Poll for us to vote. Let's write the comments in this discussion.

Please go over the above links -- people have already written their thoughts, and they are worth reading.
Oh, and the choices are only OG or Group... :)

Contributed Module Ideas

Recently, I've been working with the Drupal Association in determining the most effective ways that the association can help user groups organize local Drupal camps. One of the first thing we realized was that we didn't have any hard data on how camps were actually organized. We decided to create a survey for camp organizers to collect some data.

The resulting survey has been available for about a month, and we've collected 31 responses. Not all surveys were completed, so not all of the responses total 31. If you're a DrupalCamp organizer and haven't completed the survey yet, please do so!

Here's a rundown of the results to date:

• 8 were one-day camps
• 20 were two-day camps
• 3 were three-day camps

12 countries were represented
Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Romainia, Spain, United Kingdome, and the United States.

It is not a big surprise that most camps were multi-day camps. I was surprised by the three-day camps. We didn't collect information about what took place each day, I'd be curious to know if the three-day camps were comprised of three days of sessions or something else (code sprint? coding for a cause?)

• Average attendance was 135 attendees, range was 45-375.
• 11 camps had less than 100 attendees
• 16 camps had between 100 and 200 attendees
• 3 camps has over 200 attendees
• Largest camp was DrupalCamp Spain 2010 with 375 attendees.
• The total combined number of attendees of all reported camps was 4,044.

• Average budget was $5,429.50
• Largest budget was $31,319 (DrupalCamp Spain 2010)!
• 11 camps had a budget of less than $2,500
• 8 camps had a budget of between $2,500 and $7,500
• 0 camps had a budget of between $7,500 and $10,000
• 5 camps had a budget of over $10,000
• The average cost per participant was $33.93 (low was $5.00, high was $90.91)
• The total combined budget of all reported camps was $130,308
• (all amounts in USD)

With the total number of attendees of 4,419, the reporting camps were collectively larger than DrupalCon SF 2010! For all camps, the average cost per participant was $29.49, roughly 10% of what a ticket to DrupalCon SF 2010 cost. Clearly, camps offer an amazing cost-effective opportunity for new and existing Drupalistas.

• 12 camps charged an admission fee ranging from $5 to $43
• 3 camps had their admission fee provide less than 25% of their total income
• 6 camps had their admission fee provide 25% and 50% of their total income
• 3 camps had their admission fee provide more than 50% of their total income

• 13 camps charged an admission fee to recover some costs of the camp
• 8 camps charged an admission fee to get a more accurate count of attendees
• 6 camps charged an admission fee to appear more professional
• 1 camp charged and admission fee because they wanted active developers, not newbies
• (multiple answers were allowed)

As one of the organizers of Florida DrupalCamp, we debated charging a small admission fee. Our main reason for ultimately deciding to charge $6 was that we felt it was important to have an accurate count of attendees for planning purposes. Obviously, being able to recover some of the costs of the camp was helpful as well, but there appears to be no negative repercussions from charging a small admission fee.

• 13 camps reported a profit
• 0 camps reported an loss
• Average profit was $1,620.46
• Largest profit was $8,000
• 6 camps had a profit of less than $1,000
• 7 camps had a profit of more than $1,000

While we didn't ask explicity what camps did with any operating profit, conversations I've had with other camp organizers indicate that most profit is saved to be used as seed money for a future camp.

• 8 camps paid for expenses out of pocket
• 14 camps had sponsors pay for expenses directly
• 9 camps paid for expenses out of a user group or camp account
• 4 camps had a 3rd party manage income and expenses

• 1 camp created a legal organization specifically for the event
• 5 camps partnered with a 501(c)3 organization
• 6 camps partnered with another type of organization
• 19 camps utilized no legal organization at all

• 1 camp purchased event insurance from their venue
• 2 camps purchased event insurance from an agent/carrier

Providing a financial and legal mechanism for camps is one way that the association has indicated that it might be interested in helping camps. Less than half of the camps utilized a legal entity or a dedicated account to handle finances. Surprisingly, only 3 camps purchased any kind of event insurance. Granted, some venues include event insurance as part of the rental fee, but this is something that should be considered for all camps - especially larger ones.

• 7 camps purchased t-shirts to give away to participants
• 5 camps purchased t-shirts to sell to participants
• 19 camps provided morning drinks/snacks
• 20 camps provided lunch
• 15 camps provided afternoon drinks/snacks
• 8 camps provided evening drinks/snacks
• 4 camps rented additional equipment (chairs, projectors, PA systems, venues, internet services)

Other items paid for by camps included: notebooks, fliers, posters, bags, badges, patches, lanyards, banners, raffle tickets, sign holders. In addition, it is assumed that at some camps, sponsors provided some of these items.

• 10 camps had 10 or less volunteers
• 13 camps had between 10 and 20 volunteers
• 1 camp had more than 20 volunteers
• The average participants per volunteer was 15.8 (low was 4, high was 61.67)

Larger camps tended to have a participant-to-volunteer ratio of between 10 and 15, while smaller camps were a bit lower. Three camps had participant-to-volunteer ratios over over 30, which skewed the average (and probably made for some very tired volunteers!)

• 2 camps organized their camp sessions a low degree ("unconference style")
• 9 camps organized their camp sessions to a medium degree ("seeded the camp")
• 13 camps organized their camp sessions to a high degree ("all sessions pre-planned")

Clearly, the majority of the camps were more conference-like than unconference-like. Conference-like camps add an additional layer of complexity, resulting in the need for additional volunteers (both organizers and speakers), but probably results in better attendance (more people might be willing to attend if they know what to expect) and a wider variety of Drupalistas (especially if there are different levels and topics of sessions). Another possible benefit might be an increase in the number of sponsors - if they see an organized program, they might be more willing to participate.

The last question of the survey was for camp organizers to add any additional comments they thought might be helpful. Here's a sample:

"We organized on a Google Wave, letting everyone who was interested join the conversation. We picked a good venue (Temple U, where one organizer works) who also donated the food and took care of a lot. We used a pretty basic site which we built in a one evening open sprint for the previous camp, and updated its theme with a new design. Overall, people step in and do what's needed and we don't do a whole lot of organizing and have no real power structure or people seeking power in the process. On the other hand, we always have our camps on a weekday because we are more professionals than hobbyists, and they've always managed to be smooth and professional."

"We held in the camp in a very small village in the West of Ireland. It was held in a beautiful venue - the Burren College of Art which was about a mile from Ballyvaughan village. The idea behind this was that in a small and lovely location, it would be very easy for socialise during the weekend - and so it proved. We found this was as helpful as the pre-planned sessions themselves and people loved having the camp in a place that had a unique character in itself. We also found that staff and management of the Burren College of Art (who gave the use of their venue for free) were also very enthusiastic and helpful as it was an unusual (to them) conference to host."

"Focused on track on beginners - soup-to-nuts intro to basics of Drupal core, how to install modules, some basic CCK & Views."

"We did a mini, regional Drupalcon for drupal 'professionals' - no newbie track."

"Having a focus on developers allowed us to get a lot of high-quality sessions, even with guest speakers from outside the Drupal world (php, mysql). The drawback was less sessions targeted at beginners (even though no restriction was imposed)."

"We got it organised, with 45 people signed up, within 2 weeks. Only marketing was through twitter."

"We partnered with local university for space, WiFi, most venue infrastructure."

"We had a great party the night before and planned sessions. Unconference-style, but with good people ready to give talks."

Drupal Association

As our community grows, it is imperative that we preserve the what got us here. Namely, we keep Drupal a fun, welcoming, challenging, and fair place to play. IMO, we need to proactively state our shared ideals with respect to conduct. Think of this as coding standards for people :)

Our friends at Ubuntu have blazed a brilliant trail in this area. They use our CMS, and I propose that we use their Code of Conduct.

1. Adopt the Ubuntu Code of Conduct.
   • Make very light edits to the UCOC just to swap the word Ubuntu with Drupal and and remove reference to conflict resolution process. See my proposal below. I propose to avoid bikeshedding and avoid further edits for now.
   • Write a handbook page where we adopt the DCOC. Add prominent links to this document from drupal.org, groups.drupal.org, etc.
   • Add a user profile checkbox where users can optionally affirm their support for the Drupal Code of Conduct. There are no repercussions to checking or not checking this box. Its just a grassroots way to show that many members of drupal.org believe on our own Code.
   • Post the news on drupal.org front page
2. Build upon the DCOC with a conflict resolution policy. Again, Ubuntu has a really strong model. Have a look at it. Such a policy will really help groups.drupal.org and IRC administrators as they deal with the inevitable trolls in our world.

If this sounds too formal for Drupal, I sort of agree with you. But in the end, we want Drupal to be big and successful and a force for positive change in the world. Without a code of conduct, we impair this goal. We need to shout from the rooftops about who we are and how we operate. We need to recruit like-minded people. And we need to clearly deal with trolls who throw roadblocks toward our goals.

This is bridge building, in classic Drupal tradition. The DCOC finally documents the unwritten guidelines that have been so instrumental in the healthy/happy development and growth of Drupal to-date. It's a numerical fact that we're growing beyond the scale at which we can rely on informal standards and individual personalities to guard the spirit of the community.

Lets discuss the many details here. I hope to synthesize all feedback and make a recommendation after a couple of weeks. Lets christen this the webchick model of community decision making. We are following her brilliant lead in pushing the community to modernize its version control platform. Feel free to blog and microblog (use #DCOC keyword) about this in order to get the best minds talking here.

CAPS indicate changes from the Ubuntu Code of Conduct

Be considerate.

Our work will be used by other people, and
we in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision we take
will affect users and colleagues, and we should take those
consequences into account when making decisions. DRUPAL has
millions of users and thousands of contributors. Even if it's not
obvious at the time, our contributions to DRUPAL will impact the
work of others. For example, changes to code, infrastructure,
policy, documentation, and translations during a release may
negatively impact others' work.

Be respectful.

The DRUPAL community and its members treat
one another with respect. Everyone can make a valuable
contribution to DRUPAL. We may not always agree, but disagreement
is no excuse for poor behaviour and poor manners. We might all
experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that
frustration to turn into a personal attack. It's important to
remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or
threatened is not a productive one. We expect members of the
DRUPAL community to be respectful when dealing with other
contributors as well as with people outside the DRUPAL project and
with users of DRUPAL.

Be collaborative.

Collaboration is central to DRUPAL and to
the larger free software community. This collaboration involves
individuals working with others in teams within DRUPAL, teams
working with each other within DRUPAL, and individuals and teams
within DRUPAL working with other projects outside. This
collaboration reduces redundancy, and improves the quality of our
work. Internally and externally, we should always be open to
collaboration. Wherever possible, we should work closely with
upstream projects and others in the free software community to
coordinate our technical, advocacy, documentation, and other work.
Our work should be done transparently and we should involve as
many interested parties as early as possible. If we decide to
take a different approach than others, we will let them know early,
document our work and inform others regularly of our progress.

When we disagree, we consult others.

OMIT THIS SECTION UNTIL WE HAVE CONFLICT RESOLUTION PROCESS

When we are unsure, we ask for help.

Nobody knows everything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the DRUPAL
community. Asking questions avoids many problems down the road,
and so questions are encouraged. Those who are asked questions should
be responsive and helpful. However, when asking a question, care must
be taken to do so in an appropriate forum.

Step down considerately.

Members of every project come and
go and DRUPAL is no different. When somebody leaves or disengages
from the project, in whole or in part, we ask that they do so in a
way that minimises disruption to the project. This means they
should tell people they are leaving and take the proper steps to
ensure that others can pick up where they left off.

Drupal.org policies

Start:  2010-06-12 10:00 - 18:00 America/Los_Angeles Organizers:  christefano matt2000 maxxtraxx salimlakhani mike stewart

We're pleased to announce Git with Drupal 7, a one-day LA Drupal event featuring both a git bootcamp followed by a Drupal 7 code sprint. Git with D7 is being sponsored by Exaltation of Larks, Ninjitsu Web, This by Them, WebEnabled and Acquia.

Attendance is limited to 30 people (but we only have ~15 chairs - please bring one if you can). RSVPs are required so be sure to reserve your spot by clicking the Sign up button below. Anyone who wants to attend the code sprint but not the prerequisite git bootcamp must contact the organizers in advance.

Join us online for the Git bootcamp!

To make this event as accessible as possible, we're broadcasting the bootcamp via WebEx conference at https://acquiawebinars.webex.com. Please see the official announcement on Drupal.org for more details.

When: Saturday, June 12, 2010 from 10am-6pm PDT Where: Specialized Digital Solutions at 4136 Del Rey Ave., Marina del Rey, CA 90292 (look for Dogma / Guidance office signs) Parking: Ample parking in the back Between Dogma and Guidance office buildings. Seating: We need chairs. If you can easily bring a chair, please do. There are only about 15 in the office. But space for at least 30.

During both the bootcamp and code sprint, we'll be gathered in the #drupal-la IRC channel and and all are welcome to join us. We also recorded the git bootcamp and posted the video online on blip.tv and on iTunes.

Location

The bootcamp and sprint is hosted by Specialized Digital Solutions at their offices in Marina del Rey, CA.

This is the second Drupal 7 code sprint to be hosted by LA Drupal. The last code sprint was held just prior to the Drupal 7 code freeze and was a full two-day event. Our goal this time is to work through specific issues the various sections of the core improvements handbook page and help get Drupal 7 to beta and on track for a summer release.

Schedule

We have a lot of ground to cover and the day's basic schedule is:

• Morning set up
• Bootcamp
• Late lunch
• Code sprint
• Clean up
• Drupal After Dark

That's right, we're having another Drupal After Dark. After the bootcamp and sprint have concluded, several of us will be going out to a nearby restaurant to decompress and socialize.

Git Bootcamp

About Drupal and Git

Drupal.org is moving from using the CVS version control system to Git for the development of Drupal 8. As Drupal core development is migrated to Git, thousands of developers will need to learn Git in order to help develop Drupal 8 as well as their own contributed modules for Drupal 7 when the contrib repository is moved to Git later this year.

The importance of moving to a modern version control system was outlined last year in step 5 of Dries' 8 Steps to Drupal 8. Git was selected after a lengthy evaluation discussion, and Drupal.org's migration to Git was the subject of The Exodus: Leading Drupal out of CVS, a session at DrupalCon San Francisco earlier this year. That session was well-attended and featured members of the Drupal.org Git Migration Team, Damien Tournoud (DamZ), Derek Wright (dww), Angie Byron (webchick) and Sam Boyer (sdboyer).

Announcing the Git with Drupal 7 bootcamp

The bootcamp will cover the basics as well as some advanced topics. Expect to learn things such as moving from Subversion to Git, updating local code to the latest (upstream) code, checking in your modified code, undoing recent commits, undoing local changes, creating diffs and patches and so on. If you want to get a head start, check out the list of tutorials and videos on the official Git website.

The Git bootcamp will be led by Scott Nelson from This by Them and we'll be using Dries' GitHub mirror of the unofficially official git repository from git.drupalfr.org. Please plan ahead and get a copy of the latest Drupal 7 alpha well before the bootcamp.

Code Sprint

After the bootcamp, everyone will have a chance to use what they've learned. We will be breaking into teams and tackling items listed in the various sections of the core improvements handbook page:

• Upgrade path problems
• Security improvements
• API changes
• Usability issues

Requirements

There will be tasks for everyone and you don't need to be a hardcore Drupal developer in order to participate. You must, however, meet the following requirements:

1. you have a laptop, power cord/adapter and (if you have one) an extension cord or power strip
2. git must be downloaded and installed
3. you have a working server stack (e.g. Drupal Quickstart, MAMP, XAMPP, WampServer, DAMP, etc.) up and running -- for reasons discussed in the comments below, PHP 5.2.x is preferred over 5.3.x
4. Drupal 7 must be downloaded and installed prior to the code sprint

Optionally, bring your favorite chair. (The office only has about 15 - but desk space for ~30).

Anyone who wants to participate but hasn't met these requirements must have VirtualBox downloaded and installed and arrive early at 9am. We will be using the Drupal Quickstart environment with VirtualBox, so download and install VirtualBox now if you don't already have a preferred working environment.

Food and drinks

Lunch will be provided by Ninjitsu Web. If you have food allergies or other dietary needs, please contact the organizers in advance or post a comment below. We want to accommodate as many people as possible.

Drupal After Dark!

We're going out afterward to a restaurant to wind down and socialize after a long day of work. This time we'll be going to Gaby's Mediterranean at 20 Washington Blvd. near the Venice Pier. Parking on Washington Blvd. is difficult but there's parking along Pacific Ave.

Gaby's is both vegan- and omnivore-friendly. Their phone number is (310) 821-9721. There's a convenience store next door in case anyone wants to BYOB.

About LA Drupal

The LA Drupal community in and around Los Angeles, California, is one of the world's largest regional Drupal user groups. With regular Drupal trainings, monthly meetings and social gatherings, LA Drupal is Southern California's largest hub for all things Drupal. LA Drupal is also the producer of the annual DrupalCamp LA conference, the largest independent Drupal event in the world for two years running.

If you aren't already part of LA Drupal, it's easy to become a member. We have several meetings every month that are free and open to everyone. There are also social gatherings and formal working meetings that sometimes happen throughout the month. Events are announced here and at the LA Drupal website.

Sprint Drupal And Git

Start:  2010-06-05 09:30 - 2010-06-06 18:30 Europe/Bucharest Drupalcamp or Regional Summit Organizers:  gabidrg claudiu.cristea

We have a very good start at DrupalCamp Timisoara 2010, with more than 150 participants already registered at conference. See the schedule here http://drupalcamp.ro/schedule and follow the live stream here http://drupalcamp.ro or at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/drupalcamp-timisoara-2010

Tommorow, 6th of June at 18:00 online session Timisoara-Copenhagen with mortendk on DrupalCon Copenhaga 2010.

Drupalcamps Europe [international & english]

Start:  2010-08-27 19:00 - 2010-08-29 18:00 America/Chicago Drupalcamp or Regional Summit Organizers:  djhahn jenniferconley obiwan TomDude48

DrupalCamp Dallas 2010 : Two Days and Two Nights of Drupal Learning, Teaching and Networking

August 27-29

You may have heard rumors, but it’s now official- we will be hosting DrupalCamp Dallas 2010 at OpenCamp! That’s right- a full DrupalCamp with two simultaneous Drupal tracks running all day in their own rooms, as well as Birds of Feather sessions and all the usual greatness of DrupalCamp, but with the added benefit of everything OpenCamp has to offer.

Your OpenCamp ticket gets you into any and all DrupalCamp Dallas sessions as well as all OpenCamp sessions, keynotes, the Genius Lounge, parties and networking events, breakfast and lunch both days, drinks and snacks, a t-shirt, giveaways, etc.

And start thinking about what you have to share at DrupalCamp Dallas 2010- we'll have 20 sessions to fill with Drupal community speakers- and propose a session.

We're also looking for Drupalers to help staff the OpenCamp Genius Lounge, to provide Drupal help and advice to the expected 1,000 attendees. Share your brilliance, and maybe meet a new client or employer.

DrupalCamp Dallas is not a profit-driven event- we rely on income from our (low) ticket prices, hotel rooms booked and sponsors to help us break even. Please consider sponsoring and getting your message out to the up to 1,000 attendees we are expecting at OpenCamp and DrupalCamp Dallas. And book a room for both nights, even if you are local- you won't want to miss the parties!

Sign up today - and use this Drupal user-group discount code for 20% off any registration: ugdrupalOC10

San Antonio Texas

Start:  2010-06-26 08:00 - 2010-06-27 17:00 America/Chicago Drupalcamp or Regional Summit

Mark your calendars! DrupalCamp Chicago 2010 will be held on June 26 and 27 at the University of Chicago Law School, located in the neighborhood of Hyde Park on city’s South Side.

The camp will feature both scheduled sessions and "unconference" content on both Saturday and Sunday. Sessions are proposed by community volunteers and programming decisions will be made based on the interests and Drupal experience level of the attendees. In addition to scheduled sessions, the camp will feature space for community gatherings, Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, hands-on-training and more!

Tickets are $40 each for individuals and cover two full days of programming, plus two lunches. Sponsorship opportunities are also available.

Sign up and buy your tickets at drupalcampchicago.org - space is limited, so don't delay!

Minnesota