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DrupalCamps Organizer Survey - Final Results
The Drupal Association has been working to figure out the most effective ways it can help local user groups organize Drupal camps. We quickly realized that there was a lack of data about how past and present Drupal camps were currently being organized. With that in mind, we created an online survey for DrupalCamp organizers that would help everyone understand how Drupal camps currently worked.
Over the course of about 7 weeks, we collected a total of 51 responses, with 6 duplicates and unusable, making our sample size 45 Drupal camps. In a previous article posted on the Drupal Event Organization Drupal group, I posted the results from the first 31 responses. Since that article was published (and because of it), we had an additional 14 responses, making the data that much more valuable.
Overall, the 45 camps that completed the survey had over 6,200 participants, a combined budget of almost $250,000, and were organized by over 400 volunteers.
The resulting data is extremely valuable to both the Drupal Association and Drupal user groups around the world. The Drupal Association now has an idea of how camps are currently being organized and can make informed decisions about how to help future organizers. Local user groups can use this data to help plan future events. In particular, the average cost-per-particpant and participants-per-volunteers data (highlighted below) should be considered when planning future camps.
Drupal 7.0 Alpha 6 released
Our fifth Drupal 7 alpha version was released a little over a month ago. Today, we're proud to announce the release of the sixth (and hopefully final) alpha version of Drupal 7.x for your further testing and feedback. The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!
This release includes many critical bug fixes, a nearly working upgrade path, and a new default core theme: Bartik!
Please see the release notes for more details.
When will alpha become beta?We have identified several "beta blocking" issues, and itemized these at the Drupal core community initiatives page. On or about August 1, 2010 (or when the upgrade path is working, whichever comes first) we will create a new official Drupal 7 release. If this list is fixed, it will be a beta release. Otherwise, it will be another alpha release. It's expected we will have a few beta versions and at least one release candidate before Drupal 7.0 is finalized. We can potentially reach beta within the next month by focusing on this short-list of issues! Please help!
DrupalCon Copenhagen: Keynote speakers
We are proud to announce the keynote speakers at DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010: Rasmus Lerdorf (topic to be crowdsourced), Jeremy Keith (Design of HTML5) and Dries Buytaert (State of Drupal).
The State of DrupalDries Buytaert, Drupal Project Lead
Tuesday, August 24th
Dries Buytaert will discuss where Drupal is and where it is going. In particular, he’ll discuss the final preparations for the release of Drupal 7, the Drupal.org redesign, and the plans for Drupal 8.
Dries Buytaert is passionate about the web, open source, and photography. He is the original creator and project lead of Drupal, an open source social publishing system. He is co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for Drupal. Dries is also working on Mollom, a service that helps you identify content quality and that stops website spam.
Topic to be decided by youRasmus Lerdorf, PHP Project Founder
Wednesday, August 25th
Tell Rasmus which topic you would like him to focus on by leaving a comment on the DrupalCon Copenhagen site.
Rasmus Lerdorf is known for creating the PHP project in 1995 and he has contributed to a number of other open source projects over the years. Rasmus was most recently an infrastructure architect at Yahoo! for over 7 years before joining WePay in 2010. He was born in Greenland, grew up in Denmark and Canada and has a Systems Design engineering degree from the University of Waterloo. You can follow @rasmus on Twitter.
The Design of HTML5Jeremy Keith, Author of HTML5 For Web Designers
Thursday, August 26th
Everyone's talking about the benefits of HTML5 for Web applications but the specification also introduces an extra layer of semantic richness to our Web documents. These additions aren't wishful thinking for some far-flung future: you can start using them today. That's because the design principles driving HTML5 are steeped in pragmatism. Find out how important good design principles are to any project, whether it's a website, a content management system, or the very language that underpins the World Wide Web.
Jeremy Keith is an Irish web developer living in Brighton, England where he works with the Web consultancy firm Clearleft. He wrote the books DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, and most recently, HTML5 For Web Designers. His latest project is Huffduffer, a service for creating podcasts of found sounds. When he’s not making websites, Jeremy plays bouzouki in the band Salter Cane.
Supersize that Background, Please!
Prefix or Posthack
DrupalCon Copenhagen: Pre-conference training
On August 23rd, the day before the main conference kicks off, you'll be able to attend training sessions facilitated by leading Drupal experts. These sessions will take place at the main conference venue.
The training sessions will cover:
- Performance and Scalability
- Drupal Powered E-Commerce
- Module development
- Security: process, code and hands-on training
It is possible to attend the training sessions even if you're not going to the main conference. If that's the case, simply buy a ticket for the training session you'd like to attend.
If you buy a ticket for a training session together with a ticket for the conference, we will subtract €30 from the price of your conference ticket (making it €249 + VAT). The discount will be applied automatically during checkout.
Check out the training page for more information on the training sessions.
ThinkDrop and MACILE collaborate on Internet technology curriculum for kids in the Dominican Republic
ThinkDrop Consulting and the non-profit organization MACILE are collaborating on a pilot program to introduce open-source technology and Drupal to children living in less-advantaged communities, helping them overcome the hurdles that prevent them from openly accessing and sharing information. In July, we will travel to Itabo, Dominican Republic to teach a two-week class to 6th-12th graders and educators on Internet Technology, Open Source, and Drupal.
In addition to educating both students and teachers on Internet technology and Drupal, we will be documenting the process using OpenAtrium and releasing our curriculum under Creative Commons licensing. Our goal is to create a consistent curriculum to teach kids around the world who may have not ever even used a computer.
We are seeking $8,000 in funding through Kickstarter, an innovative website that allows users to fund creative endeavors. The funds we are seeking will pay for full-time coding and project development, travel and housing expenses in the Dominican Republic, and additional computers for educators and students. As we will be working in less advantaged communities, maintaining access to consistent electricity and the internet will be a challenge, so a portion of our time will be spent developing a model approach to this problem.
Although we have set our funding goal at $8,000, we hope to exceed it. Any additional funds we receive will be used to continue expanding the Internet Technology programs of COSOLA and MACILE.
Taking Advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 with Modernizr
eCSStender
DrupalCon Copenhagen: Session submission deadline has changed
A couple of days ago, we announced the track chairs and published the final descriptions of the six tracks at DrupalCon Copenhagen.
To make sure that everyone has had a chance to submit a session targeted at a specific track, we have decided to move the session deadline back a week. The revised schedule is as follows:
- The final deadline for session submissions is July 4th.
- Voting will take place from July 5th until July 11th.
- The initial schedule will be published on July 18th.
We have enjoyed seeing all the sessions submitted so far, but it has become apparent that the lack of detailed track descriptions has made it difficult to categorize some sessions. Hopefully, the track descriptions will make it easier for you to target your session at a specific audience.
Please consider the following track descriptions when submitting a session proposal:
- Introducing Drupal
Chaired by Boris Doesborg
For users and developers new to Drupal. - Theming, Design & Usability
Chaired by Roy Scholten
For people who focus on usability, user experience, and design. - Code & Development
Chaired by Gábor Hojtsy
For people interested in Drupal's architecture and the future of its codebase. - Configuration, Set-Up & Performance
Chaired by Florian Loretan
For people who want to spend less time coding and more time working on the content of their sites. - Drupal for Business
Chaired by Jakub Suchý
For people who using Drupal as a tool for running their business. - Providing Professional Drupal Services
Chaired by Thomas Barregren
For people who provide Drupal-related professional services.
We can't wait to receive your session proposals!
Stop Forking with CSS3
Taking Advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 with Modernizr
Case Study: Packt Publishing
You may already have heard of Packt, the fast-growing publisher of hardcopy and digital books on specific technologies, due to the large number of Drupal books it has published over the years. However, you may not be aware that they recently relaunched their website, www.PacktPub.com, using Drupal as its framework.
Packt Publishing is a modern, unique publishing company with a focus on producing cutting-edge books for communities of developers, administrators, and newbies alike. Packt has so far published over 15 Drupal books and remains committed to producing practical solution-based books for Drupal developers, along with the best available online bookstore. The new website, which took 12 months from design to launch, was developed with UK-based Bluetel Solutions. The new version not only adds to the existing functionality of Packt’s original website, but now also offers a new, enhanced customer experience with an advanced design.
DrupalCon Copenhagen: What You May Have Missed
We are continuing to work to make DrupalCon Copenhagen as awesome as possible, but we wanted to take some time to give you an update on what we have been working on lately:
As you may have noticed, the deadline for submitting a session has been moved back to June 27th. Voting on the sessions opens on June 28th and closes on July 8th. We will notify all speakers and post the full schedule on July 18th. The votes for the different sessions will be used by the track chairs to inform their decision of which sessions get selected.
If your session isn't selected for one of the main conference tracks, please consider doing it as a Birds of a Feather (BOF) session instead. We will post more information about how to announce your BOF sessions as we get closer to the conference.
If you are not attending one of the training sessions on August 23rd, we would love to see you at the Unconference. This will be a perfect opportunity to connect with the local open source community and to discuss issues outside of the Drupal-sphere. The Unconference will be run BarCamp-style and it will be free to attend, but please register in advance to help us determine how much coffee we need to brew.
PitBulls.org - Dogs for Smart People
PitBulls.org is a community and information site centered around the American Pit Bull Terrier, usually referred to as Pit Bulls.
Pit Bulls get a lot of coverage in the media, usually negative, because there is rampant fear of the breed. They are also often the target of Breed Specific Legislation (BSL). PitBulls.org aims to share another perspective, those of passionate Pit Bull owners. The main mission of the site is to convey that Pit Bulls make great family pets, to get the word out that a dog is only a reflection how it is treated and raised, and to provide a central hub where owners can connect and share their pictures and stories.
The site was conceived and developed by PropDrop Web Development and Marketing. PropDrop not only does client work, but also performs web niche analysis and develops in-house web properties based on that research in order to gain market share in a wide variety of areas. PitBulls.org is one of these properties. It also doesn't hurt that we are dog lovers and own a Pit Bull/Lab mix named Bauer, so we are our own audience in some sense.
PropDrop uses Drupal exclusively for its in-house projects, because we can create a community and information site with some advanced features in under 2 weeks, with everything optimized for search with little effort. It also gives us the opportunity to expand a site's feature set in the future without interfering with current functionality, taking a site in directions that might not be possible with other content management systems.
Git with Drupal 7 Webinar on June 12, 2010
On June 12, 2010, the Los Angeles Drupal user group is hosting Git with Drupal 7, a one-day event featuring both a Git bootcamp followed by a Drupal 7 code sprint. To make this event as accessible as possible, we're broadcasting the Git bootcamp via WebEx conference from 10am-1pm PDT. Please join us!
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, including Damien Tournoud (DamZ), Derek Wright (dww), Angie Byron (webchick) and Sam Boyer (sdboyer).
During both the bootcamp and code sprint, we'll be gathered in the #drupal-la IRC channel and all are welcome to join us. We also recorded the git bootcamp and posted the video online on blip.tv and on iTunes.
Web Fonts at the Crossing
DrupalCon Copenhagen Ticket Prices Go Up on June 28th
Act now if you want to get your DrupalCon Copenhagen ticket at the current price of €249. On June 28th at 8am CEST the ticket price will go up to €279.
Go to the conference site to buy your ticket for the conference, which will be held August 23-27.
Your ticket includes:
- 90 sessions spread out over 3 days
- Ad hoc BOF (birds of a feather) sessions
- Access to pre- and post-conference code and documentation sprints
- Access to the coder lounge where you can hang out and code when you're not attending sessions
- Access to fooBar, the official bar of DrupalCon Copenhagen
- …and, last but not least, a chance to meet your fellow Drupalers
Drupal 6.17 released
Drupal 6.17, a maintenance release fixing issues reported through the bug tracking system, is now available for download. There are no security fixes in this release. Upgrading your existing Drupal 6 sites is recommended. For more information about the Drupal 6.x release series, consult the Drupal 6.0 release announcement.
Highlights of changes in this release include improvements of session cookie handling, better processing of big XML-RPC payloads, improved PostgreSQL compatibility, better PHP 5.3 and PHP 4 compatibility, improved Japanese support in search module, better browser compatibility of CSS and JS aggregation and improved logging for login failures. An incompatibility of Drupal 6.16's new lock subsystem with some contributed modules was also resolved. In total there were about 55 patches committed to improve Drupal 6.