A group for discussion of creative funding and business models to provide sustainability for developers contributing to Drupal. More »
Paying for the Plumbing: Group Purpose
It's easy to make a living using Drupal. It's far more difficult to make a living building Drupal. At present the community relies largely on volunteer time, a few generous companies that have the ability to subsidize people's time, or the rare case where one organization is willing to foot the bill for the first copy cost. But increasingly, we all depend on "tools to build tools", such as Fields, Views, Drupal core enhancements, and other frameworks or API's that make our work point-and-click. How do individuals and organizations make the building of Drupal's plumbing sustainable?
Read moreSnowball Charter
Snowball: Getting projects rolling! Coordinating community initiatives in Free Software and beyond. (Sign up for updates on Snowball.)
We can realize the huge potential in the gap between desired projects that individually people and organizations in our communities do not have the capability or resources to make happen— but collectively do.
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Paying for the Plumbing: Snowball initiative for a Drupal crowdfunding platform
Ever wanted a place where you could simply offer to pay to get something you need in Drupal done?
Please donate to make that place. (Yes, it's using a different crowdfunding platform, one that really lacks features for coordination, but is passing on all money raised -- if we reach the minimum -- without even deducting credit card fees.)
And spread this link! http://tilt.tc/usLL Is there enough interest in community funding of Drupal software to fund the software to coordinate this-- in just a few days? Also, if you are available to work on this project in DrupalCon Denver, we've got a DrupalCon ticket for you! Or if you're interested in working on this later, contact me for that, too!
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Sponsor LA Drupal
In 2010, LA Drupal members created an unincorporated association named the LA Drupal Association that is officially recognized as a legal entity by the State of California. The LA Drupal user group can now receive donations and sponsorships large and small to help us produce the events, trainings and conferences that LA Drupal is known for, as well as cover our ongoing infrastructure and promotion costs.
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Better recognition for businesses?
At Drupal Down Under a few weeks ago, Dries was asked a question about how to get companies more enthusiastic about staff spending time on Drupal core.
One of the points he mentioned is that currently, people get recognition for contributions. For example, everyone who's spent a bit of time in the community knows people such as merlinofchaos, sun, chx etc..
Read moreDrupal Developer | Vodaplex
We are a young startup that has built an interesting sales/marketing platform around the Drupal Platform. We are a strong believer in open source. This means we don't just take, but also give back when we can. We helped fund much of the Braintree merchant gateway module.
Read moreWhy Snowball?
Earl Miles states the need to raise funds for Free Software clearly:
It works when your employer uses the software you create. It's a lot tougher when you want to create something that no single employer is going to get enough value out of to justify the total cost.
That's where you want something that allows you to pool customer's money together.
Dries Buytaert sees a need also:
Read moreSnowball: Getting Community Initiatives Rolling- Coordinating and Funding Drupal Projects - 2011 November Sprint Day 1
At the undisclosed location of the Pirate Ship in Somerville we came together to follow up on many discussions at Drupal events over the years and launch into coding-- and spent the day discussing.
Day 1 Participants:
Boz Hogan
Mary Maguire
Allie Micka
Jer Davis
RJ Steinert
Nathaniel Hoag
Mitchell Tannenbaum
Benjamin Melançon
Stefan Unterhauser (he came with the place)
After a great deal of talk, most agreed that a unique capability we can bring is:
Community Driven Project Planning
Read moreUser stories (specifications) and requirements for Snowball: Getting Community Initiatives Rolling
User stories
- Wendy the Webmaster has a great idea for an improvement to Drupal core form validation that would benefit her and many others in her position. She proposes it and many other site builders pledge support, and eventually a developer familiar with core comes across this and fills in the blanks to make it an actionable funding item (promising a patch and if possible a work-around module, as there are no guarantees something can get into core).
Tools to Help Coordinate and Fund Community Initiatives: The Snowball Code Sprint
Thanks to the leadership of Allie Micka and R.J. Steinert, the Snowball initiative to provide tools for coordinating and funding Drupal initiatives is coming to the Boston area this long weekend for its first code sprint.
We will focus on building a working alpha so we have something real to share for feedback, to refine, and to build process, message, and governance around.
We'll be working on Friday November 11th, Saturday the 12th, and Sunday the 13th starting at 10am on Friday and no later than that on the weekend days in Somerville, Massachusetts.
If you can dive into helping build this, contact rjstatic or contact mlncn for directions to the venue.
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Building a Drupal.org deployment pipeline
Leading Drupal's migration from CVS to Git made something eminently clear to me (and eliza411, the migration's PM): there's a lot that's broken about how we manage, maintain, and improve drupal.org (and its subsites). Since then, I've been gradually chatting up more and more people with the idea that we could build a structured, participatory model for updating and adding new features to drupal.org. And that if we do it right, it could become a best-practice model for (Drupal) site management (open, participatory) workflows.
Read moreConference Organizing Distribution (COD) code sprint on October 8 & 9, 2011 in Downtown Los Angeles #CODD7
Join members of the Los Angeles Drupal user group in the Drupal community's second code sprint for updating COD (Conference Organizing Distribution) to Drupal 7. This is a joint event produced by LA Drupal's Pro Drupal 7 Development book study group and Droplabs, a Drupal coworking / hackerspace in Downtown Los Angeles.
Join us in person or online!
During the code sprint, we'll be gathered in the #drupal-cod IRC channel and all are welcome to join us. The event organizers and attendees will also be checking Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @UseCOD or use the #CODD7 hashtag.
About COD, the Conference Organizing Distribution
COD is used for building conference and event websites. It's built on Drupal, the highly-regarded open-source web framework and content management system, and each component is independent of each other. This means you can disable the features you don't need, whether it's selling tickets or listing sponsors or allowing session voting.
Just like Drupal, COD is free and can be used by anyone. There is a very long list of sites that use COD, from the DrupalCon Chicago and DrupalCon London conferences to RIACon, Brisbane Innovation Camp, the Meego Conference, the Bay Area Drupal Camp, and our own Drupal Design Camp LA.
Here are just some of the great features in COD:
- Session submission, voting and moderation
- Session schedule grid
- Personalized attendee schedules
- Easy event registration and attendee management
- Community features (forums, friending, etc.)
- Easy sponsors management
We're already using COD on Drupal 6 for the Drupal Design Camp LA 2011 website and we plan to use COD on Drupal 7 for Drupal Design Camp LA 2012. COD is not yet ready for this but we're not afraid of rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty.
Help us improve COD and you'll also be helping numerous Drupal contrib projects, including Location, Signup and Commerce, as well as other organizations and conferences, such as DrupalCon, SCALE 10x and DrupalCamps around the world including our own Drupal Design Camp LA.
COD on Drupal 7 Battleplans
- Find a venue (done! we're meeting at Droplabs)
- Gather interest and sponsorships
- Set up a hosting environment for group collaboration
- Add contributors to our version control system
- Download COD, set up the team with tools, including Quickstart
- Get up to speed on work that has already been done:
- San Diego COD sprint on May 7, 2011
- Notes on Lullabot's Etherpad instance at http://lullapad.com/h12fYizetk
- Upgrading COD to Drupal 7: Sprint 1 - San Diego
- COD roadmap
- Porting COD to Drupal 7
- COD on Drupal 7 How-to
- Debate Commerce vs. Ubercart 3 (just kidding: the COD roadmap lists Commerce)
- Code! Code! Code!
- Update the COD issue queue with current progress
- Write a summary for Planet Drupal to thank our sponsors and contributors, aid any future CODD7 sprints, etc.
Pre-sprint discussion and planning
We've already begun discussing and planning several parts of the code sprint during the first 15 minutes of each Pro Drupal 7 Development book study group meeting. To join the conversation, click the Signup button below, post a comment below, contact any of the event organizers at the top of this page or just drop by the Pro Drupal 7 Development study group some Monday night.
The attendance of the book study group is already capped for this book group cycle but you're more than welcome to drop by, talk with us and work on your projects at Droplabs alongside other Drupaleros.
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Drupal Dojo Session: Drupal's Payment API and how we built crowd-source funding functionality in Drupal
Drupal's Payment API -- http://drupal.org/project/pay -- is a simple, flexible and pluggable payment transaction handler for Drupal. Advantage Labs has recently extended the functionality of the Payment API and built a crowdsource pledge-funding feature using contributed Drupal modules.
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Market rates for development work
There's an interesting thread on linkedin discussing market rates for Drupal development work (freelance, contract, etc.) here: http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionI...
I'm not sure what conclusion can be drawn, other than the obvious one - rates vary widely depending on location, skills required, etc, etc. Still, the discussion makes worthwhile reading IMHO.
Exploring solutions: Supporting Sponsorship for Drupal Contribution
There are people who would like to spend more time doing Drupal contrib work but who cannot financially justify taking time off commercial work or minding the kids (or other demands of life) in order to do so. These are often highly skilled and experienced members of the Drupal community.
There is an opportunity to make it financially (and otherwise) viable for these contributors to choose to do Drupal contrib work by helping them find commercial sponsorship, primarily from companies who benefit from Drupal being a better product and a stronger more active community.
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Can Drupal Go Pro? Products, Marketplaces, and SaaS
Robert Douglass initially crated a lot of buzz about this topic via his now famous Tweet several weeks ago. The purpose of the tweet was to croudsource a community response to a concept and to build tension for his upcoming presentation in Brussels about the topic.
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The COD500 Pledge
At yesterday's COD session I asked Ezra if there was a system in place to accept money from individuals or organizations for the purpose of funding the development of COD. He was [as you would expect] very open to the notion. Currently no such system exists but the decision was made to take the conversation beyond the session.
My proposal:
We have ONE destination for the checks OR other forms of payments. These payments can be for any specific feature request, or issue queue post or for an unspecified reason.
ladrupal.blip.tv and ads: one month later
At several meetups in December and January, I asked during the opening announcements if there were opinions one way or another about using ads to support the LA Drupal video channel at ladrupal.blip.tv (which we use to post meetup presentations, podcast episodes, etc.).
There weren't any objections and in experiment intended to offset costs and help make LA Drupal self-sustaining, pre-roll and post-roll ads were turned on.
In the last 30 days, LA Drupal has earned less than $5. This is less than the $8 a month that a "Pro" account costs (which is currently paid for by a sponsor *), which I upgraded it to last summer in order to get the necessary machine time to convert some of the longer videos, like the Git with Drupal workshop in June.
This brings us to today and I think it's a good time to check in.
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Programmer | Titan Gaming
Full Website Development World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Heroes of Newerth, League of Legends, Defense of the Ancient, Bloodline Champions.
We are looking for experienced programmers within the fields of:
- Community
- Larger Databases and linking
Having a interest for gaming is plus, but not a need.
We are looking forward to hear from you,
Best regards,
Dan Christensen
Skype: yaang1 Denmark
How did it go Robert Douglass presentation in Drupal Developer Days 2011?
I found the slides from the presentation in
http://www.slideshare.net/robertDouglass/sell-your-code-announcing-the-d...
Is there any video of this session?
Thanks.
