Knight Drupal Initaitive Monthly Proposal Review -- 7 August 2008
We will meet for the next round of proposal reviews on Thursday, August 7th at 15:00 Eastern (US) (19:00 UTC).
This meeting is part of our ongoing monthly review meetings. To be held in #drupal-dojo on IRC [freenode]. (See http://drupal.org/irc for information.)
We will meet for 1:30 with the following agenda:
1) Review current proposals that need decisions:
-- http://groups.drupal.org/node/11859
-- http://groups.drupal.org/node/13071
-- http://groups.drupal.org/node/12721
Media Code Sprint (Top 3 Goals)
The Media Code Sprint is underway! Here's a cross-post from my blog detailing the goals of this sprint, which runs through Saturday. We need your help!
Andrew Morton (drewish), Darrel O'Pry (dopry, remotely), and I are heading up a Media Code Sprint in Portland this week! Come help, in person or remotely, if you're interested in multimedia and Drupal! It has now officially started, and as I've volunteered to help keep folks updated, here goes...
First the reasons.
Number One: Better Media Handling in Core
Dries conducted a survey prior to his State of Drupal presentation at Boston Drupalcon 2008, and number one on the top ten (or 11) list of what would make THE KILLER DRUPAL 7 Release was "Better media handling".
Let me repeat that. Better media handling.
People have done really amazing stuff in contrib, but it is difficult (if not impossible in many cases) for developers to coordinate the use of files, as there is no good means for file handling in the core of Drupal. Thus, we have several dozen (or more) media modules doing some small part, or even duplicating functionality, sometimes out of necessity.
We need (better) media and file handling in Drupal core. In particular, there has been a patch for a hook_file in the queue for over a year, which has been in the Patch Spotlight (for the second time, no less) since May! (And has been RTBC several times during that process...) Come on folks.
One of the powers of Drupal is its system of hooks. We have hooks to modify nodes, to notify changes to user objects, to alter nearly any data (such as forms and menus). Noticeably absent is a consistent handling for files or any sort of notification. We need hook_file.
So goal Number One: get media handling in core. The means? Add hook_file and make files into a 1st class Drupal object. We'll be creating a test suite for functionality in the hook_file patch to validate it and "grease the wheels" to get it committed.
The other goals of this sprint pale in comparison to the first in utility, but are still highly desirable and worthwhile.
Number Two: Refactor File Functionality in Core
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Taxonomy improvements for Drupal 7
I think it's time taxonomy module got some more love in core. Drag and drop etc. was nice to get in D6, but there's much more we could do. Also I keep seeing various taxonomy administration helper modules cropping up - which is good, but there's no core patches cropping up alongside them, which is a shame, so I'm starting this in the hope of generating some discussion about things we could do this release cycle.
There's three obvious areas where Taxonomy could use some help.
Administration:
Merging terms.
Moving terms between vocabularies.
Mass operations (delete, edit).
Bringing the Spring 2009 DrupalCon to Washington, DC
Over the last several weeks I've been contacting people in the DC Drupal community and the Drupal Association to evaluate whether DC would serve as a good space for the Spring 2009 North American DrupalCon. As we all know, it will and it will be awesome!
With our large and very active Drupal community, we'll be able to support it, and with all the nonprofits, associations, and political organizations based here there is a huge user and potential user base that we can engage and get to invest in Drupal. Our Convention Center is centrally located and surrounded by hotels and restaurants, which makes it convenient for people traveling from anywhere (including DC and the 'burbs) and for meeting and socializing after sessions are over. Plus, Washington, DC is a great city and a tourist destination in itself - it will be great to share the city with the entire Drupal community.
So, we are going to go for it. The proposal has been submitted to the Drupal Association, and now that the formalities are started, it's time to engage more people to further develop this and let the community discourse shape this into what will be an awesome conference. Here is the formal proposal we submitted if you'd like to give it a read: http://is.gd/X3m.
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Drupal Camp Colorado July 2008 at Denver Open Media
It's official! The next Drupal Camp Colorado is happening the weekend of July 26th and 27th in Denver. Come join us in the mountains for two full days of Drupal wisdom and knowledge. We are going to host a mix of sessions and BOF's geared towards both the new Drupalers out there as well as the experienced veterans. Come join companies such as pingVision, Growing Venture Solutions, Aten Design Group, Blue Tent Marketing, Deproduction, and Civic Pixel among others.
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Drupalcon Szeged 2008
This Wednesday we opened the registration for Drupalcon Szeged 2008 and some of the early birds are already in! If you sign up before the end of June you will be able to buy your ticket at the extra discounted price of 80 EUR. From July the price will increase to 120 EUR, from August on to 160 EUR and just before and during the conference it will be 200 EUR to attend. We also help you get a hotel room and buy shuttle bus tickets until July 24, so if you'd like to go the easy way, make sure to register by then.
A week ago we published the sponsor packages. We received positive feedback from several companies and we already sold our first platinum package! As you might have noticed we only have 3 gold and 4 platinum packages available this Drupalcon. So if you want to get the exclusive benefits of these packages and get your company's name on one of our BoF or session rooms, contact us as soon as possible. To make the conference a huge success again, we will need your help: if you know a company that could be interested in sponsoring Drupalcon please get in touch!
We also opened session submission last week. If you have a topic that you would like to present this Drupalcon please fill in the form. Our track chairs will then evaluate your proposal and choose the sessions that will become part of the conference tracks. Session submission will be open until the last week of July. You can also submit BoF session proposals for our unconference program. This Drupalcon we are going to have 3 bigger rooms for larger BoFs (and an open space for smaller ones), so make sure to get the word out about your plans and spark interest in them sooner then later.
Drupalcon North America 2009, Drupalcon Europe 2009 as well as Drupalcon [place your idea here] are being planned right now. If you would like to have a Drupalcon in your town please let us know by submitting a formal proposal. If you have questions regarding the submission process feel free to contact the Drupal Association and someone will help you.
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Drupal Camp Alberta 2008
DCA08 is unlike any corporate conference you've ever attended - and for good reason. Focusing on "Drupal" - an open source content management system and application framework, DCA08 is a low-cost, highly collaborative "unconference" held in at the University of Lethbridge, in Southern Alberta, Canada.
Gone are the days of sponsored vendor presentations and for-profit registration fees. Our peer taught, volunteer-run sessions will by heavy with "doers", and light on the "talkers".
Join us July 3 & 4 from 8am - 5pm both days (Networking event on July 3rd)
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Local group organizer best practices and improvements to groups.drupal.org meeting
Jacob Redding and Kieran Lal will discuss growth of local groups on http://groups.drupal.org, best practices for organizing your local group, and request feedback on some improvements to GDO which will help local organizers. We will be presenting statistics calculated from http://groups.drupal.org, what we've learned by talking to 8 local group organizers, and request feedback on some improvements to http://groups.drupal.org to help local group organizers.
Free Conference Play Back
Playback Number: (712) 432-1281
Access Code: 450345#
http://acquia.acrobat.com/localgroups/
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Drupalcamp Barcelona
Following our success in organizing the past Drupalcon Barcelona 2007, the Catalan User Group is ready to start organizing local events at the Citilab, where we held the Drupalcon. We have created the Drupal.cat association to help the catalan drupal community grow, and our first action will be the organization of a monthly drupalcamp at the Citilab, on each second Saturday of every month.
Our first drupalcamp in Barcelona, then, will be held at the Citilab on the 14th of June and everyone is wellcome. Leave your session proposals on our session list page.
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