Koumbit.org was honoured to host Montreal's first ever Drupal Developers' meetup this last weekend. Having a great tool is only a part of what makes the Drupal community strong. The rest stems from the increasingly vast network of individuals and organisations that are proactively providing each other with technical, logistical, financial and emotional support. While we are still at a relatively early stage in the whole "coopetion" game, there are many reasons to be hopeful and Koumbit is dedicated to helping in any way that it can.
About 10 people got together on Friday night at an IleSansFil.org hotspot in Montreal to discuss some of the big issues floating around in the community before settling down in front of our computers at FACIL's headquarters. The topics covered included:
- getting internationalization (i18n) into core,
- the future direction of Content Construction Kit (CCK),
- the possilibity of incorporating decision-making mechanisms into Organic Groups (og),
- the possibility of developing an equivalent to the sifr module without Flash and/or Javascript,
- progress on the new default theme,
- patch for sanitizing user provided data on input instead of output,
- patch for admin option to let users choose password and login immediately,
- patch for enabling multiple node_access modules to run simultaneously,
- patch for moving signatures from comment module to user.module and adding some features,
- a whole lot more that I'm fogetting.
Unfortunately most of Koumbit's own developers were out of town and thus didn't get to meet the renowned Drupal heavy-weights who were in attendance such as moshe, chx, webchick, dopry and jjeff.
We spent the next day at Café L'utopik, another IleSansFil hotspot, working on all kinds of stuff. For some it was a chance to help eachother out with patch reviews etc. For others it was a chance to catch up on their work load in the company of their coworkers. For yet others it was a chance to learn some invaluable tricks from the masters. And for at least one, it was a chance to submit his first "real patches" to the Drupal project. Ultimately, however, the meeting itself probably matters more than the actual tasks tackled. Even if people were to only work on personal contracts as opposed to drupal debugging, these events would still represent an excellent opportunity to reinforce the "coop" side of the "coopetition" equation.
So, after hosting Montreal's first Drupal Meetup in March and now Montreal's first Developer Meetup, what's next?
Well, one thing is for sure, Koumbit will continue to look for every/any opportunity to support cooperation and collaboration within the Drupal community. My guess is that, amoung other things, we'll continue to host events, alternating between developer focussed and non-developer focussed meetups, as we build up to hosting a full fledged DrupalCon in Montreal... next spring/summer perhaps?
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Comments
thanks omar
we all had a great visit, omar. thanks for organizing such a team .. i added a few more accomplishments and promoted this post to the home page.
DOH!
I just edited a word and the post disappeared from the front page.
Great meeting you
It was great to meet you all last Friday! While I have been amazed with Drupal's technical marvels since I got my first look on it about a year and a half ago, now I can better see how it's the people's values and openness that make the Drupal community so strong.
It's unfortunate that I could not get my laptop working on time for Saturday's coding session, but I won't miss the next opportunity! À la prochaine!
// David Lesieur // Associé // Whisky Echo Bravo // Développement Web, experts Drupal // Montréal //
Cheers
I just recently joined Koumbit, glad to see things moving in Montreal.
I hope no one discover the master plan to seduce devs from abroad so they move permanently here :)
Cheers to all that made this possible!
too bad I missed it
I was at Blogher test driving sports cars and getting a free condom in my schwag bag ; /
Sounds like the cool kids were all here.
Can the next time be sooner then later pretty please.
I agree!
...both about it being too bad you missed it and that we should do another one of these soon. :D
Probably the next one should be more like the first meetup in that it's open to all and geared to some extent towards "newbies" as well.. I kind of got the feeling that a few in attendance at the initial cafe were a little like, "Uh. Woah." and it would be good to be able to include everyone.
Or, heck... maybe a two or three-day thing where the first day is open to all and is more around "what is Drupal" and helping people get support, where the second and third are more of a "hackathon" for the hardcore coding geeks. ;)
I seem to remember fall being a really nice time of year in Montreal... maybe in early September? I think the Brussels Drupalcon is the week of the 18th, so probably before then. Else, we could maybe do something like have an informal get-together the last weekend of every month at L'Utopik.
Those are all good ideas!
Where there's a will there's a way.
in this heat.....
My will seems to revolve with the blades of the oscillating fan these days.
It's like - "uhhhh do I go get another lemonade or should I just fall asleep again."
I like the idea of a monthly thing in the afternoon/early evening. Maybe we could do a monthly seminar, very short, say half an hour to 45 minutes not longer on something drupal-ease, and then have networking/small group meetings afterwards.
Some of the seminars could be more complex/hacker-esque and some could be geared towards newbies/non-coders, we can identify the target audience in any press stuff we make.
For non-developers like me, that's a nice way to get to know other people in the community but not have to try and crunch myself into the hackfest model _ which I don't think I would enjoy anyways,
Suggestions for seminars;
setting up a paypal store
reputation management for publishing queus ( how do you spell that?)
how to get your module idea onto the development horizon if you don't know the first thing about coding
usability brainstorming session
Of course we'd have to find experts to talk about all this stuff and then we'd have to find sponsors to give them honoraria (or free beer) but if we can agree to do the legwork of setting up seminars I can go and try to find some sponsors for the first two seminars.
Good to be home even if everything is either broken (My computer) too hot (the whole island) or having allergies (My dog and I both - mwaaa)
oooh
i'd love to come over for a party in Montreal. I just might have to join this group ;)
sorry i missed the inaugural event!
a few weeks later..
I just forgot about this thread .. but I still want to mention it was great meeting everyone. Yep, regular meetings would be very encouraging to keep on doing "drupal stuff", so I hope we get to do it!