Dries is visiting India!

Posted by ishanmahajan on September 23, 2011 at 5:19am

Hello Drupalers,

Dries Buytaert, the creator of Drupal and the CTO of Acquia is visiting India during the week of 07 Nov. He will be visiting Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, to engage with the developer and business community, to further the adoption of Drupal open source "content management system" (CMS) in our country.

He will be in Delhi on 7th and 8th November. There is a proposal that from 11AM to 1PM on 07 November 2011, he deliver a Keynote address to the Indian developer community on the lines of http://bcove.me/hk55ca4q which he delivered at Drupalcon London from 22 - 26 Aug 2011.

There can be presentations and coding sprints after that. People who are interested in giving presentations are requested to respond with their presentation topics. We need to make this event a success and who knows a DrupalCon maybe organized in India in the near future :)

We need volunteers to help organize this event and spread some Drupal love.

The most immediate requirement is the finalization of the venue. It would be ideal if the venue can be booked by mid next week. Two suggested venues are IIT Delhi and JNU campuses. Here are the requirements for the venue:

An auditorium with 300+ seating capacity.
3-4 rooms for presentations with a seating capacity of 50 people each.
WIFI internet connectivity.
Similar event can also be organized in Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Kindly reply on this thread or contact me at ishanmahajan87@gmail.com.

Regards,
Ishan

Comments

about volunteering

Posted by ujvaljoshi on September 23, 2011 at 2:21pm

Greetings

I would love to be part of this event. I study in Gujarat. How can I help you to organize this event?

Regards,
Ujval

Plans for Mumbai

Posted by pavithra.raman on September 24, 2011 at 7:36am

Hi Ishan,
There is a good Drupal community here in Mumbai. We would love to organize something here in Mumbai too. Let me know of his schedule for Mumbai and we can plan for an event accordingly. You can mail me at pavithra.raman@blisstering.com

~Pavithra Raman

If Dries is coming or any event

Posted by Purvesh Shah on September 25, 2011 at 11:59pm

If Dries Buytaert is coming to Mumbai or any other Drupal related event is going on or we can organise event on drupal then let me know, i like to help for any drupal related activity.

Regards,
Purvesh Shah
Founder & Contributor of Ubuntu Gujarati Translation Team: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-l10n-gu
Ubuntu Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/purvesh.shah

Open for any help !!

Posted by Ujval Shah on September 26, 2011 at 4:53am

Hi Ishan,

I have already dropped a mail to you !!
I am open to help the community events and willing to be a part of the event.
I was part of the Team for First Ever Drupal Camp - 2008 Held in Gujarat,India. I have represented and given a few sessions for my past employer at Drupal Camp - 2008, Ahmedabad,India and Drupal Camp - 2009,Pune,India . I was also actively involved in the Open-source and Drupal Seminars-Workshops at different colleges and universities in Gujarat.

Thanks,
Ujval Shah

Ujval Shah
Linked-in : http://in.linkedin.com/in/ujvalshah
Skype : ujval99
Gtalk : ujval99

Way to go Ujval

Posted by roshan_shah on September 26, 2011 at 5:14am

Great going Ujval..

Cheers
Roshan

Hey Ujval: would you folks

Posted by rahuldewan on October 6, 2011 at 6:27am

Hey Ujval: would you folks from Gujarat be coming over to Delhi or Mumbai? Please tell us in advance, in case some stay arrangements need to be made, then we can help organise the same. Thanks.

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

We might join

Posted by mittalpatel on October 6, 2011 at 6:48am

Hello Rahul,
Me and my friend planning to go to Mumbai on Sunday, 9th. Not 100% sure yet but mostly we'll come. As of now we haven't planned to stay there but in that case I will surely let you know.

Mittal Patel
http://www.MittalPatel.co.in

Mumbai is Near to us

Posted by Ujval Shah on October 7, 2011 at 6:03am

Hello Rahul,

Thanks Mate.
Actually Mumbai is near to Gujarat :) so we are participating at Mumbai. I am in regular communication with Pavithra on all updates regarding the Mumbai Event. Probably today evening I have a complete information regarding the event related responsibilities and task allocations.

Probably, We have Drupal Meetup on this weekend for Gujarat Drupal Group, So we have clear idea of how many people are attending Mumbai or Delhi.

Thanks,
Ujval Shah

Ujval Shah
Linked-in : http://in.linkedin.com/in/ujvalshah
Skype : ujval99
Gtalk : ujval99

@all thank you for showing

Posted by ishanmahajan on September 26, 2011 at 5:21am

@all thank you for showing interest in Dries' visit. We have received a lot of mails and we'll get back to you all personally today and decide the plan of action.

Regards,
Ishan

dries' visit

Posted by jadel on September 26, 2011 at 9:01am

Hi to all you drupallers in India.

I am a drupal entrepreneur from Denmark, who is coming to india in shortly. I am staying in visakhapatnam, so I'm very interested in updates on meetings with Dries in Hyderabat. Could someone keep me posted?

Looking foreward to visit the Indian drupal community.

Sincerely,
John

Awesome!!

Posted by dipen chaudhary on September 26, 2011 at 10:22am

So If I understand it correctly, Delhi is planning a drupal camp of sorts or it'll be different in nature? Will be a good idea to replicate something similar in Bombay. Its time Dries listens to the drupal song live - http://buytaert.net/drupal-song-in-india

Cheers

Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development

we have a great success in past

Posted by Ujval Shah on September 26, 2011 at 12:13pm

Dipen, We have great success in Both Drupal Camps - @ahmedbad and @Pune

Some of nice moments we captured,
http://drupalcamp08.drupalindia.in/image-galleries/drupal-camp-photo-gal...

In second event we also introduce Drupal T-Shirts and Drupal Song !!
http://punedrupalcamp09.drupalindia.in/image-galleries/pune-camp-pictures

Looking forward to keep our successful momentum going on ..

Thanks,
Ujval Shah

Ujval Shah
Linked-in : http://in.linkedin.com/in/ujvalshah
Skype : ujval99
Gtalk : ujval99

Dries' visit schedule

Posted by ishanmahajan on September 26, 2011 at 5:07pm

Hi,

Here are the details of Dries' visit to India -
7-8 November in Delhi
9-10 November in Mumbai
11 November in Hyderabad
The plan is to have a Drupal community gathering in Delhi on the 7th. Dries will deliver a keynote address for around two hours, which will be followed by a Drupal coding sprint and 2-3 presentations. Srijan Technologies(http://www.srijan.in) will be one of the co-sponsors for the Delhi event.
Sponsors will be required for the Mumbai and Hyderabad events. Acquia may or may not sponsor these events. But this is not clear at the moment.

We are planning to have a meeting of all the Delhi volunteers later this week. We will keep you posted on the date and venue for the meeting. For those of you who cannot attend the meeting, the minutes of the meeting will be shared.
The community members in Hyderabad and Mumbai also need to plan a meeting for the people interested in organizing some event in their cities.

Regards,
Ishan

Bangalore on the cards?

Posted by mskothari on September 26, 2011 at 8:02pm

Hi Dries and Ishan,

You can't leave Bangalore behind with so many Drupal developers awaiting your visit :-) We would love if you stop by and motivate the Drupalizers. We can organize an event via drupalized.org or You can reach out to me at manish@sourcen.com

Looking forward to hearing for you,
Manish

Drupal Camp Deccan at Hyderabad

Posted by asifnoor on September 27, 2011 at 9:19am

Hi Ishan,

Thanks for posting this news across to everybody. For Dries visit to Hyderabad, we are in touch with Acquia and are planning to organize a major two day Drupal Camp Deccan for all of South India.

All folks from Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Cochin are welcome to make good use of this event. We will have Dries to address the crowd in person and deliver the keynote address.

Azri (www.azrisolutions.com) is co-sponsoring the event. We plan to have different tracks for beginners and advanced learning.

We have some volunteers from Hyderabad but are looking for more to make this event a grand success. It would be great to hear from all of you fellow Drupallers in this regard.

Manish and John,

You can contact me at asifnooruddin1@gmail.com for any information required. I will keep you guys posted on all developments at Hyderabad.

Please do spread the word around. More the merrier.

Asif

any update

Posted by dgoutam on October 7, 2011 at 7:06pm

Any update about the venue/site etc? Happy to help .. please let us know.

Would love to see him in Gujarat !!

Posted by Ujval Shah on September 27, 2011 at 12:26pm

Hi Ishan,

If Possible please plan for Gujarat too, In Gujarat we have a good Drupal Community. We have many companies working in Drupal Since 2006. We have many colleges, universities who are aware of Drupal and would love to be a part of the meet-up/event.

Thanks,
Ujval Shah

Ujval Shah
Linked-in : http://in.linkedin.com/in/ujvalshah
Skype : ujval99
Gtalk : ujval99

Ujval I agree with you

Posted by mrugesh_drupal on September 28, 2011 at 5:39am

Hi Ujval,

I am agree with you. City is decided. But at which locations/address all these event will goes on. Is there any online registration to join the event? Please let us know.

Regards,
Mrugesh Panchal

KR
Panchal Mrugesh

Meet Up for further plannings

Posted by nmudgal on September 28, 2011 at 12:21pm

As discussed already, dries will be in Delhi on 7th and lots of planning needs to be done yet.
Agenda of the meet would be to decide, a place other than IIT D Audi as they have some internet issues and plan for the rest of the day [ after dries keynote ].

Time is so short, so let's meet up & decide the rest of the agenda in this meet & finalize everything else.
Venue : JNU Library, Delhi
Date : Thursday 29th Sept, 2011
Timings : 05:30 p.m.

See you around.

Regards,
Nitin

Dries Visit Planning | Minutes of the Meeting

Posted by nmudgal on September 30, 2011 at 6:16am

Schedule: [ 7th November,2011 ]
10 - 12 : 2 parallel sessions. Hello Drupal training / Code sprint
12 - 1 : Lunch/networking
1 - 3 : Keynote session by Dries
3 - 5 : Case studies presentation (6 ppt's 20 minutes each)

Requirements:
2 Rooms, 1 Auditorium (about 300 capacity)

Sponsorships :
Potential sponsors needs to be figure out.

Things to do and /or Expenditure:

Food + snacks
Venue
Posters
Tshirts
Stickers
Miscellaneous

Next steps:

Coordinate timings/schedule with Acquia
Hall bookings
Update drupalcampdelhi.in

Wiki to be setup for managing tasks etc.
Event page to be setup announcing the dates and the tentative program schedule.
Call for papers to be announced, case-studies mainly (6, out of the total submitted, will be shortlisted by Dries/Ron and allowed to present in the audi).

You might wanna join the list [ http://list.drupalcampdelhi.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dcd ] for the further updates or discussions either to attend or to volunteer.

Thanks

Drupal Camp Mumbai - 9th & 10th September

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 2, 2011 at 4:09am

Hi Everyone,

We are planning for the Mumbai Drupal Camp to be a 2 day event on 9th and 10th September. All the 'Drupalers' from Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Gujrat, Maharastra and elsewhere are invited for the mega event. We would be having Dries and other members from Acquia interacting with the developer community, student community and Drupal Shops in the western region.

We are yet to decide on the final venue on schedule, but will post them here as soon as they are finalized.

Please subscribe to this thread to get updates on the same.

I'm so excited!!! I'm in

Posted by vijaycs85 on October 2, 2011 at 3:58pm

I'm so excited!!! I'm in

Hi..pavithra I am working

Posted by chintan4u on October 4, 2011 at 4:30am

Hi..pavithra

I am working with DATAMATICS, SEEPZ,Andheri (E).
Contact me for any help required.
chintan@umarani.com
9702332577

Thanks.

9th & 10th September?

Posted by nikhilkala on October 2, 2011 at 4:29am

9th & 10th September?

Sorry, 9th and 10th November

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 2, 2011 at 4:57am

Sorry, 9th and 10th November. Good catch.

It will be on 9th and 10th November. Will post put schedule and venue details soon.

~Pavithra Raman

That is really awesome

Posted by lazyD on October 2, 2011 at 7:08am

That is really awesome Pavithra.... early waiting for the Mumbai Schedule... I am in Pune anyway can i help you guys please feel free to drop a line.

Thanks.

Drupal v/s Acquia

Posted by roshan_shah on October 2, 2011 at 4:33am

I think organizers may want to check and post clarification on whether it is Dries coming for promoting Drupal or is it Dries coming to promote Acquia.

Who is funding Dries trip - Drupal Association or Acquia?

a) If Drupal Association is funding this, then he should mostly focus on promoting Drupal in general and I think this will have wider acceptance.
b) If Acquia is funding this - you will then have to understand first what is the real strategy behind a corporate promotion and who is benefiting in what way.

One good way to find out is who is accompanying Dries in this event. Drupal Core Contributors or Acquia Team or is he coming alone?

It is good to get super excited on Dries visit. I would rather love to see Drupal being promoted rather than Acquia because if it is Acquia being promoted, many entrepreneurs who do not know the history of what Acquia wanted to be when it was started and what it is today (e.g it never wanted to be in Professional Services) and where it wants to go, Indian community will not want to be kept in dark.

Everything is being done for a reason. Even the timing of this visit has to be closely looked at. Suddenly someone who was against Indian developers now is in India. This reminds me of 'Topi kand' of our politician who was against a particular sect but political/business compulsion can make people do weird things.

A blog post from Dries on his visit, purpose would help. Whether this is one time visit only or will this be followed up with other visits to promote Drupal in India and Asia in general?

I certainly want to help and participate but I can only decide when there is clarity on this visit.

Hi Roshan, This is an Acquia

Posted by JacobSingh on October 2, 2011 at 1:30pm

Hi Roshan,

This is an Acquia funded trip, totally unaffiliated with the Drupal Association. The goals are pretty clear:

Foster adoption of Drupal in India, in particular contributing back to Drupal.
Learn about the market.
Meet with large Drupal users
Meet with current and potential partners.

I don't know about your other comments about being "against Indian developers", etc. But the fact is India obviously has growth potential, Acquia already has partners in India and will continue to work with companies there. There are other similar events happening in other Asian countries as well.

Best,
Jacob

Good to know

Posted by roshan_shah on October 3, 2011 at 5:23am

If it is Acquia funded trip and sessons are like 'Hello Drupal' (Acquia), how does this benefit the general Drupal community without benefits going back to Acquia and its partners?

And if this is for Acquia to learn about Drupal market, meet large Drupal users, why is govt infrastructure being used (e.g University) for this commercial event? If it was independently organized Drupal Camp, it would have been a different thing but the fact that few cities in India are doing Drupal camp because Dries is visiting India and not the other way around like Dries visiting India to participate in Drupal Camp (pre-organized) means sending mixed signals.

I hope Indian Drupal Community strongly raises their voice to get proportionate equal representation(not just handful of people) in Drupal Core team, Service Providers list, etc etc. else I don't think just asking community to contribute back would work.

Yes Drupal needs more Indian developers - more at this moment since the list of bugs are growing, 6.x contributed modules are not being converted to 7.x - besides commercial entities are now under pressure to reduce cost as VC's may pull the plug if costs are not reduced. Indian dev community has for large been ignored or even not given same status/treatment like others. http://twitter.com/#!/Dries/status/1729306430 - now most Indian community members are not contributing code back but still the list of bugs are growing.

I don't understand

Posted by kthari85 on October 3, 2011 at 6:11am

Hey Roshan ,

I don't understand why you have issues with Acquia. If you have ever contributed to open-source you will definitely know how hard is it to raise the amount. For eg : Dries have been contributing to Drupal for a long time , but there will a huge list than Dries and Acquia that have benefited with the name of Drupal.

About the status message , may be you misunderstood it. It was google trends showing the Bugs are mainly from India. ie ok , for India is one of the people who contributes more :) . We can make India also without Bugs , its easy don't contribute :P . So without a bug its not software. Software needs bugs and need to fixed ;) . ie why we started using unit tests :).

After all its an open-source tool , so it doesn't means only Indians need to contribute , those who love the software will contribute back. The only thing is to make aware they can contribute back , and what to do and how to do . So to give awareness ie all .

I have full support for Acquia and Drupal Association and no issues for they are an open-source company not a propritery one :D .

Hari K T
http://harikt.com

Support Drupal

Posted by roshan_shah on October 3, 2011 at 6:51am

See this is being announced as Drupal event but Public Infra (built with Taxpayers money) is being requested for promoting Commercial company. This is the only thing that is probably wrong more than anything else.

Have you looked at Agenda?

1) Hello Drupal Session - Acquia
2) Keynote - Acquia
3) Code Spring - led by Acquia resources/ partners
4) Other sessions - Acquia partners ? ( I am not sure yet)
(Picked up from Delhi agenda)

Then why not book a hotel and do it?

I have spoken at many universities on Drupal(with latest last month being at DDIT, Nadiad attended by 81 students) and also sponsored few Drupal camps. The sessions were open to all and the announcement that it was a Drupal Camp was done in advance with due respect and voice given to community.

Take a look at my 2009 post http://www.roshiley.com/blog/bias-and-favoritism-all-over-drupalorg-proc...

Even today look at Drupal Services List that I mentioned in my post. How many Indian/Asian companies are there? See if you or anyone can encourage few companies to participate, give back ton of code and get added this and other such lists. If there is a push back, equate this with others in the list if they have done similar contribs of have upgraded their modules to D7?

As I wrote earlier, everything is happening for a reason. This may be a Drupal promoting event - great. But if it is acquistion of customers, partners etc then it should be explictly mentioned "Acquia Drupal" event. To me, this event is not done with need to promote Drupal but with compulsion to reduce cost (may have push from VCs) in finding low cost developers who can also support Acquia Network. Good for India for sure and potential partners so sure go for it.

Is Acquia the beneficiary of contributions of global community? This is a separate thread but I will just add 1 liner here - has Acquia contributed all code/modules back? Who is going to decide who is a genuine contributor?

Totally agreed...

Posted by amrit_b on October 3, 2011 at 12:44pm

Totally agreed...

Why I think your posts are misguiding and in bad taste.

Posted by dipen chaudhary on October 3, 2011 at 9:45am

Disclaimer: My comapny is not an Acquia Partner.

Hi Roshan,

As far as the agenda goes, I m not aware of any sessions which will be taken by Acquia except for keynote by Dries and QnA after that. So your presumptions are wrong when it comes to agenda. I think your point about using public infrastructure ( university auditorium etc ) for Drupal event to promote a commercial company is also misguiding for the following reasons:

1> All organization is local, we need to arrange for sponsors or talk to university and manage expense. If a university is willing to give out an auditorium it'll saves us money to spend it on other stuff like tshirts, accessories and wot not.

2> Acquia has not asked for any special slots, as far as i know there will be just one keynote by dries on line of drupalcon london. We are also planning to have a panel discussion to discuss problems faced by Indian developers in contributing back, mentorship, learning drupal etc.

I fail to see how public infrastructure is misused here, if we wanna do it in hyat, leela kempinsky we can very well find sponsors and do it, its all upto us.

About Acquia and Drupal Developers.

I don't know what your experience with them is, but I have worked with them on a small gig and all code was built in open. All code went back to drupal.org. I don't think there are any evil plans here or something being cooked from atleast acquia's side and thats based on my conversation.

Btw, drupal.org last month had highest number of visitors ( or was it second highest? ) from india and thats definitely one of the catalyst of this trip as we do have lot of drupal developers and we deserve the attention. I don't see anything more to it and after the event Dries, jacob or Acquia representatives meet their indian partners or attend business meetings is their personal business and has nothing to do with the camp.

Cheers

Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development

Agenda

Posted by roshan_shah on October 3, 2011 at 10:47am

I will not write I am not aware or I don't know. But what I just wrote was based on what was published. "Hello Drupal" is Acquia training module. Help me understand that if from 10:00AM to 3:00 PM you have attention to 1 Company/CTO/Partners, what does this mean?

Secondly you probably did not read about my comment on getting due recognition to Indian developers overall in Drupal ecosystem. I think this should be on top of agenda on everyone. Actually without this, I don't even know what more you can achieve then what you already know about Drupal. Also work up a roadmap on follow up visits and when they will happen. Where there is a trust deficit, it just can't be overcome with 1 visit. Indo-Pak dialogues have been going for long. There has to be give and take. Maybe I will wait for a follow up post summarizing Dries visit on what was the take for Indian community after the panel discussions and what is transpiring at ground level after that.

On public infrastructure, I do know for a fact that when we speak at universities, we talk about Drupal and not Gloscon Drupal or our Galaminds platform or our OpenKick Training. They won't allow us and it would also not be right to avail free/subsidized infrastructure for self promotion.

If not misguiding, misguided perhaps

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 3, 2011 at 12:22pm

Hi Roshan.

Like you said it, there seems to be big trust deficit between you(your drupal shop?) and drupal association. And I am sure you have your reasons. That part I understand and I hope all things clear up .. sooner or later.

What I fail to understand or accept, are the observations you have made in this thread and things that you are trying to question.

First, you shouldn't really be reading too much into Dries (now historical) tweet at all. Come on, it had wink smiley in it. If you think it is sarcastic or degrading why not reply back with a tweet with link to statistics on drupal contributions and bug fixes .. and a smiley. Unfortunately I doubt if the contributions of Indian drupal shops have been worthy of such possible bragging. I have been associated with many Indian Drupalers, and though it pleases me to see their drupal skills and efficiency with which they execute client projects in drupal, I have never seen them contributing back much to the community.. not significantly at all. I have been guilty of this too and I look forward to change that.

About this being a commercial event on lines of a open meetup/camp and not "exactly" an open meetup/camp, Jacob has listed things our pretty clear - It is an Acquia funded trip. And he has been clear about Acquia's agenda too. The agenda allows businesses, partners, potential partners, large drupal users in India to meet with Acquia team and share notes. To see if existing Acquia solutions are a good fit for some of their customers/work. To discuss other potential large scale drupal solutions that they think businesses could use. Just as much as it allows Acquia to connect with drupal users and businesses in India. That is a mutually beneficial gathering, on the "commercial" lines of it.

And while Dries is in town, why not reach out to students, freelancers and yet-to-drupal-adopters and talk. Have workshops and sessions by the Indian Drupal community and those from the Acquia team on a trip. Drupalers meeting up, with the added excitement of Dries being around, would be such a good thing.

Smiley

Posted by roshan_shah on October 4, 2011 at 2:36am

I don't agree on this. You can write anything and have smiley that means your intent changes?

If someone can research and get this data it will help to see how we are represented.

a) Number of Drupal Developers/ users registered globally
b) Number of Indians in there and % terms
c) Number of firms, case studies from global firms (including Acquia partners)
d) Indian firms listed and front-page case studies listed on drupal.org

Ppl can add more to this. Valid point can be made that Indian Companies English on Case Studies is not good so they are not d.o frontpage material. Wait a sec - but general perception is that Drupal is only Developer friendly CMS but marketing efforts are put in to make it look business/end user friendly. This is good. Same way, understanding that Indian English is not American English, Indian shops and lifestyle is not US life-style - not everyone will fly across the world to attend event, sponsor events, etc but still Indian developers are working hard - many even 6 days a week and this can't be taken away. When you shutdown ppl on English, Code Quality, Origin it will take long before bridges are built.

I live in Gujarat that does not mean I agree on everything happening in Gujarat like Sadbhavna fast with public money. Real Sadbhavna happens only when there is clear embrace and effort to bring Indian Drupal devs with recognition for their work and this can't be done with one off visit. We have a huge developer community and I hope there are plans to have more such visits to India to promote Drupal in general.

Apologies for double posting.

Posted by dipen chaudhary on October 3, 2011 at 9:33am

Apologies for double posting.

Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development

Acquia event? Or Drupal event?

Posted by rahuldewan on October 3, 2011 at 3:59pm

Roshan,

I was the one who recommended "Hello Drupal" to be one of the events during a 10AM to 12 Noon slot. The reason for this is that in most Drupal Sprints that have happened earlier get crowded and taken over by students. And for sure there will be a ton of them at the event. Hence, a training for them would be useful; while the programmers can split themselves into two sessions, one led by Jacob (i'll come back to this in a minute), and the other perhaps open for a BoF format, etc.

Why "Hello Drupal" by Acquia
Well, simply because it is available, and is a free course by Acquia. Had you/your company designed a course like that, or the Drupal Association had, we would have used that probably. I personally, did not see the "Hello Drupal" course to be an Acquia curriculum per se - even as it has been prepared by them. Infact, none of the 8 people present, did not seem to have any objection to this (there were 5 non-Srijanites).

Lately, Srijan has been delivering "Hello Drupal" courses free at several universities. We are using Hello Drupal, for the same reasons cited above.

I've been trying to move Piyush Poddar, Ipsita Mishra and Rashmi Rajput, in Jaipur, Hyd and Blore, to adopt "Hello Drupal" and go to universites in their regions with it. Piyush, a non-Acquia partner attended a training on my pushing him, and is now shortly announcing such trainings for colleges in Jaipur.

I see it as a completely valid community exercise, using someone's brand name - and why not - who has contributed the curriculum for free.

Why Jacob Singh (from Acquia)?
Jacob is someone who is tremendously respected, atleast in this part of the country. Much before he joined Acquia (2007), he mentored Srijan's team, and helped us in the development of www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in and the SOLR search. Since then, he has been someone who a lot of folks atleast at Srijan turn to, for advise, and for inviting to Drupal Camps.

We actually organised the last Drupal Camp Delhi at a 2 week notice, because he informed me he was going to be in Delhi; we were thrilled to have someone of his stature to make a presentation. I am in no way taking anything away from Sumit Kataria, Dipen, Sid Kshatriya, others who have made a name for themselves - but one has to agree, Jacob has been the most accessible, and has reached out to companies - not only Srijan, but many others - offering his help, sessions, and trainings. Very few you could name who have done that out of the sheer "attitude of sharing".

Hence, whenever, there is an event of any significance, and if anyone from Srijan is involved, it is Jacob Singh we call onto. If he moved to another company tomorrow, that is NOT going to make a difference to a whole lot of us at Srijan. We will engage with him regardless.

It is in this spirit, since he is going to be here in Delhi region - and delivering (probably) a performance and architecture training (it may well be a free training) for developers from various companies - ICREON, Monsoon Consulting and Srijan have already shown interest; and are in touch with him (and Acquia) - that we recommended that he lead the Code Sprint. There was a unanimous yes among the members.

Now, is that wrong? Or is that Acquia? Well. I completely disagree. I think we chose Jacob Singh; not Acquia to lead this session. If Srijan takes a lead in organising an event, does it become a Srijan event? No.In Delhi, we're the primary movers; and i have taken it upon myself to ensure that this is a good event. It is a matter of personal reputation now. If other companies, who are on this group and mailing lists, are not coming forward and collaborating and taking leadership, should Srijan be penalised for it?

Look at this way - many companies/people knew of Jacob coming over to India earlier this year, and he was asking everyone around if there was an event that he could attend. How many people/companies moved their butts? Srijan did. And we have 78 attendees - 100% developers - and about 70% of them from companies other than Srijan. We used whatever space we had - our own office.

If other companies come forward and help organise this event, and take a lead, Srijan and its people (including i) would participate whole-heatedly, in any which we can. We've demonstrated this with several events which we have sponsored from Kashmir, Shimla, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad - for little or no quantifiable return, other than helping out the community.

In general, i have a problem with 'pulling someone down', rather than 'raising the bar on oneself' to get things moving. I find this a rather cynical way of looking at things.

We need to change this. My apologies for ending on a rather patronising note.

Thanks,

Rahul

www.srijan.in

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

Context of my comment

Posted by roshan_shah on October 4, 2011 at 2:21am

Rahul,

First let me clarify that this is not about Srijan or Jacob Singh. Srijan is in communication with Acquia/Dries but it could have been anybody.

I am outright open in my beliefs and have always believed that your team is doing good work in Drupal and when a resource from my team moved to Delhi and joined your firm, I communicated that the person is in good place.

You'll have to understand current global scenario, how VC's work and why now and not earlier when in 2008 when request was made to DA to have someone attend the event. That is first part and must be really really understood. Second - you compare youself with others in Drupal Services List - why are you not listed there?

My call to you ,Jacob, Sumeet, Dipen all is simple, if Indian developers are asked to contribute code and promote Drupal, what would be the checklist they have to go through to be on equal footing with other global developers/firms. I hope this is defined and followed.

Roshan

Roshan, Thanks for nice

Posted by rahuldewan on October 4, 2011 at 6:37pm

Roshan,

Thanks for nice comments on Srijan.

On your response to being listed in the Drupal Marketplace, we created this page way back in March - http://drupal.org/node/1092958, and we still do not have listing. Even Jacob could not convince people at the association; it seems they want the larger community to approve Service listings with the last revamp of d.o. processes, and everything seems to be much tougher.

Apart from a general process issue at d.o., i would put this problem, simply to us Indians having to work doubly hard in fighting several battles at the same time --
a) one for raising our reputation in the global developer and business community (this directly impacts how easily we get business; and at what price), and
b) for accessing good and stable developers who commit to the technology (and to companies to help create a win-win ecosystem) - our developers get bored, far too soon and want to move from Drupal to Django :) ; ofcourse company leadership has to do a lot with this as well
c) the absolutely horrendous and horribly overpriced/overcharged infrastructure access (i did some calculations with a German friend; it's much cheaper for me to run an office of the same size in Munich, than in the f***ed up Gurgaon; rentals, internet, utility costs, etc.)

There is nothing extra-ordinary about point (a). Sony was formed with one of its objectives being "to raise the national status of Japan", after Japan was literally wiped out in 1945. Few companies, in India pursue BHAGs (not that we do at Srijan) or goals larger than being a shittie 100 people company; and most of us screw up on "management skills and bandwidth".

These are issues our generation will have to deal with. Period. 5 years down the line, we would have crossed this cycle. China has don that now. After having a reputation of being the dirtiest manufacturers, even by Indian manufacturing standards, they now compete with the Koreans and Japanese in automobile design. So, this is a matter of time.

I feel you should see Dries' visit as one piece, in this change process for us in India. Then our outlook would perhaps would be more positive in spite of the tough circumstances.

We people just have to raise the bar for ourselves; do more community events; release more code; being more visible through code contributions; presentations; write; - all this will automatically raise our reputation, and our development Rates (!!!!), in the global marketplace.

We're being recognised. We have to go past the same stigma that the Chinese had till just 3-4 years ago.

From my Drupalcon London visit, i got one really important thing back from Dries. He said, during his analysis of the "State of Drupal survey" (and i am not quoting him; but stating the gist of what i received with my own filters), that while improving a product constantly is important, marketing it well is equally important.

I think we Indians - as companies, and as developers - do not write. We have some of the best English speakers in the world, but we f**ing, just don't write. *We do a lot more than what we say, and a lot more than what we find recognition for. If no one knows the great things we have done, how are we expected to be recognised.

Writing, Community Events, and more marketing around being recognised - we just have to do this. We have to be honest, yet speak out loud about what we stand for and what our goals are (even if we find it a struggle to achieve these goals internally in our companies). Indians excel is US, because the environment gives them visibility, and recognition.

Once again, Dries' visit is a HUGE opportunity for us to change this for ourselves.

My musings! :)

Regards,
Rahul

p.s.: I personally do not see Dries' keynote, as being from Acquia; but rather being from the guy who wrote Drupal, and drives a major part of the direction.

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

it seems they want the larger

Posted by vivek.puri on October 4, 2011 at 7:35pm

it seems they want the larger community to approve Service listings with the last revamp of d.o. processes, and everything seems to be much tougher.

IMHO this is a very good thing. This may not be popular but this will separate the good ones from the rest. Its not like they have different standards for Indians vs others.

all this will automatically raise our reputation, and our development Rates (!!!!)

In general I agree but for that to happen most Drupal shops in India will have to go beyond selling themselves as cheap labour. Indian community already has quantity but it must focus on quality as well.

If no one knows the great things we have done, how are we expected to be recognised.

So far what I have seen, Drupal community has for most parts recognized the effort of people who have contributed. Code speaks louder than words, this is the golden rule of open source projects and Drupal is no different.

blog | twitter| Mimir Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Agree 100% with your

Posted by rahuldewan on October 5, 2011 at 10:10am

Agree 100% with your observations here. My points, specifically on marketing, is not contradictory, but just offered in a certain context.

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

Clarification

Posted by sridharpandu on October 3, 2011 at 6:52am

Google trends is a trend of the search term. There is no way anyone would share their bug density with Google! The post in Dries' tweet is a plot of the search trend "software bugs" over the years and incidentally most of this search term has originated from Chennai.

We'll the tweet could be misleading and in some cases cause a lot of bitterness.

Agreed

Posted by roshan_shah on October 3, 2011 at 7:05am

Agreed 100% that it was just a trend of search term. It was a sarcastic remark against Indian developers that triggrered that post.

Today they have need of Indian community which was purposefully left out as we didn't have DrupalCon - even no one from Drupal Core team backed by Drupal Association showed interest to sponsor or even participate in any Drupal Camps organized by various young entrepreneurs and small companies, there is hardly any representation of Indian community in Drupal Association or various Service Providers list on Drupal.org.

Why is the need now? Serious Drupal lovers must read http://www.unleashedmind.com/en/blog/sun/the-drupal-crisis

And I am not saying we should not support Drupal. We should support Drupal - but why go gung-ho on a commercial organization coming to India and pushing itself?

Let Drupal Association take the lead and work with Indian developers starting with Drupal Camps and later plan to do a DrupalCon here in India.

Hi Roshan, Please take this

Posted by JacobSingh on October 3, 2011 at 12:25pm

Hi Roshan,

Please take this comment as my personal opinions and not an "Acquia" statement. As you may know from following my blog posts, twitter, etc I am not a "company man" and am perfectly comfortable speaking my mind outside of press releases.

I can see how Dries's comment about bugs coming from India is perhaps a little insensitive, but it's really just a bad joke. Anyone who visits the link will see it's just being silly. Silicon Valley is full of Indians, so is the Boston Tech Corridor (where Acquia is based), and Acquia itself has (albeit few) Indian employees. Of which I guess I am one (part Indian, ABCD, etc...).

What you're writing about seems to motivated from some personal anger at your company's involvement in Drupal and the result of it. I don't know the background of this, so I can't comment on it.

The things you are citing (organizing a camp around a visit from a distinguished guest, teaching Hello Drupal at camps, using Universities to host camps with corporate sponsors, etc) are all TOTALLY commonplace everywhere in the world. I've helped to organize camps in the US and gone to several. Most are held at Universities and they all need sponsors to take place. It's up to the organizers to keep commercial interests at bay while still providing value to the sponsor. I trust that the fine people organizing these events have the integrity to make that happen.

Hello Drupal is a course I have helped develop. People really like it, it's free, easy to teach and easy to learn. True, it is based on Drupal Gardens but that is mainly just because it's the best platform to show off features without having local installs. If someone else wants to write a similar one based on some other system, that would be great. I don't know of any.

On a separate topic of the Indian community involvement in Drupal. This is something I know something about. I fully agree that Indians need to assert their involvement and get into leadership positions in the DA, slots at conferences, commits in core, etc.

I'm not pretending prejudice doesn't exist and that it doesn't exist in the Drupal community. Most of the Drupal community are Europeans or North Americans and old opinions die hard. However, I've found that the Drupal community is very welcoming of anyone willing to put in the work and give back. And they will be rewarded if they do so. Not knowing English well and not being on EU and US timezones do hurt someone's chances, but on the whole it is a more meritocritous institution than any I've seen. Have you not found this to be the case?

People like Dipen, Gurpratap, Pratul and Sumit for instance have made names for themselves and gotten respect, scholarships, etc. Companies like Srijan have shown integrity in encouraging contributions from their employees not from their company and have built a reputation as a progressive open source company. There is hope, and there are challenges, but part of this trip is to basically demonstrate the possibilities here to people who are afraid to bet on something other than .NET or J2EE with their career.

I doubt any of this will change your mind, but I see lots of opportunity here and losing it via infighting and suspicions is a waste IMO.

Great

Posted by kthari85 on October 3, 2011 at 3:36pm

Great. Lets work together to make this event a great success! .

Welcome Dries to India and also to the beautiful places in India. Anyone organizing for South India ? Or can we get the venue and details , so I can book my tickets for the train if possible :) .

Thanks

Hari K T
http://harikt.com

Thanks

Posted by roshan_shah on October 4, 2011 at 2:58am

Jacob,

One has to understand the history, Raajneeti and Kootneeti too from various angles like Trademark Policy and Ownership, Drupal Association as US non-profit, Commercial company partners and process of passing the new leads for Professional Services to partners, historical discussion from company which was not going to do professional services but now has been more doing it at cost of its partners, company which wants global developers to contribute code but hasn't fully contributed its own code.

There has been a lot of flip-flop and statements historically and comments made earlier on policy, timelines no longer stand valid and there is clearly trust deficit with many people that is widening.

This discussion is not about my company but more about purpose. It could also very well happen at a later date that some Acquisition or strong MoU/partnership may happen and more support moved to India - that would be great for company but it will kill Drupal at a very rapid pace when commercial entity does this.

Everyone who writes or seeks clarification and data has personal anger? Everyone who says that there are no set rules for everyone has personal anger? I just want people and community to ask questions and get commitment from Dries that he will give Indian community equal representation if x..y...z is done.

In past this has been done one-on-one (including me at Boston Drupalcon) but verbal commitment has less value as I have learned. For those who would be putting in free time, it would be a nice gesture by Dries to at least go on record to encourage people to apply for Drupal Association, get involved in community and assure that level playing field will be set. This is my wishlist and it does not have to be addressed. I can assure you that I will not place any request for me/my firm addition from this point forward so I am taking me out of this equation for general good of Indian developers. Let them see policy in books and policy in practice.

Roshan

Promoting Drupal in India and ..

Posted by dgoutam on October 8, 2011 at 6:43pm

Jacob, Dries's visit to India definitely means a lot for the Drupal Community of India. But I do feel that if it could be an effort sponsored by D.A it would be better. Though I do understand that when Acquia is sponsoring the entire trip for Dries it is obvious that as a Business Entity Acquia should think of ROI. But still it means a lot to the Drupal Community of India as many of Indian developers are unable to taste the DrupalCamp or DrupalCon's (because of socio economic conditions obviously and because of the some un justifiable psychological taboo towards the PHP in general though lot of companies do earn millions of dollars by selling it).

But I would also like cite that the timing is great as lot of Elephants (Read TCS/CTS/Erricson/CapGemini etc) have started building their drupal teams (which was unbeliveable even a year back).

Again I am confident that Acquia will get good ROI from this event but not very much confident about how much it will help growing the community and attract new people towards the Drupal. One more thing I would like request you that not to oversell Drupal Garden to the new comers as they could mis understand Drupal and the true charm of Drupal Lego.

I would like to attend at least one of the city (I am from Kolkata and still trying hard to have one official Camp and not succeeded yet).

Any way thanks to Acquia for at least make it happen in India, but need real help and drive from D.A to continue this effort of promoting drupal in India ( I personally do believe that we really need the support from D.A) to organize more camps/workshops in India, start helping groups who made one and unable to make it as regular events.

Few humble suggestions:
- Do consider requests from India for CAMP organizing grants
- Do consider requests from India for Drupal Oriented Volunteered sites (Acquia DevNetwork Site Grant)
- Take care of the requests for New Project Applications from India (I like the new proposal of Automated Application )
- Do encourage freelancers (Drupal) from India (I personally believe freelancers made Drupal renowned)

I would like to put all the video recordings on DrupalCamp24x7.org to promote it if Indian Drupal Community and organizers want it to and help me by posting all the videos across the three city.

Further clarifications please

Posted by gora on October 3, 2011 at 6:31pm

Dear Jacob,

Thank you for the prompt, and forthright reply. I have not been an active member of drupal.org in
the past, but now seem to have been dragged into the Delhi DrupalCamp by various people, am
a little lost, and need to give some sensible advice.

Could you clarify on what this being an "Acquia funded trip" means? Does it then follow that all
events on this trip are commercial events? Do you only work through your existing partners?
How, in your opinion, might such a trip differ from a trip funded by the Drupal Association?

Please understand that I am not taking an antagonistic attitude, and would like to see all
this get resolved in a way that benefits all participants. I look forward to your response,
and thank you for your time spent in responding.

Regards,
Gora

Hi Gora, Heh, this thread has

Posted by JacobSingh on October 4, 2011 at 2:48pm

Hi Gora,

Heh, this thread has really gotten out of hand, hasn't it? The internet has a way of getting people to talk past each other. I assume you're the same Gora who works w/ Rahul, organizes the local LUG and was doing that mapping application back when? Good you're getting involved! Would be nice to reconnect.

Anyway, it's nothing nefarious :) Here's the deal:

Dries wants to promote Drupal in India generally. This is the primary purpose of the trip. Acquia is funding this. Acquia is not funding my trip to India, but is funding my travel around India w/ Dries and Ron (Acquia's CMO). Acquia also has business interests to pursue. Nothing very exciting here. Acquia is not coming to take your business!!! :) Acquia is coming to make the pie bigger for everyone. This is a GoodThing(tm) IMHO. For those who don't get it, Acquia's future success is tied to the success of the Drupal community.

Local people in Delhi, Mumbai and Hydrabad are organizing mini-conferences (camps) on the days we'll be there because it is a good opportunity to galvanize the community. Dries will show up, give a keynote, meet people, kiss babies, whatever. I'll give a training or two, etc. But the events are not Acquia events in any way. I haven't been involved in organizing them (either as a human being or an Acquian). I might get involved, but only because I care about Drupal and Rahul is a good friend. Acquia may sponsor the events at some level, but will not be a lone sponsor. Events cost money, and you can't really charge for them, so someone needs to pay. But sponsoring just means some banners and a table, the schedule will be determined by the local organizers in each city.

For those who are not aware, this is how every Drupal Camp operates: http://groups.drupal.org/node/10437 is a good resource on organizing one.

The DA is a separate issue all together. I think some people on this thread misunderstand what the DA actually does. I've had separate discussions with Jacob Redding (head of DA) about doing something in India, but that would be totally separate of any commercial entity. If the DA paid for Dries to come, it would probably be a conflict of interest. And the DA would likely not actually do anything in India, but would just provide support for a group who was organizing a con. We can talk about that separately.

TL;DR: Acquia is a company that makes money supporting open source software (like Ubuntu, Redhat, Zend, Puppet, etc) and they are funding a trip to India to promote Drupal and to have some meetings. Local groups in 3 cities have decided to use the opportunity to organize Drupal conferences as Dries's attendance will drive up participation and motivate people.

I hope that helps clear anything up here which may be a misunderstanding. If anyone wants to contact me, feel free to do so on IRC (JacobSingh) so we can chat more.

Pune on Cards?

Posted by Prasad Shir on October 3, 2011 at 7:36am

Such an exciting news to see Dries in India! Can we steal one day from Dries' schedule for Drupal Camp Pune?

We have very strong & active community of Drupallers in Pune. Drupal camps in Pune had been very successful in past! So I would propose to have a camp in Pune in addition to Mumbai.

We will be happy to sponsor / co-sponsor the event in Pune!

Prasad
Designs2Drupal.com

Not this time

Posted by dipen chaudhary on October 3, 2011 at 7:46am

Hi Prasad,
I was hoping for the same but as per my conversations this wont be possible this time as the schedule is already tight. But then Bombay is not far, thanks for offering to sponsor/co sponsor I'll get in touch once some basic logistics are taken care off. See you in drupal camp bombay :)

Cheers

Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development

Cool!

Posted by Prasad Shir on October 3, 2011 at 8:26am

ok Dipen, pls call / mail me if anything is needed for organizing Mumbai camp.

Prasad

@dipen: I dont see the

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 3, 2011 at 12:38pm

@dipen: I dont see the organization discussion that you tweeted about here!? :-/
Found the controversies discussion though.. even got sucked up in it a bit.. :p

It's Nice feeling.

Posted by zakir.gori on October 3, 2011 at 8:02am

Well its good to know Dries Buytaert is coming in india mainly in Mumbai. Hope everything is manage nicely if need support i am here Waiting for venue details.

Cheers!!

Posted by Hardik C on October 3, 2011 at 8:02am

Hey,please update the time and venue details for Mumbai location on this post asap.

signature

Waiting for venue

Posted by shreeni2 on October 3, 2011 at 10:15am

Hey we are now curious about the venue details.
Update it soon....

We are missing this drupal-con in Pune.. But its ok for this time. Next time we'll rock!

Lets cheers for Mumbai.

Mumbai let us know if anything needed. We are there always!

Thanks!

Posted by Dries on October 3, 2011 at 11:49am

Hello all,

Thanks for helping to organize the trip. I've never been to India -- I'm really looking forward to it. :)

The primary purpose of the trip is to evangelize Drupal and to learn more about the state of Drupal in India. I hope that my trip results in more Drupal developers in India. I'd love to meet Drupal users and contributors.

I'm paying for the trip through Acquia.

Thanks Dries

Posted by ujvaljoshi on October 3, 2011 at 12:23pm

Thank you for coming to India. I am sure it will be great learning for all of us here. Hope to meet you.

I believe you will have fun.

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 3, 2011 at 12:25pm

I believe you will have fun. India is a nice place to be traveling this time of the year.

And having the "creator" around is always good for evangelizing and encouraging more developers :-)

Thank you

Posted by Abhijeet Sandil on October 3, 2011 at 12:38pm

Thank you Dries for visiting India.

welcome

Posted by shreeni2 on October 3, 2011 at 1:01pm

Hey Welcome Dries.

You'll enjoy this trip.

Made one website on facebook for drupal camp

Posted by Purvesh Shah on October 8, 2011 at 12:14pm

hi,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for inventing this amazing and mind blowing technology for content management. Personally, I worship Drupal and it is a solution to all my needs.

I feel proud to introduce you to this fan page of Facebook that i have created as my tribute to Drupal. I would be honored to have your inputs to this fan page! This is Drupal website inside Facebook fan page & till today night more details i"ll upload to website.
http://www.facebook.com/drupalcampmumbai

I would also like to enlighten you with the fact that India has a lot of talent that can be put to optimum use to improvise the web technology and take it to an all new level. All it requires is adequate training and guidance.

Regards,
Purvesh Shah
Founder & Contributor of Ubuntu Gujarati Translation Team: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-l10n-gu
Ubuntu Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/purvesh.shah

Good proactive action. But it

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 10, 2011 at 8:25am

Good proactive action. But it seems like we are forking out a bit. The FB page is pretty different from what the site looks like !? :-/

Control Shre

Posted by shreeni2 on October 11, 2011 at 11:52am

Hey Purvesh,

Could you please share the control of this FB page with Drupal-Camp-Mumbai orgnising team? or just be a part of the this organising team. So we can update this FB page constantly.

You can send the email to me on shree[dot]ransubhe@gmail[dot]com
or my number is 9833399080

A month long 'contribution sprint'! What say ya?

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 3, 2011 at 2:02pm

It is about a month's time before Drupalers in India meet each other at Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. So how does the idea of having a month long 'contribution sprint' sound like to all?

Think..

Contributions of all kinds - modules, patches, bug reports, documentation, forum/irc support etc
Working together to help each other with contributions - new group specifically for this, testing patches, listing out bugs to take on next, point to right help and documentation
Collecting statistics and feedback
- Count of stuff done in this month long 'contribution sprint', time spent
- Count of people involved, other details such as profession, region
- Twitter hashtag #DCSIndia(?) (for 'Drupal Contribution Sprint India' along with #drupal of course.. I am thinking something unique, easily measurable, describes the idea of drupal contribution and yet is tweetable size (hence an acronym))
Culminating the sprint when Dries is in town and Drupalers across the country are meeting :-)
Discuss sprint success, failures and pain points, how to fix pain points etc, when Drupalers across the country meet each other and Dries

Such sprint could be a great way to build a contribution momentum among drupal developers in India. And with the meetups in November to look forward to, it would be exciting to culminate such sprint in a 'day long sprint' where everybody is present across the hall. And doing this over a month would mean more meaningful contribution too.

And of course, the idea is not to not just to contribute over this one month, but to increase the moment and continue.

I am starting to look at ways I can contribute.. meanwhile, would love to see others add more to this idea..

This is great stuff. I'd

Posted by JacobSingh on October 3, 2011 at 2:44pm

This is great stuff. I'd love to see this happen. The key in my experience to successful sprints is small focused groups with clearly defined objectives. But general "let's all chip in" initiatives are also useful.

Perhaps there are Drupal shops in India with common needs who could send devs to work together on something? Anyway, a big +1 from me.

Best,
Jacob

I like the idea.. one common

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 3, 2011 at 4:47pm

I like the idea.. one common need that I can think of is integration of Indian payment gateways with drupal commerce?

A great moment

Posted by siva_epari on October 4, 2011 at 7:01am

Count me in :)

Here are my 2 cents.

When we talk about Drupal in India, what we need to take care is whether Drupal caters to the Non-profit use or not.
1. Translations
2. Drupal profiles customized for Indian requirements(Easy setup, Embedded self paced tutorials, etc.)
3. A National level Drupal committee/association which will be the flag bearer for propagating the idea throughout India. State level & City level groups can take help of the National association for pooling speakers & scheduling events. And i feel that this is right moment to initiate such idea when the focus of most Indian drupalers is on this thread now.

Siva Kumar Epari

Hi Siva, This is exactly what

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 4, 2011 at 9:20am

Hi Siva,

This is exactly what we are thinking about. I have been interacting with a lot of people from the Drupal community in Mumbai, Pune and Gujarat over the last 2-3 days. We want to use this to promote the idea of building an actual Drupal Community with active members, regular events and an amazing contribution to the Drupal and Open Source world.

This can be possible only if individuals come together and participate. So looking forward to your participation and contribution. Welcome to the Drupal Community.

~Pavithra.

Contribution Sprint Coming Up.. Have fun sharing and giving back

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 3, 2011 at 4:44pm

I have created the group to bring together the efforts and conversations around a month long active contribution sprint by the Drupal community in India - http://groups.drupal.org/node/180224

Inviting all to hop on, start contributing and have fun.

New group

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 6, 2011 at 4:28pm

Today is the day I am back to work after a short sort-of-a-vacation. So when I go ahead and try to share contribution sprint related stuff to the group that I had created couple days back, to encourage and indulge Indian drupalers to actively contribute over the next one month, I find it is deleted :-(

Here is the discussion I am having with the webmasters on what "things" are groups meant for - http://drupal.org/node/1298100#comment-5083410
Right now, I am having a tough time being convinced that a group is not the right way to engage users for this.

Any insights anybody? Alternate ways of doing this? I really do not mind not using a group if there are other just as good or better ways of reaching the target audience (Drupalers in India) and engaging them in discussions around contributing(helping each other out) over a month, share their contributions (encourage each other) etc.

Sumeet, That is what i

Posted by siva_epari on October 6, 2011 at 8:13pm

Sumeet,

That is what i proposed in my above comment "A National level Drupal committee/association". On that basis you can be able to create a group & than it can be used to post info about
code sprints, online meets & contributions. So the India group can be a regular channel for doubts, job postings & getting social.

The group will help us to collaborate & organize national level events. Hope i was clear about my idea

Siva Kumar Epari

cannot wait

Posted by mukesh.agarwal17 on October 3, 2011 at 6:44pm

this is such an awesome news..

@Dries: we will all try our level best to make this an happening event for evangelizing Drupal in India.. the land has produced immense talent in the field of internet and web technologies.. and all of us have been in love with open source some way or the other.. just that we have been hesitant in speaking out more often.. and that I believe is something we can work on..

@All: great discussions and great initiatives from all.. I'm all up to provide full fledged participation in the Mumbai event..

@Pavithra, Dipen: I would love to sponsor the Drupal Camp Mumbai event and we are definitely going to come to attend it.. My idea revolves around the following:

Contribution from Indian developers: something that everyone has been talking about. And this is not just with Drupal, we are fighting a reluctant / hesitant state of mind here. I believe all of us should throw some interesting ways to overcome this. One of the things that I think can work is to organize small local groups and do code sprints for a day or two say every fortnight / month and have the agenda of contribution in place before getting sponsored. And that is something we can do as a regular thing. And as Sumeet says it can be a great initiative to get this started from today and have all of us jump in.. it will be difficult for all to jump in (because of client projects) but this month long time can be covered in short sprints of a day every week..
Participation in the Drupal Camp: I think its important to come out strong this time as Dries will also be here. We should try and get a lot of interested web developers from tier I/II colleges and invite other open source web developers too. I still know a few companies working on raw PHP still (in Kolkata of course). It seems like a good idea to invite web development companies CTO to see how strong Drupal is.
Sessions: I would really love to keep it sweet and simple (and at the same time addressing complex needs of the web developers). I liked the idea of parallel sessions on different topics. We could select 6-8 such topics, discuss them in detail with Jacob (who seems to have an excellent understanding of Drupal developers in India :-)) and then invite speakers for the same.

Thoughts?

I think the vision is simple too: when Dries goes back from India, his tweet should read "Drupal is happening in India, big time :-) excellent plans in place" :-) or something on similar lines..

@Roshan: i think your perception of the event is bringing all the drupal lovers together to speak out against your observations.. i hope we are all on the same page when we say we love drupal and we understand the needs of such events, take positives out of it and share them with many more..

Cheers,
Mukesh Agarwal
www.innoraft.com

Great

Posted by roshan_shah on October 4, 2011 at 3:03am

Mukesh,

Great to see people speaking against my observations. If this brings togather India Drupal community and shakes up Drupal ecosystem to contribute more code, do more local events and get more frontpage stories, that would be great. I do not mind any critical comments a all. Everyone has a viewpoint.

Roshan

Greetings! First things

Posted by asifnoor on October 3, 2011 at 6:57pm

Greetings!

First things first. Welcome to India Dries.
Its about time :-) !

We in the India Drupal community should celebrate that finally that this is happening, and the visit will further bolster our community and the participation from all sectors. Dries has multiple roles and his main role, as he explicitly stated many times is to evangelize Drupal. Of course he has other responsibilities, and every one in the community is aware of those.

I had met him personally at Drupalcon Chicago and during my short conversation with him at a lobby, Dries himself had mentioned about his intention of visiting India and meet the indian community but things were not concrete by that time. Also, the same intent existed in 2010 when other members of our team met him in DrupalCon San Franciso. We are excited, Its finally happening !

The “Hello Drupal” event/course for me is a great tool. I have used it internally to teach new recruits recently. Its a great starting point, to get started with Drupal. Its free content any one can use! PDF’s are available for download. Most importantly for me, they provide a STRUCTURE (link goes to 3rd party site). Many of us are active users and *not* Trainers. And this structure helps us, to train, teach and effectively advance the word of Drupal. As you will agree, its how we introduce a new concept, many times, that affects, how well it is received.

Drupal Camps are one of the best places for Drupal training and sharing knowledge. Definitely we should have code sprints to roll out patches to Drupal core/contrib modules. This will also address the stigma attached around Indian contributors, and we can shake it off.

We shoud have as many Drupal Camps as possible and we should use this visit to kick start them. We should take this momentum to really move things forward into Tier 2 cities as well. I believe its going to be game changer in the developing countries.

Regards,
Asif

Stigma

Posted by roshan_shah on October 4, 2011 at 3:30am

I don't think there could ever be a stigma attached to open source contributors. This is where we need to set the line - a hard line.

Donation can never be stigma be it donating time (read... time is not free or cheap) or money. And donations should not be used for personal gains. Even the most entry level person trying to do something or trying to write code and contribute is donation, trying to get in ecosystem. If Stigma is with Indian developers, why are many top branded sites that are not built by Indian developers not on Drupal anymore?

So we need to know where stigma on Indian developers is coming from and either correct it or stop donating. You just cant keep on donating and continue to get sidelined.

Hi Jacob, This is an Acquia

Posted by vivek.puri on October 4, 2011 at 5:24am

Hi Jacob,

This is an Acquia funded trip, totally unaffiliated with the Drupal Association.

A Drupal association blessed event would have been much better as this would have meant that Drupal community in large is looking positively at India. Hopefully Dries trip will bring attention and hopefully DA will at some point get involved with community in India.

Indian Drupal Community still have long way to go to be equal partners in Drupal ecosystem. They will have to make significant contributions to Drupal itself, which at present is much lacking.

Dries trip is most welcome and for most people this would be great opportunity to meet him and listen to him.

Meet with large Drupal users

I suppose key decision makers (technical) in organisations who are actively using Drupal would be invited as well. This will build confidence in them for the future of Drupal and probably Dries may get first hand experience of challenges they face.
Unfortunately I have not seen any action to invite such people, who are not developers but key to evangelizing Drupal in their respective organization. I hope this will be addressed soon. Maybe Acquia can be more proactive to address this.

blog | twitter| Mimir Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Thoughts on making Drupal Camp Mumbai successful

Posted by sunitgala on October 5, 2011 at 12:09am

Howdy folks!

 "A Drupal association blessed event would have been much better ..."

I don't know much and I'm often called dense, but I just don't get the big deal about Acquia vs Drupal Association. The creator (of Drupal :-)) is coming to India. Let's just get on with it and make the most of it.

What's great to see are people working towards making this trip worthwhile for all: Drupalers in India and those traveling half a world to be at these camps. We need to see more volunteers and especially Drupal Shops from Mumbai/Pune and elsewhere contribute in specific ways to make this event successful. Drupal is a big deal for me personally, and for everyone at our company -- it's our bread and butter and puts food on the table. Let's give back.

Possible metrics for success can include:
0. Volunteers -- we need a broader cross-section of the Mumbai/Pune Drupal community to step forward and take ownership of specific tasks
1. Venue -- scoring an IIT campus or something equivalent will be huge
2. Attendees -- the more the merrier, especially folks from Pune and other places near Mumbai (perhaps a bus can be arranged?)
3. Code sprint -- can we write some bug-free code for the love of Drupal (wikidkaka only writes bug-free code :-))
4. # of Sponsors -- how many corporates and Drupal shops can we get to contribute to the camp?
5. Amount of sponsorships -- can we raise a buck or three to help with some of the expenses
6. Presentations -- case studies or technical contributions by the Mumbai Drupal community (how many will we be able to squeeze in?)
7. What else?

Onwards and upwards.
Sunit.

Full Disclosure (or shameless plug -- a matter of one's viewpoint): I work for Blisstering Solutions, and we are helping to organize the event in Mumbai. We are a California company with a significant Mumbai presence. I'm hoping to travel from California to Mumbai for this event but can't promise until my wife lets me :-).

There is already action on

Posted by rahuldewan on October 18, 2011 at 7:35am

There is already action on this end, Vivek. If you see: http://list.drupalcampdelhi.in/pipermail/dcd/2011-October/000058.html this list (minus the design companies) was sent out to Acquia. Invites would be going out from Acquia for a networking event. Your name/company is also on the list. You should have/should be soon receiving an invite for the networking/industry event for Delhi region.

Would be nice if you could participate on this community list.

Rahul

--
www.srijan.in

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

Missed listing few more Drupal ....

Posted by Sree on October 18, 2011 at 7:44am

Hi Rahul,

I can help you out with SPOCS for few companies in that list.
Also, you missed adding few more to the list.

Sree

Hi Sree: do you mean people

Posted by rahuldewan on October 18, 2011 at 2:58pm

Hi Sree: do you mean people for the networking event in Delhi? Please suggest the companies i have missed.

Meanwhile, the SPOCS for the ones listed are mostly now covered, and the list sent to Acquia.

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

nice ...

Posted by Sree on October 19, 2011 at 7:25am

Hi Rahul,

Yes, I meant the same - people for the networking event in Delhi.

Good to know that the list is already shared.

Sree

Drupal Camp Mumbai - Nov 2011 : Need volunteers

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 4, 2011 at 6:12am

Hi All,

I would require some volunteers for opening this Drupal Camp. We already have Dipen and Mukesh helping out and we need more people helping us to make this event a huge success.

You can call me anytime at 9619496897 or mail me at pavithra.raman182@gmail.com.

We need help in the following tasks right now.
1. Getting a venue
2. Getting companies and their developers and also Drupal users, students and enthusiasts involved in organizing and participation.
3. Promoting the event to Drupal developers, community members, students, companies and even maybe government people to whom we can show how powerful Drupal and its community is.
4. Also will be calling for sessions, presentations.

Let me know when we can talk.

~Pavithra

Ready to Volunteer

Posted by surendramohan on October 4, 2011 at 11:17am

Hi Pavithra,

Please let me know if I can support you guys in organizing the event.

Surendra Mohan
Drupal Consultant | Architect | Author | Trainer | Blogger
http://www.surendramohan.info/

Certainly would be interested

Posted by nagwani on October 4, 2011 at 1:50pm

Certainly would be interested in volunteering.

Let me know if I can be of any help.

Regards,
Prafful Nagwani

Access to grants

Posted by roshan_shah on October 4, 2011 at 8:59pm

Also people organizing camps/local events should also apply for Grants https://association.drupal.org/grants

There are many Indian companies who are current/past members of DA and have attended one or more DrupalCons too and also may have been sponsor. So why not apply and use grants available to promote Drupal? I am sure some portion will trickle back to India for promoting Drupal.

Drupal India IRC channel active/inactive?

Posted by ipsitamishra on October 4, 2011 at 1:32pm

Hi all,

It's indeed a treat to read this thread. :)

I just joined the #drupal-in IRC room but found no one there. I was expecting to see some people around and discussion happening around the events in November.

I think we have used this channel in past http://groups.drupal.org/node/18754

Would like to see you all there and discuss about the plannings at other cities, not just the one we are going to have in Hyderabad.

Cheers,
Ipsita

~ Ipsita Mishra

IRC

Posted by Sree on October 4, 2011 at 5:24pm

yes, please join the IRC room to discuss about plannings etc.

Mumbai folks: If you have any plan for patch / doc sprint - do let me know I am open to coordinate in that area.

Hyderabad folks: As discussed over IRC I would keep you all updated about my plans of place of attending the event.

Thanks,
Sree

Sree

Apply for adding in Drupal Services list and access to grants

Posted by roshan_shah on October 5, 2011 at 5:20am

I would also suggest that all Drupal Camp organizers in each cities work up on a plan later on to get Indian firms added in Services list as well as apply for grant from Drupal Association ( See Singapore getting one http://groups.drupal.org/node/180739 ) for ongoing Drupal events in India.

1) You can set some rules on who should apply (min 3 years in Drupal, 10+ sites?)
2) Indian community must stand united and support every other person to get added IF he meets the qualification criteria like others globally
3) We are majority in numbers as software developers and while we should contribute code but at the same time we should also show up as major voice if community has to evolve in India.
4) Why don't people just apply for their firms to be added as Drupal Service Provider to start with - http://drupal.org/node/1000788. Get this rolling. Reach out companies you know and ask them to apply for this. There is also "Hosting List", "Training List" and "Marketplace Listing" where you can and should apply.
5) Also plan additional events and apply for grants. Create a separate page or site or mailing list or whatever where you can measure your interaction and results of your contributions first, then your recognition of free time/fund allocation, then getting access and support to do more in your local area to promote Drupal.

Drupal Camp Mumbai - Registration, Updates, Volunteers & Sponsor

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 5, 2011 at 5:38am

Hi All,

We have setup a site to organize the Drupal Camp - Mumbai on 9th of November.
Please register and sign up for the event at http://drupalcampmumbai.org

This will help us get some numbers for smooth organization of the event. And also to send out email updates to the participants.

We are looking for volunteers and sponsors. You can get in touch with the organizing team from the contact us page on the site.

The Drupal Community can also propose sessions.

Also I shall be there online on the IRC channel #drupal-in ( Thanks ipsita for the idea. ) Anyone who wants to contact me and the organizing team can just login there and help us out.

~Pavithra Raman

Update site

Posted by tejaspmehta on October 5, 2011 at 5:54am

Please update site. When i try to signup it throws error like

Fatal error: Cannot access empty property in /var/www/drupalcampmumbai/profiles/cod/modules/contrib/signup/includes/date.inc on line 87

Thank you
Tejas Mehta

Also updated Room2 timings.

Posted by tejaspmehta on October 5, 2011 at 6:01am

Also updated Room2 timings. Its 1Am to 5 PM.

mumbai event - updates summary

Posted by Sree on October 5, 2011 at 6:02am

Hello everyone,

Latest updates on discussions going around the organizing team would be regularly summarized here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/180754

For people who couldnt access IRC please keep an eye over there.

Sree

We got the venue for mumbai :)

Posted by rinashah on October 5, 2011 at 7:32am

hey guys,

there is a news. we got the venue for mumbai event, its st. andrews bandra with the capacity of 800 people and we got the sponsor for the venue as well. Activeark (www.activeark.com) is the sponsor for the venue.

Lets make this a grand event :)

cheers,
rina

mumbai organisers ....

Posted by surendramohan on October 6, 2011 at 9:39am

Hi Mumbai event organizing team,

Can you pls keep the community updated with the current status of the event organizing so that it would enable us to plan our schedules accordingly?

/*Drupal Camp Mumbai - Nov 2011 : Need volunteers */

You guys have been posting the requirement that you need volunteers, but I got to know (from few of my friends including myself) that despite of their showing interest to volunteer, you guys even don't bother to response.

Anyways, it's all upto you. But, please keep the community updated with the latest status so that people can make a better choice which one to attend amongst the 3 events ( Delhi, Hyderabad & Mumbai ).

Would appreciate your response.

Surendra Mohan
Drupal Consultant | Architect | Author | Trainer | Blogger
http://www.surendramohan.info/

Hi Surendra and fellow

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 6, 2011 at 11:04am

Hi Surendra and fellow Drupalers,

Myself and a lot of others have been in touch with each other almost everyday. We have been calling each other, being on the IRC and posting updates on the group as we get them.

We have short listed 2 venues, IIT Mumbai and St.Andrews auditorium at Bandra. The venue will get decided and booked on Friday/Saturday, as today is a holiday.

I would like to thank Zakir, Sunit, Rina, Siddhartha, Vijay, Ujval, Dipen, Rahul and many more who have helped us.

Also on Friday we will be deciding the responsibilities of the core members, who will then in turn pick up volunteers for their teams. We need to work and make this event a huge success. Also we should have such a response and participation for future events too. We will definitely post updates as soon as we do get them.

@Ipsita & Siva: Amazing effort on having the training for Hyderabad. Lets have something like that for Mumbai too. A training session or a code sprint. I can get my office for the weekend. Let me know.

~Pavithra

Thanks for the compliment.

Posted by siva_epari on October 7, 2011 at 3:24am

Thanks for the compliment. Please share your ideas on how to organize a code sprint and also possibilities to make it online so that people from all corners can participate.

Siva Kumar Epari

Appreciate the details

Posted by surendramohan on October 7, 2011 at 6:10am

Hi Pavithra,

I appreciate your sharing the details & activities to all of us.
As you already know, not all of us have access to IRC in our offices. So, would appreciate if you would manage to share the progress in the groups as well.

Surendra Mohan
Drupal Consultant | Architect | Author | Trainer | Blogger
http://www.surendramohan.info/

Hi Surendra, As and when we

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 7, 2011 at 6:16am

Hi Surendra,
As and when we get details, we are posting it on the groups.
We will be meeting the people at IIT Mumbai today to confirm availability and booking. Once it is confirmed and booked, we will share the exact details.

Capacity of 800 ppl!! This is

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 6, 2011 at 11:44pm

Capacity of 800 ppl!! This is epic!

Industry Event in Delhi during Dries' visit

Posted by rahuldewan on October 5, 2011 at 10:08am

Hi folks,

This is concerning the industry event which is to be organise towards the evening on 07 November in Delhi. We need to collect a list of all companies that work in Drupal in the north India region, who may be interested in an interaction with Dries and amongst each other.

Could we compile a list here please? Please publish the names of representatives to contact with their emails; if posting emails on the list is problematic, you could mail them across to me at "rahul [at] srijan [dot] in".

For the moment, we're not clear whether the invites would go out from Acquia, or from us as volunteers. Getting the list together is useful anyway, which i'll go ahead and share with Casey at Acquia.

The event is tentatively proposed to be from 1700 to 1900 on 07 Nov. The venue is not decided as yet.

Leads to press organisations would be nice as well.

Thanks,
Rahul

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

Dates for Dries' event in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad; 07-11 Nov

Posted by rahuldewan on October 5, 2011 at 11:42am

Folks:

Ipsita from Drupal Hyderabad (an informal group of Drupalers) just called me. It seems there is confusion on Dries' visit dates and how things stand with regards to the official announcement from Acquia.

So, there is no official announcement as yet from Acquia or on Dries' blog, but that is expected soon (i've requested Acquia for the same).

However, please take this as confirmation that Dries is available on the following dates and time (as i've been informed by Casey McCullar from Acquia):

1) Delhi :: Monday, 07 November :: 10AM -12 PM (availability for keynote address)
2) Mumbai :: Wednesday, 09 November :: 10AM -12 PM (availability for keynote address)
3) Hyderabad :: Friday, 11 November :: 10AM -12 PM (availability for keynote address)

Dries and other Acquia business leads would be available during the evening for an "industry event", if the cities alongwith Acquia are able to and intend to oraganise it.

If anyone from any of the cities are having any sort of trouble with confirmations, please feel free to write to me; i'll connect you all to Casey. I'll also try and have Casey officially post something here on this group.

Thanks,

Rahul

www.srijan.in

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

Thanks

Posted by ipsitamishra on October 5, 2011 at 12:09pm

Thanks Rahul for confirming this. I think plannings for Hyderabad event will speed up now.

Regards,

~ Ipsita Mishra

Thanks

Posted by siva_epari on October 5, 2011 at 12:15pm

Thanks Rahul,

For confirming Hyderabad dates & exact time. We will schedule the event accordingly

Regards

Siva Kumar Epari

Schedule Confirmation

Posted by casey.mccullar on October 5, 2011 at 12:26pm

Rahul,

Yes, those are the days and times we are planning at this point. As soon as we have final confirmation on venues and schedules we will post that as well.

Casey

Thanks Rahul

Posted by zakir.gori on October 5, 2011 at 11:57am

Thanks Rahul for informing us.

Facebook Events

Posted by rahuldewan on October 5, 2011 at 12:24pm

It may be useful for all cities to have Facebook pages setup. When we did for the last Drupal Camp Delhi (www.drupalcampdelhi.in), it gave us a good sense of how many people would be attending the event. At Delhi, Abhinav Sahai just helped setup: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=238829339499922 ; Thanks Abhinav.

We've put JNU as the venue (as the FB event required us to do so); but this is still a bit tentative; a confirmation is pending our contacts at JNU.

Thanks,
Rahul

--
www.srijan.in

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

On Hyderabad Schedule

Posted by venky.drupal on October 5, 2011 at 1:04pm

Hello Fellow Drupallers,

November 11th being the scheduled date of Dries’ visit to Hyderabad, the Hyderabad Drupal community folk are meeting to discuss and finalise the agenda for the day. Some of us are meeting this evening over coffee. Again, there is a meeting planned for Saturday. Will keep you posted on the suitable venue for all folks in city to easily commute.

We believe it would be a great occasion to provide an opportunity for every Drupal enthusiast in the southern region to make it to Hyderabad and interact with Dries.

The idea mooted is to organise a DrupalCampDeccan, and bring together the enthusiasts from the region, from Kochi to Hyderabad and cities that are easily connected to Hyderabad. It would also be a great opportunity for Drupal folk from Indore, Vizag, Bhubaneswar, Aurangabad to make it to Hyderabad,a s it is equidistant to many cities.

Do watch out for further updates from the Drupal Hyderabad community on the same.

warm regards,

Venky :)

www.azrisolutions.com

Bangalore, Chennai, Thirvanthpuram

Posted by rahuldewan on October 6, 2011 at 10:50am

Venky, please go ahead and engage with the Chennai, Thiruvanthapuram, Bangalore communities as well. It would be great if folks from there can come over and attend the keynote by Dries. You may want to call on Shyamala (http://groups.drupal.org/user/5203) based in Chennai, and find out ways to engage with the community there - she's one of the most prominent figures from the Indian Drupal community.

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

Shyamal already in organizing committee

Posted by siva_epari on October 6, 2011 at 12:53pm

Rahul, we already in contact with Shyamala. She is also in the organizing committee of the event

Siva Kumar Epari

contacting communities...

Posted by venky.drupal on October 6, 2011 at 2:48pm

Rahul, as Siva mentioned, we have already initiated contacts and are having enthusiasts from the region join in to make the event a collective success, and Siva's contacted Shyamala as well. We'll be having more updates in the coming days on this. Also, a post has been made asking inputs from various communities in the region. There already are many inputs coming from Benguluru and Chennai...and we expect many more.

www.azrisolutions.com

Drupal Camp Delhi 07 No : Updates

Posted by rahuldewan on October 6, 2011 at 6:23am

Thursday, 06 Oct

JNU auditorium is confirmed to be available, and booked (formal paperwork will be started this Friday). Auditorium seats about 250 people (which we feel should be good enough for the event).

2 lab rooms for Code Sprints available as well. Beautiful lawn in front (just needs to be tidied up a bit, which perhaps us volunteers can help organise); this can be used for networking, working, cod-sprints (Nov is going to be quite pleasant out in the open in Delhi).

High-speed wi-fi available in the whole complex.

Sponsors' publicity needs to be limited to T-shirts, Bags,; and perhaps some inconspicuous printing on the main Event Banner (Drupal Camp Delhi).

Thanks,
Rahul

--
www.srijan.in

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

Thanks rahul :-)

Posted by nmudgal on October 6, 2011 at 7:05am

Thanks rahul :-)

Any formal web site for this ?

Posted by dgoutam on October 7, 2011 at 6:50pm

Rahul please publish any point of web contacts to get updates or tweeter a/c so that we could track what is going on .. I am not from Delhi but willing to help in any way I can ... please make it professional enough ...

Hi Guys

Posted by anil614sagar on October 6, 2011 at 3:47pm

This is Anil Sagar from Bangalore. It's a heartbreak for us not including Bangalore (Silicon Valley of India) in the Dries trip.

I would like to attend Drupal camp @ Hyderabad and be part of code sprints, training, all the exciting things happening around Drupal. Excited to meet Dries & Drupal community !!

You are always welcome :)

Posted by siva_epari on October 6, 2011 at 8:01pm

You are always welcome :)

Siva Kumar Epari

Each and every time i feel so

Posted by zakir.gori on October 6, 2011 at 8:56pm

Each and every time i feel so good and happy when government body use Drupal just seen Chemical Engineering dept off IIT Bombay [http://www.che.iitb.ac.in] they use Drupal. But this is right time to promote Drupal, Dries Buytaert is coming in India.
Now our main priority is how we manage everything. Hope we do our best, as pavithra.raman said : We have short listed 2 venues, IIT Mumbai and St.Andrews auditorium at Bandra. we will come to know about venue on friday or saturday. i also think we should meet some where and discuss more on how we will complete all task related to Drupal Camp Mumbai. Don't forget
“Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.”

Thanks

Any video recording for the sessions

Posted by dgoutam on October 7, 2011 at 6:52pm

Organizers any video recording plan for the sessions ?

Venue Finalized For Mumbai

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 10, 2011 at 7:38am

Hi All,
Great News. The venue has been finalized as IIT Mumbai for the Drupal Camp in Mumbai.
The session schedule is being drafted and will be uploaded soon.

Please have your friends and colleagues attend the event along with you. No Drupaler should miss this event.

~Pavithra.

This is awesome!! How many

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 10, 2011 at 8:17am

This is awesome!!

How many ppl and what all stuff can we manage? 2 parallel track sessions? Projectors and sitting? Labs for code sprint? Wi-fi? What more?

I would like to thanks all

Posted by zakir.gori on October 10, 2011 at 9:23am

I would like to thanks all people who work to arrange IIT Bombay venue specially Dr. Sumit Gala, Prof. Kannan Moudgalya, S. Sudarshan Pavithra etc. if i miss someone apology.

Thanks

projectors, audio systems all

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 10, 2011 at 8:49am

projectors, audio systems all in place.
If we need one laptop for presentations, internet will be made available for that ( after the requisite security checks ). If we need anymore bandwidth or wi-fi for everyone then, that has to be arranged for separately.

Awesome.. so that means

Posted by Sumeet.Pareek on October 10, 2011 at 9:07am

Awesome.. so that means internet access could be another aspect that we will have to hunt sponsors for.. I am thinking Reliance, DoCoMo etc.. They will have clear ROI too :-)

Won't miss...

Posted by crisscross on October 11, 2011 at 5:12am

I reside in New Delhi and it would be pleasure joining the event. Won't miss it.

Final schedule : DrupalCamp Mumbai

Posted by Sree on October 11, 2011 at 6:15am

Day 1: 9th November 2011
8:30 am - 9:30 am Registration IIT - B Room1
9:30 am - 10:00 am Opening Note, Drupal Song rendition by Gaurav and team IIT - B Room1
10:00 am - 11:00 am Keynote by Dries IIT - B Room1
11:00 am - 11:05 am Announcements IIT - B Room1
11:05 am - 11:30 am Tea Break Refreshments Area
11:30 am - 12:15 pm Panel Discussion IIT - B Room1
12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Session 1 By Jacob Singh IIT - B Room1
1:15 pm - 1:20 pm Announcements IIT - B Room1
1:20 pm - 2:15 pm Lunch Lunch Area

Track 1: For Beginners
2:30 pm - 3:15 pm Session IIT - B Room1
3:15 pm - 4:00 pm Session IIT - B Room1
4:00 pm - 4:20 pm Tea Break Refreshments Area
4:20 pm - 5:00 pm Session IIT - B Room1
5:00pm - 6:00 pm Showcase of drupal indian sites ( 6 sites * 10 mins each ) IIT - B Room1

Track 2: For advanced Drupalers
2:30 pm - 3:15 pm Session IIT - B Room2
3:15 pm - 4:00 pm Session IIT - B Room2
4:00 pm - 4:20 pm Tea Break Refreshments Area
4:20 pm - 5:00 pm Session IIT - B Room2
5:00pm - 6:00 pm Showcase of drupal indian sites ( 6 sites * 10 mins each ) IIT - B Room1

Day 2: 10th November 2011

Track 1: Code Sprint
10:00 am - 1:00 pm Code Sprint IIT - B Room2
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch Lunch Area
2:00 pm - 5:30 pm Code Sprint IIT - B Room2

Track 2: Sessions
9:00 am - 9:30 am People coming in
9:30 am - 10:00 am Opening note & Announcements, Instructions to the Code sprint IIT - B Room1
10:00 am - 11:00am Session IIT - B Room1
11:00 am - 11:15 am Tea
11:15 am - 12:00 pm Session IIT - B Room1
12:00 pm - 1:00pm QnA session with experienced Indian Developers IIT - B Room1
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch Lunch Area
2:15 pm - 3:00pm Session IIT - B Room1
3:00 pm - 3:45 pm Session IIT - B Room1
3:45 pm - 4:00 pm Tea Break Refreshments Area
4:00 pm - 4:45 pm Session IIT - B Room1
4:45 pm - 5:30 pm Closing note IIT - B Room1

Block your calenders!

Sree

Sites Ref

Posted by roshan_shah on October 12, 2011 at 1:22am

I hope publicity disclosure will be taken from the owners of indian ref sites. If there is commercial mileage being taken away by showing someone else's work and then promoting a particular company in an open source event, it may create issues in future. To be on safer side, I hope some kind of consent is taken in writing from the key stakeholders of ref sites to be displayed.

This is also I think the norm for getting site up on d.o frontpage where D.A team asks for client disclosure and approval to push it on front page.

Make sense!

Posted by shreeni2 on October 13, 2011 at 4:53am

I am agree with this.

So we could atleast know, in brief, the present points. We should have some format for submission. i.e.

Website URL:
Key features / Requirements of the clients:
Technical analysis / solution:
Issues faced:
Client testimonials if any:

And with this points that person can do a presentation.

What say?

Indian Case Studies

Posted by roshan_shah on October 28, 2011 at 9:26am

Yes, I am really looking forward to Indian Case Studies along with other sessions and am looking forward to the videos. Hopefully, they will be made available by various organizers.

Are there any plans for 8th

Posted by vivek.puri on October 11, 2011 at 7:52am

Are there any plans for 8th Nov in Delhi ?

blog | twitter| Mimir Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

There is nothing scheduled in

Posted by rahuldewan on October 18, 2011 at 7:30am

There is nothing scheduled in the community on 08 Nov. Dries and Acquia folks have personal/business visits that day.

Regards,

Rahul Dewan

CEO | http://drupal.org/marketplace/srijan-technologies
http://www.srijan.in/drupalgive | http://twitter.com/srijan

This thread is Epic :P Wonder

Posted by rajarju on October 11, 2011 at 6:17pm

This thread is Epic :P
Wonder how i missed it!

rajarju

Dries Buytaert post a new blog

Posted by zakir.gori on October 11, 2011 at 7:48pm

Dries Buytaert post a new blog entry. he wrote i am going to India.

http://buytaert.net/i-am-going-to-india#comment-49551

Thanks
zakir.gori
IRC Nick: zakirgori

Acquia and India

Posted by tom_eric on October 17, 2011 at 7:02pm

It's great to see so much support for Dries' trip to India. I was the person who insisted that he go, sooner rather than later. Visas (he has to go to Belgium to get one), family commitments and other conferences like Drupalcon and Latinoware (this week), held up the trip for almost a year, but the time is almost here. It is a "Drupal" trip in the sense that his goal is to expand Drupal usage in what could be argued is the single most important market long term for Drupal. My roots are in open source, and I have spent more than 10 years of my life traveling in and around Asia, including India. In 1998 I presented to a conference organized by the President of Korea on the future of tech. I had two themes, mobile and open source. I believe that open source is a tremendous opportunity for the emerging world to not only be involved with, but also drive much of the next 100 years from an economic development perspective.

As Acquia, we're pleased that we can help finance this trip, which would not have otherwise been possible. We wish we could have left Dries in India for a longer period of time and visited more cities (I also know and love Pune, Bangalore and Chennai) but it just was not feasible. If we can together make it a successful trip, he can hopefully come back soon, with his family (whom he hardly ever sees these days).

--------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Erickson | CEO | Acquia
O: +1 617 669 0827 | M: +1 617 669 0827

53 State St
Boston, MA USA

Thanks Tom and of course

Posted by vivek.puri on October 18, 2011 at 7:00pm

Thanks Tom and of course Dries for making this happen. Hopefully this will start of more such future events. I know Drupal community here is very keen on hosting a Drupalcon in future ;)

rgds
vivek

blog | twitter| Mimir Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Great to see activity

Posted by roshan_shah on October 28, 2011 at 9:24am

Great to see Acquia getting active in India for promoting Drupal. For long Indian Drupal developers and open source developers have been ignored and this trip would certainly open doors for many partnerships.

Indian Open Source developers have been always looked upon as tier-2 / extended arm and hence never got the rates that North American firms charge the clients. I am sure this trip and partnerships will open up new doors to many Drupal Service Providers in India and overall Drupal hourly rates will likely go up. Indian shops does need to stand up tall as Drupal Experts and not as the code crankers doing tier-2 work.

A trip to Gujarat would also have been beneficial if intent was to find new Customers. Ahmedabad is fast emerging as 'Cyber' capital in Asia with many many shops doing Web Development work for global clientele. Secondly, Gujarat is one of the most industrialized states in India with many of the Fortune 1000 companies having their base in India - no power cuts, excellent infrastructure and a very aggressive business community and state government.

And while Indian community has mixed feelings on this trip (timing, schedule, agenda, etc), I am sure if such trips are repeated at least twice a year, this will start having positive impact and start bringing Indian Drupal developers together.

Wishing you a Happy Diwali and a Very Happy New Year Tom.

Drupal Camp Mumbai - Website Offline

Posted by pavithra.raman on October 18, 2011 at 4:51am

Hi All,
We are taking the DrupalCampMumbai website offline. Check back in 20 mins to check out our new avatar.

DrupalCampMumbai site ready with new Mumbai avatar!

Posted by Sree on October 18, 2011 at 5:27am

Folks,

http://drupalcampmumbai.org is ready with our new Avatar!

Feel free to register, update your profiles, submit your sessions ....

Sree

Awesome

Posted by mukesh.agarwal17 on October 18, 2011 at 10:12am

It is awesome to see that we are live now.. And the website looks super awesome.. Har Pal, Drupal :-)

Guys, when you get a chance, please share the link on facebook and twitter (will be great if you use the tag #drcmum11).. really looking forward to meet a lot of Drupalers..

Cheers,
Mukesh Agarwal
www.innoraft.com

Har Pal, Drupal :-)

Posted by chintan4u on October 18, 2011 at 11:18am

Hey guys.
congrats for Rocking site....!
Home page banner is too good.....its reflecting mumbai's spirit..!

Any planed meeting before camp...?

Mumbaikar rocks..asalways

Posted by Hardik C on November 10, 2011 at 7:31am

Hi Chintan,

I agree with you,it's nicely created and well displayed !!
Hope,we all are gonna make this event successful with the same Mumbaikars' spirit!!

Regards,
Hardik

signature

Server problem made us lose some email addresses

Posted by mukesh.agarwal17 on November 3, 2011 at 11:59am

Hi Guys,

Some of the email addresses on the Drupal Camp Mumbai site are lost because of some server issue. Please login to the site and edit your account to make sure your email address is stored correctly.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Cheers,
Mukesh Agarwal
www.innoraft.com

Managing a Drupal firm in India

Posted by rahuldewan on November 5, 2011 at 7:55am

On the sidelines of the Drupal Camp Delhi we're organising a discussion on managing a Drupal firm in India. This invite comes in like really late for more companies that may be interested; sorry about that. The event is for Drupal firm owners / CXOs / Sr. Managers

So far the companies who have confirmed participation are:
- Srijan, Gurgaon & Dharamshala
- Ebizon (Drupal Forest), Noida
- Monsoon Consulting, Jaipur
- Azri, Hyderabad
- Tekriti Software, Gurgaon

http://drupalcampdelhi.in/program/sessions/panel-managing-drupal-consult... feel free join in. Should you need more details please reach me at +91 98102 00322.

Thanks,
Rahul

Regards,