If you're anything like me after spending a couple of days talking about Drupal my fingers start to get a little bit twitchy and I just want to sit down and write some code or review a patch. So following the awesome DrupalCamp Twin Cities on May 18-19, 2012 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, Jess (xjm), Tim Plunkett (tim.plunkett) and Joe Shindelar (eojthebrave) will be running a sprint aimed at helping anyone and everyone get involved in Drupal core development.
If you want to contribute to Drupal core but aren't sure where to start, this is your chance to get in-person training and mentoring from friendly, experienced core contributors. If you've already started to work on core, this is your chance to meet other contributors, hang out in person, and work on manageable tasks in the Drupal core queue. The goal is to help you help with core.
What to expect
We'll kick things off at 10 in the morning with an introduction and some training, and then start sprinting on core issues. Feel free to either drop by and work on just a couple tasks, or to stay and sprint with us all day!
We will have a list of issues already perpared and help to match up people with issues that are right for their skill level and areas of interest. This way we can get down to business and not have to spend to much time just trying to track down appropriate issues.
What to bring
1. An interest in doing something awesome.
2. A laptop
If you're going to be participating in the sprint you'll probably want to have some sort of local development environment setup in order to create and/or test patches. Don't have one already? You can get one setup ahead of time by downloading and installing one of the various [L]AMP stack installers (WAMP, MAMP, or XAMP), or check out the Acquia Dev Desktop for an easy point-and-click installer.
You'll also want to make sure that you have Git (for version control and creating/applying patches) and a code editor installed as well. (Sublime Text 2 is a free and cross-platform code editor if you don't have one installed already.)
Here are a couple helpful videos that will walk you through getting your local environment setup.
Mac: http://drupalize.me/videos/installing-mamp-web-server
Windows: http://drupalize.me/videos/installing-wampserver
Linux: http://drupalize.me/videos/installing-web-server-ubuntu
Drupal.org has some good documentation on installing Git.
Don't worry, if you're not set up ahead of time or having trouble we can pair you up with someone that will help get you sorted out.
3. I hear xjm works better under the influence of chocolate ...
Already a battle-hardened contributor?
Don't worry there's plenty you can do to help too. We could use assistance from people that already know the ropes. Know how to apply a path with Git? Great! You're already one step ahead of 3 other people. If you want to help we would love your assistance and can pair you up with others that need help learning to apply a patch, locating documentation, or doing their first patch review. Just let us know what you're interested in doing.
Time & Location:
We'll start sprinting at 10 a.m. (feel free to show up anytime after 9:30) and continue until 5 p.m.
The Nerdery
9555 James Ave S., suite #245
Bloomington MN 55431
Map: http://g.co/maps/cuf8m
Please note that The Nerdery is NOT within walking distance of the U of M where the camp itself is being held – so like, considerably off-campus. Ask around at DrupalCamp to hitch a ride – organizers will try to facilitate transportation. The Nerdery has not yet perfected teleporting but stay tuned.
If you're intereseted in attending please sign up so we can make sure we've found plenty of