DrupalCampChina 2013 announcement

We sent poster design to print last evening. So, this session won't be on the poster, but I will mention it at the beginning of the event; also, please come early in the morning to find me, so we can have a better arrangement on room and time.

Thanks again for presenting!!

Sypl你好！

谢谢你提出这个有意思的想法。非常抱歉回复晚了(Drupal中国应开始前的最后一分钟了)，你大概也猜得到我们在忙着组织最近的一些活动。

很高兴看到一些本地社区的成员积极地参与活动，尝试贡献。

需要做的工作非常多，最近几个月我们也都一直在组织/举办Drupal社区活动以改进本地社区的现状。

我希望你可以关注一些我们正在做的每月活动：

• Group改版，使内容导航更清晰(针对新人)
  
  添加 Wiki 资源页： 资源 Resources (索引页)，仅中文。
  
  请看 中文文档站 / Centralized Documentation in Chinese了解更多，尤其是：
  

  这个网页将提供最大的便利，即使很小的变化也视作贡献。因此我们建议创建一个自由、可编辑的内容索引页，在Documentation Wiki页面之间互链(这不会花很多时间，反而有利于项目持续推进)。

• 目前正在进行 Group页排版和视觉设计，即将更新(待 DrupalCamp China 2013 举办完毕之后)。已经翻译替换 菜单链接 ( Group 首页头部位置) 。
  
  更新的内容包括Group logo、event logos、快速链接(订阅ical 、从NYC群借鉴的通过直接链接webchat进入的 IRC 、中国社交工具等)。
• Drupal 全球培训日:
  
  参加Drupal Association组织的四年一次的培训， 提供精良的课程。请看即将举行的2013年6月14日Drupal上海培训日/ Drupal Training Day on June 14, 2013 in Shanghai。
• Drupal 协同贡献聚会
  
  下一场在4月20日举办，请看 上海Drupal协同贡献聚会 - 2013年4月20日 / Drupal contribute workshop SH - April 20, 2013以及Drupal协同贡献聚会：活动说明，我想这跟Drupal Ladder是非常好的搭配。
  
  这是我们的未来计划之一，它也才刚开始，我们希望逐步推进，而不是一次性给太多，因为参与者们还远远不能贡献 (甚至是ticket)。我们收到大量积极回应，这些回应来自最近第一场活动20多位参与者、同时进行的两场培训(针对不同技术水平/提供不同语言)、一些主要模块维护者 (Views Slideshow, Nice Menus, Block Class, Reroute Email, Chinese Social Networks Authentication (CSNA)等)，我们仍希望能放慢脚步做好这些事情(例如很多我们本地的社区成员因为语言不通都不知道Code Sprint是什么， 所以我们想可以从最基本的和Drupal Group正在进行的事情做起，然后再逐步深入)。
  
  我们还没有确定是否可以向线上参与者开放，这将会在今后的活动中进一步考虑。

但是，我们现在碰到的最大的障碍是(所有中文社区组织者可能都会遇到的问题)：

当涉及到本地社区支持时，总是不能越过语言障碍。

我们的本地社区有许多非常好、有价值的Drupal程序员，但是他们现有的英语水平阅读和书写都非常慢，起步的时候必须阅读英语资料、参加英语培训，使他们不能真正的加入Drupal开发。

所以在进行以上策划的时候，我们更偏向于站在中文用户的角度考虑， 总是将中文内容放在英文前。所以我们会尽量提供中文内容，如中文文档站 / Centralized Documentation in Chinese、 Add i18n support to api.drupal.org、 Multilingual documentation、协同贡献聚会和相应的Wiki等。

我们的想法是，高级程序员应该已经通过各种方式贡献过(否则他们就不能称之为高级)。那么我们的目标群体其实是那些初级Drupaler，他们从未贡献过任何代码，没有审查代码、没有测试、没有报告过，开发技能停留在非常初级的水平上。经验证明，影响这些开发者贡献的最大障碍即是语言问题，缺乏完整的中文文档清楚地解释怎样贡献、怎样参与，缺乏优秀的中文指导者。

我非常乐意和大家一起讨论怎样合作为同一个目标努力。希望你能加入我们的Drupal协同贡献聚会，帮助我们组织其他 Drupal Ladder相关的活动。

我建议在你的sessionI 当中/之后讨论我们如何利用协同贡献聚会、文档贡献 (我们希望在 资源 Resources可以有一些Wiki 页面用中文介绍Drupal Ladder)、 Events、Code Sprints等合作。

任何时候你都可以联系我，我很乐意和你进一步讨论，希望通过讨论可以为我们本地社区增添更多价值。

如果您有任何问题、评论、想法、不同意见、推荐或建议，请留言给我，我可以提供更多信息。

再次感谢您参与本地社区贡献。

期待明天见到你。

Hi sypl,

Thanks a lot for proposing such an interesting topic and sorry for the very late reply (last minute before DC China 2013), but I guess you would understand we have been kept really busy with the organization of this upcoming event.

We are very happy to see members of our local community stepping out into trying to bring more adhesion and contributions from our local communities.
I would definitely agree that there would be a lot of work to do and we have already started working in many directions, for months, to try improving the current situation.

I just wanted to attract your attention on a couple of very concrete initiatives we have started on a monthly or on-going basis:

• Rework of Groups' layouts for better/clearer identification (target: new-comers/beginners)
  Added a Wiki Resources page: 资源 Resources (which is only really supposed to be an index), to be entirely in Chinese.
  See 中文文档站 / Centralized Documentation in Chinese, for more information about the idea behind this page, in particular:

  for maximum simplicity, minimum changes/features, we suggested to create a freely editable index page from which we could simply link Documentation Wiki pages from pages to pages (does no harm, costs not much in terms of time to setup or solution and allows us to move on)

   

• Currently working on the Group layout and Visuals and we should be integrating our changes to the Groups very soon (once the heat around DrupalCamp China 2013 cools off a bit). We've already got group menu links (at the top of the Group Home Page) translated and in place.
  Changes to come include Group logo, events logos, Quicklinks (Subscribe to ical for events, IRC channel direct access through direct link webchat inspired from NYC Group, China community tools, etc...).
   
• Global Training Days:
  Participating to the official Drupal Association initiative to provide trainings four times a year, with a very well defined curriculum. See upcoming sessions in Shanghai: 2013年6月14日Drupal上海培训日/ Drupal Training Day on June 14, 2013 in Shanghai.
   
• Drupal Contribute Workshops:
  Next session at 上海Drupal协同贡献聚会 - 2013年4月20日 / Drupal contribute workshop SH - April 20, 2013, also see Drupal Contribute Workshops: activities, I guess this is really where we would probably have the best match and need of integration with the Drupal Ladder.

  This is certainly part of our future plans, since this event is still kind of fresh around here and we would rather keep this moving really step by step, steadily rather than bringing too much at once/overwhelming participants that are still light years away from concretelly being able to contributing anything (even tickets, for example). Although we got a tremendously positive feedback from our last sessions with over 20 participants, multiple training sessions in parallel (for different levels/languages), several module maintainers of major Drupal modules (such as Nice Menus, Views Slideshow, Reroute Email, Block Class, Chinese Social Networks Authentication (CSNA), etc...), we would still prefer to keep all this moving very carefully/slowly (For example, most of our local community members wouldn't have any clue what a Code Sprint would be, mostly due to the language barrier, so we thought we could already start with the basics and what's been running on GDO for a while... then step by step get to a wider scope).
  We haven't completely settled yet on our capacity to open the Workshop sessions to online participants, but this is surely something we would be looking at in much deeper details at our next session.

However, I would still like to share with you a major obstacle we have all encountered (all organizers in all Chinese language groups):
When it comes to working towards gaining more adhesion from the local community, sooner or later, we necessarily face an infinite barrier of languages.

In particular, our local community counts many very good and valuable Drupal programmers, however their English language skills are at a very slow reading or writing level, and the barrier for them to really enter/participate in the Drupal development at the begginning would be much greater if they had to necessarily go through English resources or trainings.

Therefore, we have made an implicit choice and assumption, for the whole strategy outlined above, to always keep Chinese the first priority. Thus, the 中文文档站 / Centralized Documentation in Chinese, Add i18n support to api.drupal.org, Multilingual documentation, Contribute Workshop and corresponding Wiki, etc.... trying to make things as accessible as possible to the Chinese community.

The idea behind this assumption is mostly that Advanced developpers/Drupalers should have already contributed to Drupal in various ways (otherwise, they wouldn't be considered advanced or senior), which means that our target would mostly be really beginners and people who have never really contributed whether code, reviews, testing, reporting, at least at a very basic level. Unfortunately, experience has proved that perhaps the biggest obstacle for these developpers to contribute would be around the language barrier, accessing to Chinese resources which clearly explain how to contribute and participating to events entirely in Chinese with mentors guiding them towards more contributions.

We would certainly be happy to discuss how we could all join our efforts together towards working in the same direction/goal. We would be delighted to have you participating at our Drupal Workshop sessions or perhaps help organizing specific new events that would really focus around the Drupal Ladder.

I strongly recommend we try to hook up at/after your session to try discussing how we could potentially collaborate on this through the Workshops, Documentation efforts (we would love to see some Wiki pages created entirely in Chinese about the Drupal Ladder added at 资源 Resources), Events, Code Sprints, etc....

Feel free to contact me directly at anytime, I would certainly be glad to discuss all of that with you in more details, wich would hopefully result in bringing great value to our local community.

Please let me know if you would have any questions, comments, issues, objections, recommendations, advice, or concerns on any aspects mentioned in this reply, I would surely be glad to provide more information.

Any feedback, comments, replies, reactions, questions or suggestions would be highly appreciated.
Thanks again very much to all in advance for your interest, involvement in our local contributions and community.
We're all so much looking forward to getting together tomorrow.
Cheers!