DrupalCon Portland BOF: Drupal in Latin America

At DrupalCon Portland, a small group got together to discuss Drupal in Latin America. We talked about the challenges and the opportunities of spreading Drupal in our region.

A Retrospect for 2013 so far

In a retrospect, the first 4 months of 2013 went amazingly well in Latin America. In 5 DrupalCamps, we were able to reach 1250 people!

DrupalCamp Colombia
Cartagena, Colombia
January, 2013
Participants: ~ 150
http://cartagena2013.drupalcolombia.org/

Drupalcamp Bolivia
Cochabamba, Bolivia
February, 2013
Participants: ~ 200
http://cocha2013.drupalbolivia.org/

Drupal Summit Latino
Loja, Ecuador
March, 2013
Participants: ~ 150
http://loja2013.dlatino.org/

DrupalCamp São Paulo
São Paulo, Brazil
April, 2013
Participants: ~ 250
http://2013.drupalcampsp.com.br/

Drupalcamp Mexico
Puebla, Mexico
April, 2013
Participants: ~ 500
http://drupalcamp.mx/

We want to highlight DrupalCamp São Paulo and DrupalCamp Mexico. They happened on the same dates, so on this week we totaled more than 700 participants in Latin America.

DrupalCamp São Paulo took place at USP (São Paulo State University). The event had about 250 participants from all over Brazil, as well as guests from Argentina and Peru. There were 35 talks covering both basic and advanced topics, including e-commerce, mobile and web services. This event happened just 4 months after what would have been DrupalCon São Paulo, demonstrating the strength and determination of the local community in overcoming challenges. Also, this event is of historical importance because it marked the foundation of the Brazilian Drupal Association, a non-profit organization with the mission of promoting Drupal in Brazil and Latin America. There is still a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy to overcome, and the whole process might take up to 3 months, but they were able to sign their Constitution and save enough money from the Camp to hire a lawyer and start the process. Also, they were able to foster new community leaders, and in fact the person who is in the front-run of the Brazilian Drupal Association is a gentleman called Edson Sales Jr., who works for the government and has many important contacts.

DrupalCamp México took place at the Cultural Center of the BUAP (Puebla's Public University). The event had 468 participants: 410 participants, 35 volunteers and 23 speakers, 10 of which were from outside of México. All in all, there were people from around 10 different countries. There were 11 workshops, 30 conferences and over 20 different kinds of beers (mainly from Mexicali and Puebla). The Mexican Drupal community is very happy to finally be waking up, specially thanks to the support of the Latin-American community that encouraged and showed the way with all the other events (Drupal Summit Latino, DrupalCamp Centroamerica, other regional camps). There is a lot of work to do, but with the help and example of the Latin community the Mexican community is on good track. México is growing and now has more people taking the lead role in the community: Manuel Encarnación, Jesús Manuel Olivas, David Flores, David Valdez. All of them being the key people organizing DrupalCamp México.

What's next

Next up, the Brazilian Drupal Community is working towards making DrupalCamp Porto Alegre a huge success. This event is being co-hosted with the 14th International Free Software Forum, where over 7000 attendees are expected. The event has got the official support from Maddog himself, so this is pretty cool:

http://linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddog...

Also, the Central-America Drupal Community is organizing the 5th DrupalCamp Centro America (yes, that's right, they are entering their 5th year)! This year the event will take place in Guatemala:

https://groups.drupal.org/node/296763

There is also a DrupalCamp being organized in Costa Rica, where they'll receive Larry Garfield as a keynote speaker:

http://camp2013.drupalcr.org/es/acerca

And finally the Latin Drupal Community is making progress on DrupalPicchu, where the local organizers leaded by Nancy has secured the venue for January 20-24, 2014:

Universidad Andina del Cusco
http://www.uandina.edu.pe/
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidad_Andina_del_Cusco

The Challenges and Opportunities

Latin America has epic dimensions. While in Europe you can drive for a few hours and you'll be able to cross several countries, to hold an event in Latin America with participants from different countries is a real challenge. Also, both North America and Europe have a MUCH better infrastructure than Latin America, so travelling is much easier and cheaper.

Latin American has an area of 21 million sq km (7,9 million sq mi).
European Union has 10 million sq km (3,9 million sq mi).
The US has 9,83 million sq km (3,79 million sq mi).
Brazil has 8,5 million sq km (3,3 million sq mi).

So roughly, the US, Brazil and European Union are about the same size. Latin America is twice as big. A trip from Mexico City to Buenos Aires is 7,400 km (4,500 miles). For comparison, a trip from New York to London is 5,600 km (3,500 miles).

To overcome these challenges, in Drupal Summit Latino 2011 the community agreed to concentrate their efforts in organizing regional Drupal events. Despite the distances, for many DrupalCamps the community has been able to bring speakers from other countries to create a healthy cultural exchange of ideas.

Other challenge that was discussed was the number of newbies at DrupalCamps, specially because these events usually take place at universities, where students are curious about Drupal. This is a great opportunity to not only satiate the curiosity of these students, but also to retain them and help them to overcome the learning curve of Drupal. One possibility is to, instead of holding just DrupalCamps, actually implement a long-term project in these universities. An example of this is what David Jeyachandran is doing at the San Agustín National University, in Peru, where he is leading a course about Drupal for a whole semester (4 hours a week). This will help solve Drupal's talent gap and foster new businesses.