Going to DrupalCon from Africa?

Posted by kattekrab on October 24, 2013 at 8:47pm

Hello everyone!

During DrupalCon Prague, Reinier Battenberg pulled me aside to talk about why there were so few people from Africa attending DrupalCon. Even less than in past years.

So we arranged a Birds of a Feather session to see if others were interested in seeing what we could all do to help improve this situation.
https://prague2013.drupal.org/bof/africa

That BoF was mostly just a good opportunity to start a conversation.

Who was there?
Matthew - British Council
Paolo - Six Eleven
Reinier - Mountbatten, Uganda
Ekes Kester (sp?)
Frans - OSconsultant
Daniel - John Snow Inc.
Simon - Bantanova
Willie - Angry Cactus, Tunisia
Donna - Drupal Association Board

A couple of others joined later, and I didn't catch their details...

We've made a start on gathering data on Drupal.org users who have listed an African country in their profile - and will post that somewhere when tidied up a bit more.

Here's some other rough notes from the BoF ...
1. Identify and document the use of Drupal in Africa.
2. Find the champions in local communities, connect with them, see what they're doing, what their needs are.
3. Open Source Business Models (for economic development initiatives?)
4. Importance of mobiles and tablets.

I'd invite anyone else who was at the BoF to share their thoughts... and more broadly, anyone else who is interested to ask questions, share what they know - offer ideas...

cheers
Donna

Comments

I am interested to know where

Posted by nexions on October 24, 2013 at 10:03pm

I am interested to know where this leads.

While thinking about what the

Posted by batje on October 25, 2013 at 7:28am

While thinking about what the Drupal community could do to make people in Africa feel more part of the community than they do now, I realized that it might be easier and more scalable to bring the community to Africa than to bring the African community to the North.

Africa is big (and not uniform and certainly not a country) and has great places to visit.

Why dont we set up a program to encourage people who are already active in the Drupal community to visit any place in Africa of their liking.

We make sure they get contacts of the local Drupal Community there, who will give them a taste of the local scene. The visitor takes some good DA goodies, presentations, and some proper community spirit.
Great recipy for throwing Drupal parties all over the continent.
Of course we will encourage blogging & tweeting by the visitor about the great adventures that await him or her, so as to create a good snowball effect.

And because only 1 person per Drupal party is travelling, it scales much better than flying whole groups of people to the next Drupalcon or Camp. (which we also want, I know)

We need a name for this. Anyone?

@batje I'm working on doing

Posted by willieseabrook on October 25, 2013 at 8:15am

@batje

I'm working on doing that here in Tunisia. I gave a presentation suggesting this to my hometown Wellington, New Zealand drupal group and the feedback was pretty positive, although nobody committed to coming.

I call the idea a "Drupal sabbatical". Basically, I think there's a lot of developers out there (especially consultants/contractors) who are a little bored with where they are and what they are doing (yey! i get to do another hook_form_alter!) who would be interested in taking some time out. The way I'm putting it forward to people I'm asking to come to Tunisia is:

Get a change from daily monotony
Come and work for your customers remotely from Tunisia
Mentor some students/graduates (this is very rewarding)
Drop your work days down to 3 - 4, and spend the other 1-2 contributing all those 70% finished modules you have sitting in your private repos
Do something different - learn arabic, go to the desert etc.
We (the hosts) will organise your accommodation so you can set foot in Tunisia, walk into your apartment and have a great 3 - 6 month change in your life.

I'm so much interested in this.

Posted by murpheus on October 25, 2013 at 1:48pm

I've been putting together Drupal Camp in Nigeria for four years but lately have not been able to secure sponsorship for these event. I'm very much interested in working with people to see how far this would go.

Moreso, sponsorships and grants to attend Drupalcons are never extend to Africa

Murpheus, don't give up too

Posted by batje on October 28, 2013 at 10:32am

Murpheus, don't give up too easily. We are doing a lot of events in Uganda, and the only thing we need to get together is a speaker & a room. In Uganda at least, there are a lot of public spaces (or companies) that will gladly host you. So the costs for holding an event can be 0 and you dont require sponsors.)

Yes, drinks, lunch, stickers etc etc are all a lot of fun, but they are not necessary to get together and Drupal.

(And sponsorships for DrupalCon are not targetted at Africa specific, but the DrupalCon sponsorships do not exclude anyone. For Drupal Prague, Alex from Uganda was selected. The reason he did not attend was that he would have had to travel to Addis to get a Visa for the Czech Republic, so he will attend next year.)