A group for discussion of creative funding and business models to provide sustainability for developers contributing to Drupal. More »
Paying for the Plumbing: Group Purpose
It's easy to make a living using Drupal. It's far more difficult to make a living building Drupal. At present the community relies largely on volunteer time, a few generous companies that have the ability to subsidize people's time, or the rare case where one organization is willing to foot the bill for the first copy cost. But increasingly, we all depend on "tools to build tools", such as Fields, Views, Drupal core enhancements, and other frameworks or API's that make our work point-and-click. How do individuals and organizations make the building of Drupal's plumbing sustainable?
Read moreSnowball Charter
Snowball: Getting projects rolling! Coordinating community initiatives in Free Software and beyond. (Sign up for updates on Snowball.)
We can realize the huge potential in the gap between desired projects that individually people and organizations in our communities do not have the capability or resources to make happen— but collectively do.
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Change the name and refocus this group?
With the recent launch of https://www.drupal.org/project/funding, the need for such a group is much greater than when it launched. Would it make sense to rename and refocus into more of a working group? How about doing the following?
1) Change the name of this group to SustainDrupal
2) Review, update and incorporate elements of this Snowball charter into SustainDrupal
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Come learn about Drutopia - Drupal as a Service - A framework for an ecosystem of free software distributions
August is here, let's celebrate Drupal! Why? - do we need a reason?
While there is a regular monthly meetup there is also a mission to build a Drupal as a Service full featured distribution of Drupal for organizing and campaigns. There is NationBuilder and other proprietary tools that are available, but why not a Drupal solution?
Come learn about the Drutopia distribution and how grassroots groups will be able to easily create a Drupal 8 site with pre-configured selectable features and the SAAS hosting option. Drutopia.org
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Request for input: What should our next Drupal boot camp look like?
Droplabs is planning its next Drupal boot camp and we're asking for help from you to make it even better than last time. If you have any interest in applying for the next boot camp — or sending developers from your company or organization — please take a look at the following posts:
What would you like our next boot camp to focus on?
https://groups.drupal.org/node/416448
Would you pay / donate to attend our next developer boot camp?
https://groups.drupal.org/node/416443
GitTip - Ongoing micro-funding and distributed genius grants
I just happened across what seems to be a pretty cool project for micro-funding: GitTip. There is a community for Drupallers https://www.gittip.com/for/drupal/ but they require at least 150 members before they will show the members of the community. Drupal had 20 community members this morning and is now up to 30 which is great as percent growth, but pretty small overall.
I encourage folks to sign in there (uses twitter or facebook or github Oauth).
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Marketing Fundraising Brainstorm
The Drupal Branding And Marketing Committee {BAM} needs your help!
We are trying to come up with Fundraising Ideas and we would like to hear ideas from you. These ideas must be NEW and not pull funds away from existing sources that already support the Drupal Association.
Where Does The Money Go?
BAM is working on some BIG goals. You can participate in the conversation here on GDO. Right now, we are working on several initiatives that each would require a financial outlay. Plus, we are planning for a significant investment throughout 2013 for the launch of Drupal 8. Our ideas include the purchase of print ads, video production, swag, exhibit booth materials, printed material, professional analysis services, and much more.
Who Is / What Is BAM?
BAM is a grassroots committee, led by Ben Finklea, that exists under the DA and consists of at least one board member and an international cast of independent Drupalers, shop owners, marketers, designers, themers, and coders, who volunteer their time, talents, and resources to place Drupal in the best position possible for future growth via Branding and Marketing. Read more about the creation of BAM in the official announcement by the DA. https://association.drupal.org/about/staff/marketing-branding-committee
Paying for the Plumbing: Snowball initiative for a Drupal crowdfunding platform
Ever wanted a place where you could simply offer to pay to get something you need in Drupal done?
Please donate to make that place. (Yes, it's using a different crowdfunding platform, one that really lacks features for coordination, but is passing on all money raised -- if we reach the minimum -- without even deducting credit card fees.)
And spread this link! http://tilt.tc/usLL Is there enough interest in community funding of Drupal software to fund the software to coordinate this-- in just a few days? Also, if you are available to work on this project in DrupalCon Denver, we've got a DrupalCon ticket for you! Or if you're interested in working on this later, contact me for that, too!
Read moreSponsor the LA Drupal Association
In 2010, local Los Angeles-area organizers formed an unincorporated association named "LA Drupal Association" that is officially recognized as a legal entity by the State of California. This means that Los Angeles-area Drupal user groups now have the ability to receive donations and sponsorships large and small to help members produce the events, trainings and conferences that local Drupal user groups in Los Angeles are known for, as well as cover ongoing infrastructure and promotion costs.
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Better recognition for businesses?
At Drupal Down Under a few weeks ago, Dries was asked a question about how to get companies more enthusiastic about staff spending time on Drupal core.
One of the points he mentioned is that currently, people get recognition for contributions. For example, everyone who's spent a bit of time in the community knows people such as merlinofchaos, sun, chx etc..
Read moreWhy Snowball?
Earl Miles states the need to raise funds for Free Software clearly:
It works when your employer uses the software you create. It's a lot tougher when you want to create something that no single employer is going to get enough value out of to justify the total cost.
That's where you want something that allows you to pool customer's money together.
Dries Buytaert sees a need also:
Read moreSnowball: Getting Community Initiatives Rolling- Coordinating and Funding Drupal Projects - 2011 November Sprint Day 1
At the undisclosed location of the Pirate Ship in Somerville we came together to follow up on many discussions at Drupal events over the years and launch into coding-- and spent the day discussing.
Day 1 Participants:
Boz Hogan
Mary Maguire
Allie Micka
Jer Davis
RJ Steinert
Nathaniel Hoag
Mitchell Tannenbaum
Benjamin Melançon
Stefan Unterhauser (he came with the place)
After a great deal of talk, most agreed that a unique capability we can bring is:
Community Driven Project Planning
Read moreUser stories (specifications) and requirements for Snowball: Getting Community Initiatives Rolling
User stories
- Wendy the Webmaster has a great idea for an improvement to Drupal core form validation that would benefit her and many others in her position. She proposes it and many other site builders pledge support, and eventually a developer familiar with core comes across this and fills in the blanks to make it an actionable funding item (promising a patch and if possible a work-around module, as there are no guarantees something can get into core).
Tools to Help Coordinate and Fund Community Initiatives: The Snowball Code Sprint
Thanks to the leadership of Allie Micka and R.J. Steinert, the Snowball initiative to provide tools for coordinating and funding Drupal initiatives is coming to the Boston area this long weekend for its first code sprint.
We will focus on building a working alpha so we have something real to share for feedback, to refine, and to build process, message, and governance around.
We'll be working on Friday November 11th, Saturday the 12th, and Sunday the 13th starting at 10am on Friday and no later than that on the weekend days in Somerville, Massachusetts.
If you can dive into helping build this, contact rjstatic or contact mlncn for directions to the venue.
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Building a Drupal.org deployment pipeline
Leading Drupal's migration from CVS to Git made something eminently clear to me (and eliza411, the migration's PM): there's a lot that's broken about how we manage, maintain, and improve drupal.org (and its subsites). Since then, I've been gradually chatting up more and more people with the idea that we could build a structured, participatory model for updating and adding new features to drupal.org. And that if we do it right, it could become a best-practice model for (Drupal) site management (open, participatory) workflows.
Read moreConference Organizing Distribution (COD) code sprint on October 8 & 9, 2011 in Downtown Los Angeles #CODD7
Join members of the Los Angeles Drupal user group in the Drupal community's second code sprint for updating COD (Conference Organizing Distribution) to Drupal 7. This is a joint event produced by LA Drupal's Pro Drupal 7 Development book study group and Droplabs, a Drupal coworking / hackerspace in Downtown Los Angeles.
Join us in person or online!
During the code sprint, we'll be gathered in the #drupal-cod IRC channel and all are welcome to join us. The event organizers and attendees will also be checking Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @UseCOD or use the #CODD7 hashtag.
About COD, the Conference Organizing Distribution
COD is used for building conference and event websites. It's built on Drupal, the highly-regarded open-source web framework and content management system, and each component is independent of each other. This means you can disable the features you don't need, whether it's selling tickets or listing sponsors or allowing session voting.
Just like Drupal, COD is free and can be used by anyone. There is a very long list of sites that use COD, from the DrupalCon Chicago and DrupalCon London conferences to RIACon, Brisbane Innovation Camp, the Meego Conference, the Bay Area Drupal Camp, and our own Drupal Design Camp LA.
Here are just some of the great features in COD:
- Session submission, voting and moderation
- Session schedule grid
- Personalized attendee schedules
- Easy event registration and attendee management
- Community features (forums, friending, etc.)
- Easy sponsors management
We're already using COD on Drupal 6 for the Drupal Design Camp LA 2011 website and we plan to use COD on Drupal 7 for Drupal Design Camp LA 2012. COD is not yet ready for this but we're not afraid of rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty.
Help us improve COD and you'll also be helping numerous Drupal contrib projects, including Location, Signup and Commerce, as well as other organizations and conferences, such as DrupalCon, SCALE 10x and DrupalCamps around the world including our own Drupal Design Camp LA.
COD on Drupal 7 Battleplans
- Find a venue (done! we're meeting at Droplabs)
- Gather interest and sponsorships
- Set up a hosting environment for group collaboration
- Add contributors to our version control system
- Download COD, set up the team with tools, including Quickstart
- Get up to speed on work that has already been done:
- San Diego COD sprint on May 7, 2011
- Notes on Lullabot's Etherpad instance at http://lullapad.com/h12fYizetk
- Upgrading COD to Drupal 7: Sprint 1 - San Diego
- COD roadmap
- Porting COD to Drupal 7
- COD on Drupal 7 How-to
- Debate Commerce vs. Ubercart 3 (just kidding: the COD roadmap lists Commerce)
- Code! Code! Code!
- Update the COD issue queue with current progress
- Write a summary for Planet Drupal to thank our sponsors and contributors, aid any future CODD7 sprints, etc.
Pre-sprint discussion and planning
We've already begun discussing and planning several parts of the code sprint during the first 15 minutes of each Pro Drupal 7 Development book study group meeting. To join the conversation, click the Signup button below, post a comment below, contact any of the event organizers at the top of this page or just drop by the Pro Drupal 7 Development study group some Monday night.
The attendance of the book study group is already capped for this book group cycle but you're more than welcome to drop by, talk with us and work on your projects at Droplabs alongside other Drupaleros.
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Drupal Dojo Session: Drupal's Payment API and how we built crowd-source funding functionality in Drupal
Drupal's Payment API -- http://drupal.org/project/pay -- is a simple, flexible and pluggable payment transaction handler for Drupal. Advantage Labs has recently extended the functionality of the Payment API and built a crowdsource pledge-funding feature using contributed Drupal modules.
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Market rates for development work
There's an interesting thread on linkedin discussing market rates for Drupal development work (freelance, contract, etc.) here: http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionI...
I'm not sure what conclusion can be drawn, other than the obvious one - rates vary widely depending on location, skills required, etc, etc. Still, the discussion makes worthwhile reading IMHO.
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Exploring solutions: Supporting Sponsorship for Drupal Contribution
There are people who would like to spend more time doing Drupal contrib work but who cannot financially justify taking time off commercial work or minding the kids (or other demands of life) in order to do so. These are often highly skilled and experienced members of the Drupal community.
There is an opportunity to make it financially (and otherwise) viable for these contributors to choose to do Drupal contrib work by helping them find commercial sponsorship, primarily from companies who benefit from Drupal being a better product and a stronger more active community.
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Can Drupal Go Pro? Products, Marketplaces, and SaaS
Robert Douglass initially crated a lot of buzz about this topic via his now famous Tweet several weeks ago. The purpose of the tweet was to croudsource a community response to a concept and to build tension for his upcoming presentation in Brussels about the topic.
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