D8MI news

So far there were Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative meetings every second week on Wednesdays from 4pm to 5pm UTC. Some people voiced concerns about the timing, either because it did not match their time availability or it was too early or too late in the day. Also, we only have 9 weeks left before feature freeze, and things are going to (or at least should) speed up. We should keep focused and don't miss opportunities to talk about something when critical features are at risk. We still have an impressive list of things to work through.

So we held a doodle vote and according to the majority vote I set up a Friday meeting time for the weeks not covered earlier. This means the following meeting times where you can find others on the initiative to talk to about things you are working on or need help with:

• Oct 5, Fri, 3pm UTC
• Oct 10, Wed, 4pm UTC
• Oct 19, Fri, 3pm UTC
• Oct 24, Wed, 4pm UTC
• Nov 2, Fri, 3pm UTC (on one of our BADCamp sprint days)
• Nov 7, Wed, 4pm UTC
• Nov 16, Fri, 3pm UTC
• Nov 21, Wed, 4pm UTC
• Nov 30, Fri, 3pm UTC (the very last day before feature freeze!)

After this we probably return to meetings every other weeks, we'll talk about it when we get there. Essentially the Wed meetings every other weeks at 4pm UTC are the ones we already had, and we interject Fri meetings on the other weeks at 3pm UTC. If you want reminders of these events, you can sign up to the Internationalization group's events (see group events block at http://groups.drupal.org/internationalization, ical feed available there). An overall calendar of Drupal 8 initiative meetings can be found in the calendar on the top of the http://drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupal-core page which includes all these events as well as other Drupal 8 happenings.

The Drupal 8 feature freeze is on us! As of this writing, there are only 65 days to go, which is just a little over 9 weeks remaining before new features are not allowed anymore. In the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative, we have some pretty ambitious goals that involve big scale features, like general language support for the new configuration system, entity and property translation in core and much better automated interface translation management. We have been progressing pretty well, but have a lot to be done still.

BADCamp 2012 is coming up as a great opportunity to get some finishing touches on our big changes (not to postpone our current work further!). If you can make it to BADCamp, this would be a great opportunity to do a final run at the remaining pieces. So we are planning to use the BADCamp facilities to sprint throughout the event and then extend for two more days to focus on sprinting only at a nearby location (co-located with other sprints). That means I would lead a sprint from the 2nd to the 6th of November. My personal availability on the 3rd and 4th is dependent on session and booth obligations as well, although those should be the exception, not the rule.

Remember, if you need financial help, scholarship applications are open until October 1st, so make sure to apply as soon as possible (and let me know as well if you did). Everybody contributing can be eligible for a scholarship (although no guarantees)!

Currently there are Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative meetings every second week on Wednesdays from 4pm to 5pm UTC. Some people voiced concerns about the timing, either because it did not match their time availability or it was too early or too late in the day. Also, we barely have 10 weeks left before feature freeze, and things are going to (or at least should) speed up. We should keep focused and don't miss opportunities to talk about something when critical features are at risk. We still have an impressive list of things to work through.

So I'm proposing we try to set up a different meeting time (or the same meeting time if people so prefer) for the weeks not covered yet, so essentially the upcoming 10 weeks, we would have a meeting time for every week. I'd keep the existing Wednesday time for every other week (Sept 26th, Oct 10th, etc), so let's pick another time for the even weeks.

I set up a doodle to gather community opinon. Please fill in by the next meeting on the 26th, where we'll see and pick the time. The new meeting time would go effective the first week of October and then alternate with the existing Wed 4pm UTC time each week. Of course none of the existing meetings are mandatory for anyone, so if you think yet another meeting is useless, just ignore this (or read the meeting notes, IRC chatlogs are always posted shortly after the meeting).

It is already a week and a half since the DrupalCon Munich co-located sprint for the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative ended. It feels much less because most of last week was spent recovering and trying to lobby patches to get in. So it is now time to take a review of what we done and how we did.

It was a huge and active sprint starting three days before DrupalCon and ending three days after the DrupalCon sessions were over, covering the whole weekend before and after DrupalCon and including sprinting on the DrupalCon training day and the official sprint day. The biggest crowd gathered for the official DrupalCon sprint day with an astonishing four full tables for our sprint only with even more individuals sprinting at other tables. I think this was the biggest Drupal multilingual sprint ever. It was both great to get days in both before and after DrupalCon and hugely tiring. I personally struggled all week after DrupalCon to get my speed back.

Thanks to everyone involved!

First off, a sprint on this scale would not be possible without sponsors and significant on-site help. DrupalCon provided us with space on Monday and Friday, and some great food on Friday. The rest of the days would not have been doable without comm-press, dotProjects.be, Open8.se, OSINet and Acquia. The various amounts of financial sponsorships they provided paid for our weekend venue, soft drinks, sandwiches, ice cream, fruits and so on. Evolving Web sponsored DrupalCon tickets for various key contributors. Among the sprinters, Amazee Labs sent four of their developers for all days of the sprint! psegno.it also had both of their developers on site, who made great progress with key improvements. We also had Wizzlern, MD Systems and others contributing very valuable developer time. We even had a surprise dinner sponsorship from Capgemini. Christian López Espínola could not come to Munich, but decided to organize a sprint local in Sevilla, plugging in to the Munich sprint remotely, leading new people to fix multilingual issues there in person. If you need a multilingual project done, now you know where to look for experts!

Last but definitely not least, thanks for the huge help to the local organizers, especially Florian Klare and Stephan Luckow. They helped us manage collecting and spending sponsor money wisely with the Drupal Initiative e.V, prepared great sandwiches and fruit plates for us and even organized a sprinter party night with grill food. It was amazing to work with such helpful and flexible local organizers.