In-person sprints planned for the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative in 2012

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Gábor Hojtsy's picture

While we made some progress last year for better multilingual support in Drupal 8, the lion's share of the work is still ahead of us. Make no mistake, most planned multilingual features are still vaporware. There is a lot to do to improve what is in there and to add the missing functionality. Never did I see a shortage of tasks to do, much more so lack of people with dedicated time available to focus on the tasks. Therefore it looked only logical to put together a well planned series of in-person sprints with a well planned structure to gather like-minded people who want to make Drupal 8 a much better multilingual release, getting them out of their daily habits to entirely focus on Drupal 8.

Therefore I propose the following threefour in-person sprints for the foreseeable part of this year to gather and improve our codebase. I'd love if more people can come to these sprints, so I purposefully propose them for around the biggest Drupal events of the year. Also, I'm announcing these plans so that we can organize ahead of time for travel, accommodation and sprinting space for each attendee and last but not least sponsors.

Update: one day sprint in Budapest, Feb 18th

I'm also holding an in-person sprint for the Hungarian developer community in Budapest on Saturday Feb 18th. If you are interested, read the Hungarian post at http://drupal.hu/node/15357 (in short and in English, sprint times are 9am to 6pm). We'll be hanging out in #drupal-i18n so if you want to join, feel free to do so then and there. Because this is a one day sprint only and people attending the sprint will be mostly new to Drupal 8 development (experienced in Drupal development in general though), we expect to work on lower hanging fruit tasks.

Two additional days trailing Drupalcon Denver

There is already a traditional code sprint day at the end of Drupalcon Denver. While US Drupalcons are not usually flush with interest for multilingual topics, there is always a sizable set of people interested, and we are looking forward to Suzanne's and Florian's great session on the topic. So I propose we add an additional two days of sprinting for those interested in Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative, so we can continue our work. I always found the one day sprints at Drupalcons are not good to do larger scale work and having a minimum of three days makes the work much more productive.

There is of course nobody stopping people from sprinting all through the conference, as a work home-alone geek I'm more than happy to meet people and have great discussions and conversations, so I'd not plan for a computer focused coder extravaganza. I will definitely support people who do intend to work on multilingual patches throughout the conference especially if you can come to the general Drupalcon days but not extend your stay (which would be sad).

Planned dates for the Denver sprint are therefore: March 23 (Fri), 24 (Sat), 25 (Sun) 2012.

Four additional days before Drupal Dev Days Barcelona

Drupal Dev Days is the biggest developer focused gathering in Europe each year. Last year there were close to 600 signups for the event in Brussels. It is going to be a big event in an area full of interest for multilingual topics, so it is evident that we should organize a sprint around it. While not widely publicized, this year Drupal Dev Days goes to Barcelona in June, and the organizers secured sprinting space in Citilab (their very nice event facility) for the week before the event. There is no complete information about the program of the Dev Days. It might include a sprint day in itself as well.

Planned dates for the Barcelone sprint are therefore: June 11 (Mon), 12 (Tue), 13 (Wed) and 14 (Thu) 2012.

Two additional days after Drupalcon Munich

Drupalcon comes to Munich this August. Although the exact structure of the conference is not yet publicized, I'm assuming it will follow the "traditional" structure applied recently to Drupalcons with a training day, 3 days of main session program and a day of sprints. So I'm proposing a sprint again for two days after the conference. My thinking on sprinting on Drupalcon days themselves is similar to that about Denver.

Planned dates for the Munich sprint are therefore: Aug 24 (Fri), 25 (Sat) and 26 (Sun) 2012.

General notes

I understand this is a bit too much to commit to for any single person, and I realize the sprints might not have a huge overlap in attending people due to sheer availability and the compromises involved. It would be great however to have a good set of knowledgeable people to work on current issues and make great progress on getting Drupal 8 a multilingual boost.

I'm planning to post these sprints as individual events in the Internationalization group for people to be able to sign up for and communicate with attendees. I wanted to post the overall proposal first to do a reality check with people and gather general suggestions for the larger scale plan. Feedback very welcome!

Comments

Sponsors?

Kristen Pol's picture

Do sponsors help with paying for any of the expenses for someone in the sprint? e.g. DrupalCon ticket, lodging, etc.? I haven't been in an official sprint yet so I'm not sure how it works.

Thanks!
Kristen

ticket possibly covered

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Hi Kristen,

I've "applied for leading a sprint" at the Drupal Association (DA) - https://association.drupal.org/node/11649. Not that leading a sprint would require pre-announcement or approval from the DA. However, this time they hand out free tickets to sprint leads and for the sprint leads to pass on to some sprinters. I already have my ticket due to having a talk, so we'll see how many free tickets can I get if any for this sprint.

There was also the scholarships process for which you are late now unfortunately (http://denver2012.drupal.org/scholarships). Francesco who plans to be on the D8MI sprint applied and won there. That covers a lot more of your expenses. Best to keep in mind for the future I guess.

I'll try to get help with sponsors for these events, but getting sizable sponsorships with an "agressive" sprinting schedule like this might not be easy. One way to cut costs is to do couch-surfing with the local community or share hotel rooms for sprint attendees or book a flat for more people at once (if cheaper overall). The couch surfing concept worked well for us in Berlin and Montreal on previous sprints. It largely depends on the availability of accommodation with the local community.

We can discuss finer details of how do you plan to contribute to the sprint and what would you need sponsored in email.

Thanks for your interest!

Thanks!

Kristen Pol's picture

Thanks for the low-down. I thought scholarships were meant for the students... doh! I did apply to be a sprint lead (for my own module improvements) but never heard back so I assume that is a no-go. I also submitted a Features module talk but there was another similar proposal that was accepted instead. Next time I know to try for a scholarship as well!

I definitely would like to go to Denver but with the flight + hotel, etc., it is a bit pricey. If the ticket were covered, that would certainly help a lot. I will look into sharing a hotel room as well (I don't think I know anyone in Denver).

So... I guess the next step would be to see how I could help. I've learned a ton about the i18n-related modules over the last couple months. But, I've only looked at the code for some of these. Not sure if you have tasks already lined up for people to look at/tackle, but I'm happy to take a look and see what I might be able to contribute to.

Cheers!
Kristen

sprints, locals, tasks

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Well, sprint lead applicants I think did not yet get general feedback. I've asked about that recently, and was pointed back to the timeline documenting we'd get feedback later this month. So there is definitely hope there. I did not get feedback yet either.

In terms of locals, we can certainly get in contact with local Drupalers. I did not know people in cities I couch-surfed before either. They were just great Drupal people :) That might or might not be a comfortable setup for you.

In terms of the tasks, it is pretty hard to tell now what is going to be the focus point at that time. If I could tell now that means we don't make considerable progress by then, which would be sad. So the concrete tasks would be more known closer to the sprint. We'll certainly have tasks at all levels from writing / fixing / extending tests to applying patterns to code (like the language => langcode conversion going on now at http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?issue_tags=langcode), documentation tasks, like the one at http://drupal.org/node/1156576 which is open for quite long, but we can open a family of issues like that for related topics), etc. So I'm sure we can find tasks fit for people who are eager to help out.

Sounds good!

Kristen Pol's picture

Thanks for the update on sprint status and list of possible tasks... makes sense, of course! I'm very comfortable coding, testing, patching, documenting, etc., so it sounds like I could be of use.

I'll look into couch surfing and room sharing and see what the flights cost... I'll need to make a decision pretty soon. My husband said he can deal with our kids (no small task!), so that is covered ;) Though, I don't want to be gone "too" long as they've never been without me for more than 3 days before. So, if I'm coming then I will probably miss the first day or two of the sessions in order to help out with the sprint.

Thanks,
Kristen

Room share

Kristen Pol's picture

There are some Santa Cruz Drupal gals attending so we can share a room if I go. So... it's looking likely. Getting a sponsored ticket will push me over the edge (in a good way) ;) I'll see what happens with the sprint lead announcements.

Kristen

Count on me

plach's picture

I'll be in Denver and I'm trying to renegotiate my sponsorship to be able to attend the sprint days, otherwise I'll stick to my usual jet-lag-driven "computer focused coder extravaganza" (tm) pattern.

I will surely be in Munich with my businessmate (peximo). Maybe we will be able to attend to the sprint days. I have to check with him.

Wrt Barcelona, I'd possibily be of the party too. I have a couple of friends there, so my accomodation should be covered. If any sponsor could cover the trip, it would surely be easier for me to join the sprint.

sounds exciting

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Sounds exciting. Trying to help you get your scholarship extended for Drupalcon :) Thanks!

Hi, Although I have little

fastangel's picture

Hi,

Although I have little working in issues of Drupal 8 Multilingual I can attend to sprint of barcelona and surely that of munich. So You can count on me for what you need.

Regards.

looking forward to that

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Sounds great. Looking forward to meeting you in person!

Friday

cosmicdreams's picture

How late does the code sprint go for Friday? I hadn't seen this post before getting my plane tickets. Looks like I'll be missing out on Saturday and Sunday, but I could salvage some of Friday.

Do other initiatives have code sprints planned for Friday/Saturday/Sunday too?

I was hoping to be coding Drupal all through that week. Do code sprints ONLY happen during those days?

First time Drupalcon goer here, so please set me straight.

Software Engineer @ The Nerdery

code sprint times

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Well, the usual Drupalcon format is that the last day is only for code sprints, so they are the "star of the show" for that day. Usually they last at least until the facility is available, and then given how the sprinters feel, if there is a backup place to go, it can go on as long as desired :) The official sprint time is until the facility is available.

Usually people leave gradually from the sprint throughout the day, so I thought it would be important to announce the extended D8MI code sprint as soon as possible so people can plan to stay. I understand many people booked flights and hotel rooms, but I don't even have confirmed space for the extended D8MI sprint yet (I'm sure we'll find space though), so I think I've announced as soon as I could.

On sprinting on Drupalcon days, there is a coders room available usually on Drupalcons, where people can meet and do stuff. That is much more random though as people have sessions to prepare/deliver, booths to man, old friends to meet, core conversations to go discuss topics, etc. So it is much less effective compared to a focused sprint where you don't have the temptations of the Drupalcon festivities around you anymore.

I don't know yet of others doing sprints on the weekend, I heard there might be others. Some people definitely plan to just go ski :)

updated info

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

As per the interview with Drupalcon organizers at http://drupaleasy.com/podcast/2012/01/drupaleasy-podcast-72-ryans-drupal..., sounds like they are going to have a dedicated sprint room (additionally to the coders lounge) every day. We'll see how will we be able to use that. (This is not yet even mentioned on the conference website at http://denver2012.drupal.org/program)

I'll be in Barcelona

rvilar's picture

Hi Gábor

I'll be in Barcelona, because I'm one of the organizers of Drupal Developer Days and my office door is in front of the sprint spaces. Count on me!

Ramon

BADCamp

Kristen Pol's picture

If you are considering more sprints for 2012, BADCamp in Berkeley always has a large turn-out. I think it's the biggest camp in the US... last year there were about 1500 registered.

It typically runs in October.

Kristen

Free tickets!

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Hey, I just got three free tickets to hand out to Drupalcon to people who are planning to actively participate in the D8MI sprint in Denver. Any takers? Feel free to hit my drupal.org contact form: http://drupal.org/user/4166/contact

Update: also sprinting in Budapest

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Added this to the above post too:

Update: one day sprint in Budapest, Feb 18th

I'm also holding an in-person sprint for the Hungarian developer community in Budapest on Saturday Feb 18th. If you are interested, read the Hungarian post at http://drupal.hu/node/15357. We'll be hanging around in #drupal-i18n so if you want to join, feel free to do so then and there.

made into an event

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Made into an event you can now sign up to and put into your calendar! http://groups.drupal.org/node/208428

event for Drupalcon sprint

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

I also created an event at http://groups.drupal.org/node/209803 for the Drupalcon sprint. Please sign up there so we have a better idea of the number of people expected. Thanks!

Barcelona sprint event

Gábor Hojtsy's picture

Created an event for the Barcelona sprint at http://groups.drupal.org/node/221944, please sign up there! Thanks.

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