Blogs

Back in April, after DrupalCon San Francisco, Kieran Lal wrote a post for this blog with some ideas for how to effectively grow DrupalCons without losing our soul as a community. One of the key items he focused on was improving session quality. As Kieran put it,

"In order to grow Drupalcon, we need to focus on the quality of the main program. Drupal sessions are still wildly hit or miss, both in session quality and session attendance. As a community, we need to take a hard look in the mirror and raise consistency and quality of every Drupalcon session."

These thoughts have been echoed by many other folks within the community, including Mike Anello, Heather James, and Larry Garfield.

As one of the co-chairs of the upcoming DrupalCon Chicago 2011 and a permanent member of the Drupal Association, I’m writing this follow-up post to talk a little bit more about the things that we’re doing that will hopefully help improve session quality, provide more support to DrupalCon presenters, increase attendee satisfaction, and make for an overall better DrupalCon experience for long-time members of the community and newcomers alike.

But first, a little background:
Back in April, after DrupalCon San Francisco, Kieran Lal wrote a post for this blog with some ideas for how to effectively grow DrupalCons without losing our soul as a community. One of the key items he focused on was improving session quality. As Kieran put it,

"In order to grow Drupalcon, we need to focus on the quality of the main program. Drupal sessions are still wildly hit or miss, both in session quality and session attendance. As a community, we need to take a hard look in the mirror and raise consistency and quality of every Drupalcon session."

These thoughts have been echoed by many other folks within the community, including Mike Anello, Heather James, and Larry Garfield.

As one of the co-chairs of the upcoming DrupalCon Chicago 2011 and a permanent member of the Drupal Association, I’m writing this follow-up post to talk a little bit more about the things that we’re doing that will hopefully help improve session quality, provide more support to DrupalCon presenters, increase attendee satisfaction, and make for an overall better DrupalCon experience for long-time members of the community and newcomers alike.

But first, a little background:

Following DrupalCon San Francisco, at the first ever day-long Association workshop, we set about redefining our Mission Statement and Purpose. For more background on the need for this effort, please refer to Angie Byron's excellent report. After the retreat, a working group of five association members was formed to continue the work on the Mission Statement and Purpose. Now, at DrupalCon Copenhagen, the draft has been shared with the rest of the Association, debated, massaged, and today, we'd like to share it with everyone. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome. This text will eventually be voted on and accepted by the Association board. Please read some of the notes that I included following the draft which explain each line and its motivations.
Following DrupalCon San Francisco, at the first ever day-long Association workshop, we set about redefining our Mission Statement and Purpose. For more background on the need for this effort, please refer to Angie Byron's excellent report. After the retreat, a working group of five association members was formed to continue the work on the Mission Statement and Purpose. Now, at DrupalCon Copenhagen, the draft has been shared with the rest of the Association, debated, massaged, and today, we'd like to share it with everyone. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome. This text will eventually be voted on and accepted by the Association board. Please read some of the notes that I included following the draft which explain each line and its motivations.

If you are like me, you probably weren't planning to show up at DrupalCon before Dries' keynote.

Here's a reason you might want to set your alarm clock early if you are attending DrupalCon Copenhagen.

We have managed at the last minute to get Scott MacVicar from Facebook to come to Copenhagen to talk about the HIPHPOP PHP compiler.

DrupalCon is seeking a partner to enhance the current DrupalCon website to prepare for the growth of DrupalCon events. Integration and development will use the existing code base as a foundation for adding or enhancing features as outlined in the RFP.

The DrupalCon North American Regional Organizing Group is looking for input from the Drupal community to help pick the location for DrupalCon North America in 2012 and beyond.

The Drupal Association is proud to announce that several of the previously-announced contract positions to help facilitate the Drupal.org redesign and the CVS-to-Git migration effort have been filled. These positions will serve to supplement the ongoing volunteer efforts around these initiatives.

• Sam Boyer has been hired as the Git Migration Lead. In this position, he will be responsible for helping migrate Drupal.org from CVS to Git, and making all adjustments necessary to existing Drupal.org collaboration tools to support our existing centralized, patch-based work flow. You can learn more about Sam's approach to this process on his blog, and find out how you can get involved by joining the Drupal.org Git Migration Team group and following @DrupalGitGremln on Twitter.
• Neil Drumm has been hired as the Drupal.org Redesign Architect, responsible for communicating the architecture of the Drupal.org redesign and enabling contributors to implement the redesign. Neil has also blogged about what he's been working on and you can get involved by joining the Drupal.org Redesign Implementers group.
• Achieve Internet has been contracted as the lead Solr developers for the Drupal.org redesign. They're tasked with enabling Drupal.org visitors to find the information they need by implementing Solr search applications as specified in the redesign.
• 3281d Consulting has been contracted to provide development on the project, issue and release management systems to enable new functionality for the drupal.org redesign and the migration to Git.

Look forward to a full update on the progress of the Drupal.org redesign in the coming days, as well as further updates on additional hires.
The Drupal Association is proud to announce that several of the previously-announced contract positions to help facilitate the Drupal.org redesign and the CVS-to-Git migration effort have been filled. These positions will serve to supplement the ongoing volunteer efforts around these initiatives.

• Sam Boyer has been hired as the Git Migration Lead. In this position, he will be responsible for helping migrate Drupal.org from CVS to Git, and making all adjustments necessary to existing Drupal.org collaboration tools to support our existing centralized, patch-based work flow. You can learn more about Sam's approach to this process on his blog, and find out how you can get involved by joining the Drupal.org Git Migration Team group and following @DrupalGitGremln on Twitter.
• Neil Drumm has been hired as the Drupal.org Redesign Architect, responsible for communicating the architecture of the Drupal.org redesign and enabling contributors to implement the redesign. Neil has also blogged about what he's been working on and you can get involved by joining the Drupal.org Redesign Implementers group.
• Achieve Internet has been contracted as the lead Solr developers for the Drupal.org redesign. They're tasked with enabling Drupal.org visitors to find the information they need by implementing Solr search applications as specified in the redesign.
• 3281d Consulting has been contracted to provide development on the project, issue and release management systems to enable new functionality for the drupal.org redesign and the migration to Git.

Look forward to a full update on the progress of the Drupal.org redesign in the coming days, as well as further updates on additional hires.

I've found some time to investigate some drupal.org server logs and found that while everything is generally working, there are some strange things happening.

Every full hour our access stats go up by almost 150%. I looked at the IPs that produce a lot of hits over the day, but they weren't responsible for these spikes. The spike is produced by a lot of different Drupal sites that request our update data when the hour strikes.

And why? Because we tell them to! In line 239 of our INSTALL.txt we instruct people who install Drupal to request our update stats at precisely that time. A classical facepalm.

Thanks to Varnish and the generally robust drupal.org infrastructure, this isn't an actual problem, but with the continued growth of the number of Drupal sites it might become one.

The doors have closed on DrupalCon San Francisco and we have all recovered from our DrupalCon party hangovers. Well most of us have at least.

Here at the Association we learned early on how to deal with those post DrupalCon hangovers and we have lost no ground in planning the next two DrupalCon. DrupalCon Copenhagen, Denmark August 23-27, 2010 and DrupalCon Chicago March 8-11, 2011!

Our first step in planning the next conference is to evaluate how well the recent one was received. Yes that is right we listen to you, the Drupal community.

Welcome to the first of what we hope will become a series of regular updates on recent Drupal Association activities! This installment covers March and April of this year:

• On March 2, Drupal Association elections were held, resulting in the addition of several new members to the General Assembly and one new board member.
• In mid-March, Jacob Redding was hired as interim General Manager to help establish and streamline process for the Drupal Association
• In early April, the Association purchased two new Dell PowerEdge R610 servers for the Drupal.org hosting infrastructure. These servers have now been configured and deployed into the production environment.
• At DrupalCon San Francisco on April 28, members of the Drupal Association presented a session explaining the organization's roles and responsibilities and answering questions from the community. The video of this session is now available on the DrupalCon San Francisco website.
• During the closing session of DrupalCon San Francisco, the next two DrupalCons were announced. DrupalCon Copenhagen will be held August 24-26, 2010, and DrupalCon Chicago will be held March 8-10, 2011. The Drupal Association will be providing business and logistical support for both conferences.
• After DrupalCon, members of the Association's General Assembly met for a full-day retreat to discuss the mission and goals of the Association and determine areas of focus for the next year. Angie Byron posted her report on the Association site.
• At its retreat, the Association identified completion of the Drupal.org redesign implementation as its top priority for the coming year, and made the decision to hire several individuals and/or companies to supplement the work of the volunteers who have been working on the project and assist with the migration of Drupal.org's version control system to Git.
• In late April, the Drupal.org redesign theme (known as "Bluecheese") was rolled out on the Drupal Association site. If you're interested in helping out with the Drupal.org redesign, you can find out how to become involved at the Drupal.org redesign implementers group.

Welcome to the first of what we hope will become a series of regular updates on recent Drupal Association activities! This installment covers March and April of this year:

• On March 2, Drupal Association elections were held, resulting in the addition of several new members to the General Assembly and one new board member.
• In mid-March, Jacob Redding was hired as interim General Manager to help establish and streamline process for the Drupal Association
• In early April, the Association purchased two new Dell PowerEdge R610 servers for the Drupal.org hosting infrastructure. These servers have now been configured and deployed into the production environment.
• At DrupalCon San Francisco on April 28, members of the Drupal Association presented a session explaining the organization's roles and responsibilities and answering questions from the community. The video of this session is now available on the DrupalCon San Francisco website.
• During the closing session of DrupalCon San Francisco, the next two DrupalCons were announced. DrupalCon Copenhagen will be held August 24-26, 2010, and DrupalCon Chicago will be held March 8-10, 2011. The Drupal Association will be providing business and logistical support for both conferences.
• After DrupalCon, members of the Association's General Assembly met for a full-day retreat to discuss the mission and goals of the Association and determine areas of focus for the next year. Angie Byron posted her report on the Association site.
• At its retreat, the Association identified completion of the Drupal.org redesign implementation as its top priority for the coming year, and made the decision to hire several individuals and/or companies to supplement the work of the volunteers who have been working on the project and assist with the migration of Drupal.org's version control system to Git.
• In late April, the Drupal.org redesign theme (known as "Bluecheese") was rolled out on the Drupal Association site. If you're interested in helping out with the Drupal.org redesign, you can find out how to become involved at the Drupal.org redesign implementers group.

At the recent Drupal Association retreat, the Association established that its number one priority for 2010 was to complete the Drupal.org redesign. Read the report.

The Drupal Association has been keeping tabs on the progress of the all-volunteer effort. After a review of the efforts to complete the redesign, the Association identified 5 resource-constrained projects which were preventing the volunteers from being able to complete the redesign.