Earlier this summer the Drupal Association made the decision to commit heavily to the Conference Organizing Distribution (COD) for all DrupalCons. We’re excited to announce that after a summer of activity in the COD issue queue we have launched five DrupalCon websites on the latest version of COD for Drupal 7. DrupalCon Sao Paulo 2012, DrupalCon Sydney 2013, DrupalCon Portland 2013, DrupalCon Europe 2013, and DrupalCon North America 2014. Our commitment doesn’t stop here - nearly 100% of all modifications to these websites will be accomplished through a public issue queue and released under a GPL or CC license including the DrupalCon themes.

Contribute early, Contribute often

Launching all of our conference sites for 2012, 2013, and part of 2014 allows each DrupalCon team to work together and contribute their code back to the community. The process is straightforward - each DrupalCon website is constructed from cod_support and all themes are built using DrupalCon_base theme - both are publicly available. All code or theme changes to a DrupalCon site are first checked into the public repository and then incorporated into the live site. This methodology provides a public review process, a collaborative environment, and the added benefit that any changes made to a DrupalCon website are automatically available to all Drupal Camps, Summits, Sprints, and even non-Drupal events. Learn more about how to join in. 

Massive Collaboration

In a few short weeks the COD project moved from the complete absence of a D7 branch to closing in on its first public Alpha release (expected within a week). This was the result of a massive collaboration, best demonstrated by this commit - a single patch worked on by over 7 developers. 

First we have to thank Greg Knaddison and Ezra-G for building a solid distribution from work originally created by Josh Koenig, Moshe Weitzman, and others (current and previous maintainers include: ezra-g, greggles, joshk, moshe weitzman, populist, rupl).

Traffic Management
Three months ago OpenSourcery stepped forward and generously donated the time and project management talents of Heather Klawender (uniqorn). Heather coordinated the build of DrupalCon Munich and then brought that expertise over to the COD project where she corraled a large team of staff and volunteer developers.

Getting it done

• Tyler Ward (twardnw) and Sheldon Kreger (sheldonkreger), developers for the Drupal Association, lived in the COD issue queue for weeks on end. I'm sure they still dream of the COD monster.
• Fresh off a similar project, Promet Source contracted with the Association at heavily discounted rates to support the project: Johnnie Fox coordinated Promet's worldwide development team and Brant Wynn rocked the issue queue with an impressive number of quality patches alongside Rachel Jaro (primerg) and Arnold French (dsdeiz). 
• Cafuego from Creative Contingencies jumped into the issue queue helping to create standardized user profiles. 
• Christophe Van Gysel, a Google Summer of Code student, contributed some incredible reports for Drupal Commerce. Thank you! 
• The COD sprint held at Capital Camp polished up the project with Ezra-G (ezra-g), Jakob Perry (japerry), Emilie Nouveuo (dyannenova), Joe Pontani (jpontani), Lev Tsypin (levelos), and Sean Larkin (seanberto). 
• Jakob Perry (along with Emilie Nouveuo) deserves a HUGE thank you for the special trip he took to Washington D.C. from Bellingham, Washington primarily to work on COD. Thank you!

COD isn't done yet

Starting before the DrupalCon COD project  Joe Pontani (jpontani) and the great folks at ThinkShout - Lev Tsypin (levelos) and Sean Larkin (seanberto) started on an overhaul of the registration system. This work is continuing and will be committed to the project soon. This is an enormous amount of work and will raise the profile of COD to rival many of the much more expensive registration systems in existence today. It truly is a world-class, enterprise-ready conference management tool. 

Acquia is continuing to provide support to integrate necessary changes and patches into the core project so that over the next year COD will continue to move forward and be the best face for DrupalCon and the Drupal community. We're committed to showing the world what Drupal can do. 

Wait? Where did the money come from?

This investment in COD and our community was not free. Total investment including contracts and donated time was over $30,000. A worthy investment as we not only lowered our conference costs but also released an amazing amount of great code back into the community for use at Camps, Summit, Sprints, and more. 

You made this happen! Our members and supporting partners helped to fund this project. Without your generous support this project would not have been possible. If you are not yet a member or your company is not a supporting partner, please consider joining so we can continue to invest in our conferences, events, infrastructure, and world class community. 

Thank you!