drupal

Alternative title: What every new Drupal developer should know

Over the past few years I've been teaching various Drupal classes ranging from introductory courses to module development courses for seasoned developers. In fact what lit a fire under me to write up this entry was an upcoming course I'm doing with Chapter Three December 14-18th in San Francisco. I'm my classes nearly every student has asked me a variation of the same question; What do I need to know?

If the student was a beginner I'd point them to one of the numerous Top X Drupal modules, such as Lullabot's Top 80, or direct them to review the awesome site showcases up on drupal.org. If the student was a developer (or aspiring developer) the answer was never as concrete. I would explain the concept of a hook, rattle off a few hooks I thought were important, point them to greggle's (or GVS's?) awesome Cheat sheet, tell them about t(), hook_menu, explain how db_query() worked, and then direct them to http://api.drupal.org. Being the geek I am this wasn't good enough for me so I set out to find out what the top hooks and functions were. I wanted something concrete.

As the first major budgeting process the Association undertook it was a bit of a long and mildly painful process. However we work out the kinks, set our goals, priorities and creating awesome working teams. Check out the newly published 2009 budget!. As always if you see something interesting and want to get involved contact us.

Another Drupalcon has come and gone but our work is not over. A dedicated team is actively at work on Drupalcon Paris and another team is being formed to put on Drupalcon 2010. Drupalcon is built by and is for the community. They are what you want them to be. Help us shape the future of Drupalcon by taking a few minutes to answer the questions in the Drupalcon Survey.

Are you presenting at Drupalcon D.C? Rock it!

Drupalcon D.C is nearly upon us and the registration is slammed shut full. The D.C team found extra room released a few more tickets and hired white gloved people to shove everyone into rooms Japanese Subway style. This is going to be the largest and most packed Drupalcon ever. This is your chance to address hundreds and thousands of Drupalers about your module/API/technique/process or <Insert name of your session >. Put your best foot forward and rock your session.

Drupalcon has grown from a small conference for a few folks to a much larger conference with hundreds and, possibly, thousands of attendees. The benefits of a bigger conference is that we reach out to a larger audience and introduce more people to Drupal and to its development. A larger conference, however, takes more time to plan and prepare for. In order to give conference organizers the time they need the Drupal Association has decided on the following deadlines

I just posted the announcement for the Drupalcon Schwag Swap. I have been talking about it with people for quite some time but nows its official. I want to meet people from all over the world at Drupalcon D.C and come home with stickers/buttons/shirt from their communities. I think its absolutely awesome how large and diverse the Drupal community has become. Lets meetup and swap!   Here is the description, theBoF session is listed here.  ------------

Do you want to a Drupalcamp in your town? How about having a nice Drupal meetup group?
If you have been curious what it takes to run a Drupalcamp, Code sprint, Drupal Jam, or Meetup come join us at Drupalcon D.C March 4th to 7th. Currently there are 3 sessions proposed for the conference that are designed specifically for current and future Drupalcamp and meetup organizers.

Drupalcon North America has been announced and will be held in Washington D.C from August 4th to the 7th, 2009. Ticket prices have been announced as well as the ticketing scheme. Frequent Drupalcon goers probably noticed something new at Drupalcon Szeged, a tiered pricing scheme. In Szeged we started ticket prices out at 80 Euros and incrementally raised them to 250 Euros on the day of. In Szeged this was based on timeframe. Tickets purchased in June were priced at 80 Euro, a month later prices raised to 125 euros and so on until the day of the conference.

In D.C we did something similar but based this time it is based on actual ticket sales.

China Open officially started today. China Open is an initiative to help encourage the use of Open Source and collaboration methods with the developers in China. My good friend John is the man behind the scenes there and has really pulled off something quite impressive.