code sprint

While Drupal improves its multilingual features with every version and there were numerous improvements with Drupal 6 and 7 especially, there are still lots of things for which contributed modules are needed, and multilingual support is not consistent (neither in some cases usable) with these modules. There is sizable customization and glue-code building required.

Karsten Frohwein thought to take these problems and organize a group of contributors to take a deep look at them, conceptualize on better solutions and do actual implementation in a concentrated environment. Thankfully, as with great ideas, he got lots of support from companies and individuals interested, so the Internationalization SprintCamp is a go between the 11th and 15th of May 2011 in Berlin. Key contributors are being confirmed one by one, so this event is promising to be a great and high energy one for improving multilingual features and fixing bugs. There is place for up to 20 people, so we are looking for developers who can join and help. Contact Karsten through the Impressum page or leave a comment here with your contact information (such as drupal.org username or user URL).

The sprint is sponsored by the German Drupal-Initiative e. V., Comm-press, undpaul Drupal Development, Acquia and others. We are planning to do couch-surfing to reduce costs and increase fun. If you'd like to help sponsor, contact Karsten.

Ps. we will hang around in the #drupal-i18n IRC channel throughout the sprint, and distribute information and guidance for anybody who'd like to join and help virtually. See http://drupal.org/irc for more information on Drupal's IRC channels.

With Drupalcon San Francisco just a few days away, being another great event including two days of "pure coding" and a ChX coder lounge each day for those who are inclined to join, I figured it would be a good idea to share some tips if you are about to work on Drupal 6 issues. Given the close to 2700 attendees coming, I don't know how many to expect on the code sprint days right before and after the conference, but I guess there will be people with diverse backgrounds as usual.

I am way behind in blogging about DrupalCon Boston 2008, which was truly a blast. It was the biggest and best organized Drupal conference so far, and was put together in record time. I was happy to come early to Boston and stay a bit more with people who had their flights cancelled, and others who simply live in Boston to tourist around the city as well.

The conference provided lots of opportunities to be productive on-site in the BoFs and on the code sprint which followed the conference. Honestly, I intended to work on some of my core modifications for filters which (unfortunately) are still not in patch form, but without network connection for a considerable time, I needed to look into what I have on my computer, and figured I should work on the top priority contrib issue in my projects, as identified at the BoFs. Read on to find out more.