Expectations for DrupalCon 2008 Boston

Things around Drupal are moving quickly. First it was the release of the major new version of Drupal, version 6.0, announced on the 13th. Last week, DC Drupallers met at the Affinity Lab, in Adams Morgan.

This week the minds of most Drupallers are pre-occupied with DrupalCon 2008 scheduled to kick-off next week in Boston.

Just like the Drupal 6.0 release, the DrupalCon 2008 in Boston is truly a milestone in Drupal’s development. It is the second large-scale, international conference since the launch of the Drupal Association in 2006 . Last fall’s DrupalCon 2007 in Barcelona hosted about 430 participants. Next week we expect to see around 750 attendees in Boston!

What I like about DrupalCon’s format is that unlike other tech conferences, DrupalCon is not just geared towards code geeks and tech nerds. Conference sessions are divided into several tracks: Marketing and Business; Design and User Experience; Site Building and Community and Core. There is also a showcase and case study contest. Some other non-technical events at the conference include: a job fair, industry networking and community social events.

Drupal achieved its fame for the short time-to-market of the solutions built on top of its flexible architecture. The roots of Drupal are in getting work done – not musing about theoretical solutions that may never see the light of the day. As such, arranging DrupalCon sessions around business verticals makes sense and is another significant change since DrupanCon in Barcelona.

The democratic, community-geared nature of Drupal shows in all aspects of the planning. Sessions at DrupalCon are voted-in by prospective attendees, rather than selected by a 3-4 person committee. This ensures that the sessions reflect what the participants are most interested.

I selected some sessions I think are well-worth checking out. Between Frank and I, one of us will probably be attending all of them . If you are planning to attend any of the same sessions, please, feel free to stop by and chat with us. We look forward to hear how people use Drupal, what they are looking for when considering Drupal. And we will be glad to share our experience as well.

Monday

• Drupal Multimedia
• Mapping business requirements to Drupal modules: a gap-fit process
• Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration: Can Drupal Shops Work Together
• Drupal and Open Laszlo: how an open source flash solution fits with Drupal
• Design on the Edge of Drupal

Tuesday

• The Future of Fields
• Performance tuning and optimization of high traffic Drupal sites
• Multilanguage Drupal: a status report and a discussion
• http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/session/themeing-theme-developer-module
• Better Drupal Interaction Design with Flex

Wednesday

• SimpleTest: Because clicking on forms is for suckers
• New JavaScript in Drupal 6: AHAH and Drag and Drop
• Creating custom workflows for Drupal applications – taking advantage of core hooks and context

Thursday

• Information Architecture to Drupal Architecture
• Popular, high traffic, and enterprise Drupal sites showcase
• Building a groups site – explore the backend of groups.drupal.org
• Zen and the Art of Drupal