Open source at DrupalCon Denver

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Opensource.com

March 19 will be here before you know it. Thousands of people will flock to Denver, Colorado for a week of learning and networking with Drupal community members. DrupalCon is the official conference of the Drupal community and draws an international audience. If you are not familiar with Drupal, it’s an open source content management platform that powers millions of websites--including opensource.com and whitehouse.gov.

Now that the agenda is finalized, I decided to take a look and see which sessions are most interesting. More importantly, I wanted to see how big of an impact open source has at this years event. I didn’t even get past the keynotes before the open source influence was obvious.

Almost all the keynote speakers have ties to open source. Dries Buytaert, creator and project lead of Drupal and co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, kicks things off. In previous years, he’s given a state of Drupal-style address.

On day two, Mitchell Baker, Chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation, speaks. Baker frequently talks about the power of the participatory, open source model. The Drupal community is no stranger to this type of collaboration. Baker will also highlight Mozilla’s commitment to an open, innovative web and the infinite possibilities that presents.

DrupalCon goes beyond learning about the latest technology and its application to coding, development, and site-building. Because the community has grown so rapidly, the conference has to appeal to more than just admins and developers. There is more emphasis on design and user experience, business strategy, and the Drupal community. This year, there is a big focus on mobile platforms.

We took a look at the open source agenda for DrupalCon Denver. As you’ll see, open source has a significant impact at this years DrupalCon. I found three themes that weave Drupal and open source together: open government, communities, and solutions. Make sure these talks are on your must-see list:

Drupal and open government

We the People & WhiteHouse.gov: Citizen Engagement Powered by Drupal by Tom Cochran, Director, New Media Technologies at The White House
The Story of Energy.gov: The Ins and Outs of Turning Energy-dot-Blah into Energy-dot-Awesome by Cammie Croft, Senior Advisor, Director of New Media and Citizen Engagement at U.S. Department of Energy
How Drupal is Transforming Government: 7 Case Studies by Jeff Walpole, CEO of Phase2 Technology

Drupal and the community

The Drupal Community: Where Are We Going and How to Get Involved? By Angie Byron (Webchick), Drupal 7 co-maintainer
Open Source 2.0: The Science of Community Management by David Eaves
Community Management is the New Customer Service: Creating Community Happiness Using All Those Lessons You Learned During Your First Summer Job by Amye Scavarda, Client Advisor at Acquia and Leslie Hawthorn, Community Manager at Appfrog

Drupal and open source solutions

Lessons Learned: Open Source Contributions - A Case Study of Workbench by Colleen Carroll, Director of People & Process at Palantir.net and Robin Barre, Senior Engineer and Team Lead at Palantir.net
Drupal Distribution Case Studies: Leveraging Open Source Solutions panel discussion with Marc O'Brien - VP Distro & Solutions, Acquia, Michael Shaver - Intel Open Technology Center, and Ezra Gildesgame - Technical Lead, Acquia Distribution team
Competing with Giants - How to Win with Drupal vs Proprietary Alternatives by Bryan House, Vice President, Marketing at Acquia
EFF + Drupal + CiviCRM = Great by Elly Jonez, Director, Non-profit Projects at Chapter Three and Micah Lee, Web Developer at EFF's