The Drupal Developer Days Brussels 2011 (DDDB), held on 4-6 February 2011, aims to foster the Drupal software and its community, and provides a forum where developers can share knowledge and the cross-pollination of their ideas can initiate new innovative projects.
The Drupal Developer Days is a community initiative, which in its current incarnation can be traced back to the ‘national representatives' meeting at Drupalcon CPH. In fact, critical organizational gusto had already been gathering in the Belgian Community, and in Copenhagen Roel De Meester and Kristof Van Tomme suggested that this energy could be directed into a European event: so the Drupal Developer Days was proposed to be held in Brussels (at Vrije Universiteit Brussel/VUB) in parallel with FOSDEM. The idea was realized by Boris Doesborg and Sven Decabooter, who took the lead in the organization with the help of a dedicated team consisting of many familiar faces from the Belgian Drupal scene.
I am new to Drupal, and though I had attended and even organized several conferences in various domains, I got really amazed by the community effort seen at DDDB:
- attendees who keep registering for the event both from Belgium and abroad,
- developers who are ready to speak up,
- sponsors who contribute in great numbers, and
- volunteers who do a really professional job.
We at Pronovix will all go to Drupal Developer Days Brussels, and will be present with 8 team members (both Belgian and Hungarian) and 6 sessions**. We are also contributing with a sponsorship package and with volunteer time (e.g. I am responsible for the management of sponsorship issues). And like us, there are several other companies that are investing money, time and enthusiasm in Drupal and the Developer Days.
DDDB seems to be a big success already regarding both the number of sponsors (almost 40 contributors already) and the attendees registering (we expect to have between 500 and 600 registrations). There is also a large variety of technical sessions proposed (see Program), and the event is preceded by a Code sprint, which is organized separately at Emakina Belgium.
Moreover, the Drupal Developer Days Brussels will be held in parallel with FOSDEM, Europe's largest open source gathering. FOSDEM attracts about 4,000 visitors from all around the world, and DDDB can now be seen as a sort of extra big Drupal track of that event, only for a 15 minute walk from the venue. This has surely helped to make Drupal Developer Days Brussels 2011 an international event that it is shaping up to become.
To stay updated and get the latest news on DDDB, just follow @drupaldaysbxl on Twitter.
- * Slogan from the awesome DDDB T-shirt. ** Pronovix sessions at Drupal Developer Days Brussels 2011:
