Published: Wed, 01/15/14
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What are Dev Days?
Gabor: Dev Days is a traveling conference originating in Munich in 2010, which then went to Brussels, Barcelona and Dublin. It is a developer focused thematic event for Drupal enthusiasts. Software developers and site builders have the opportunity to focus on working on and learning about Drupal in depth. While the sizes have widely differed through the years, Dev Days usually has 200-400 attendees from all around the world. The events are mainly locally organized by volunteers.
Why is it in Szeged in 2014, that seems very far!
Kristof: After we did DrupalCon Europe in Szeged in 2008, people kept asking when we would finally do another larger event, because they had such a great time at Drupalcon. If you don’t believe check out the interview video on the Drupal Dev Days website’s attendees page. I really fell in love with Szeged when I lived there, and that’s not just because my wife’s family is from there. So when Gabor said that the Drupal Dev Days didn’t yet have a city for 2014, about a year ago, I thought it would be great to bring the Drupal Dev Days to Szeged. It’s perfect for a bunch of developers to get-away from the busy life to build and learn about the future of Drupal.
I’ve never been to Szeged. Will it be expensive to get there?
Marta: For European attendees, not at all. Budapest is the nearest airport and is very well served with discount airlines, like Wizzair, EasyJet, RyanAir, Norwegian and so on. For example there are several 100 EUR offers from Brussels, London or Paris. There are even direct Lufthansa flights from Munich for 140 EUR. Well, for attendees coming from overseas the flight costs are evidently more expensive, but you can still get a good deal by reserving your ticket in time.
Zsofi: Szeged is easily accessible by train from Budapest city centre, the train line has direct stop at Liszt Ferenc Airport. We expect attendees from a lot of different places, so we are already organizing an airport or city-to-city shuttle from Budapest to Szeged.
Andrea: As for hotels, we have great accommodation offers from good nearby hotels for as cheap as 20-30 EUR per person per night. We collected other hotel and apartment options in Szeged, and in addition we also provide room-sharing possibilities for attendees.
Still not all people may be able to afford it? Do you offer any support?
Gabor: Indeed, we have a scholarship program, but signups for that are already closed. We recently announced that we are sponsoring several key Drupal core contributors to attend from Europe and North America. Our ticket prices are also exceptionally low, just 30 EUR for the whole week and that includes light lunches. (So basically free :).
I see it’s an entire week long! What’s going on for seven days? DrupalCons are not even that long!
Gabor: A whole week sprint to work on Drupal 8 with key people in the community; we’ll have Alex Pott and Nathaniel Catchpole (two core committers on Drupal 8) to help with discussions, reviews and commits; we’ll have Jeremy Thorson to help with any test system issues as well as leads of several initiatives
Kristof: We’ve got a bunch really high profile people from the community lined up who will be taking part in the three days of sessions and workshops at the end of the event. If you are into documentation we even have a partner event, Write the Docs EU, right after the Drupal Dev Days in Budapest!
Zsofi: And of course we plan to have fun and cool social events, too! We already got requests for karaoke… maybe we will do it in Hungarian :)
So is Szeged only focused on Drupal 8?
Gabor: A primary goal of Dev Days is to move Drupal 8 significantly. We’ll work on some of the most pressing outstanding issues. Another top goal is to disseminate Drupal 8 knowledge to developers, so they are ready for what is coming.
Kristof: However, Drupal 8 is not the sole focus, especially considering it is not yet even released. Sessions include practical use cases of integrating Drupal with mobile technologies, maps, graph databases, online help, building products on Drupal and so on.
Should people only plan on going if they are an experienced programmer?
Gabor: No. We even have several speakers who are not programmers, but sprints also welcome attendees with all kinds of experiences. We’ll have a documentation sprint, a drupal.org sprint, and so on. Joe Shindelar and Amber Himes from Drupalize.me are coming to deliver the Community Tools Workshop to help people new to the Drupal processes learn what tools we use, how we comunicate and move Drupal forward. So no community experience is required either. In fact, this is a great event to learn all that.
You keep mentioning workshops, what are those about?
Kristof: Szeged takes the very successful labs format from DrupalCon Prague and BADCamp and offers 2 hour and 4 hour slots for speakers to deliver in-depth content to attendees. It is great to learn new (developer) skills or any other type of skill with hands-on examples and help. This format is ideally suited for that. Our session and workshop submission is not yet closed, so we don’t know yet what kinds of workshops will our program include exactly.
Ok, so anyone listening can still submit sessions and workshops?
Gabor: Indeed, the timing of this podcast is ideal for the last hours of session and workshop submissions, so if you are listening this as it is published, you can still go and submit sessions and workshops for Dev Days. We know you have something to share! :) Our submission deadline is January 15th.
A lot of events happen around DrupalCons the weeks before and after. Is there anything else to do in Szeged if someone is arriving early or wants to stay a bit longer?
Marta: Hungary is famous for its spas, and in Szeged there are 2 great places (Aquapolis and Anna spa) to enjoy the wellness experience. There are several cultural attractions, exhibitions, a zoo and a botanical garden to visit. The Hungarian cuisine is also well-known, so you shouldn’t miss out trying the traditional restaurants and pastry shops, and sit in the popular cafés or pubs. Besides, Szeged is a real festival town, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we happened to bump into some sort of festival at that time, too.
Budapest is also worth a visit if you arrive earlier or leave later. There are already people volunteering to take you around in the capital, too.
Kristof: Moreover, the next Write the Docs conference will be held in Budapest, right after Dev Days, so if you are interested in documentation, it’s worth prolonging your stay in Hungary.
I have to assume that it’s expensive to pull off an event like this, and with tickets so cheap how are you guys managing that?
Zsofi: We have a rich sponsorship program with some great sponsors already signed up. Lingotek and Happyculture are the events Gold sponsors, and we have Acquia, ADCI Solutions, Cameron&Wilding, Deeson Online, Drupalize.me and Pronovix sponsoring on the Silver level. Our code sprint is sponsored by OSINet. We also have an individual sponsorship opportunity and we are happy to see that already twelve attendees chose to support the event this way. There are several more sponsorship opportunities, and we are still actively looking to fill in these. The money goes to making Drupal 8 better and spreading Drupal development best practices, so definitely well spent.
This has go to take a lot of time and energy too!
Andrea: Indeed, beside the individual volunteers, Pronovix devotes lots of hours to organize the event, and we got huge contributions from IntegralVision here in Hungary with the conference logo and initial design and launch of the event. The Association for the Hungarian Web provides the financial administrative background for the event. Comm-press contributed a lot to the marketing of the event too. Though, there are active organizers, it is always nice to get some help from the community. If anyone would like to take part in the event as a volunteer, feel free to contact us!
I saw Drupal Marvin among the attendees and he also promoted the event in DrupalCon. What is he doing at a Drupal conference?
Kristof: Marvin just wants to have fun after being sad for so long. He helps us to finish Drupal 8! As you might have heard, Drupal is of crucial importance to the future of the galaxy (in 2042, the resistance's intranet runs on Drupal). That's why the Inter-Galactic Council has sent DrupalMarvin back from the future to help us finish Drupal 8. At Drupalcon Prague, DrupalMarvin gave us the Infinite Improbability Drive and we've plugged it into the Dev Days' website… where there’ll be weird things happening if the buzz goes high around the event. Check out more on the Dev Days website, the rest is a secret! :)
Okay, where can people go to get more information about the Dev Days?
Gabor: Our website is at drupaldays.org and we are on twitter as @drupaldevdays. We also have a Facebook page and send out weekly newsletters. The dates of the event are March 24th (Monday) to March 30th (Sunday) with sessions and workshops on Thursday to Saturday and a code sprint the whole week.
Episode Links:
Dev Days Website
Dev Days on Twitter
Dev Days on Facebook
Write the Docs Europe in Budapest (partner event)
Gábor on drupal.org
Gábor on Twitter
Marta on drupal.org
Marta on Twitter
Kristof on drupal.org
Kristof on Twitter
Andrea on drupal.org
Zsófi on drupal.org
Zsófi on Twitter
Tags:
planet-drupal