Drupal is global, but you would know that by now. And exciting new progress have been happening to where Drupal associations are at. Feast yourself on some updates from all around the world:

The Drupal Association Gets a New Address - In Europe

One of the most impressive things about the Drupal community is just how diverse it is. Wherever you go in the globe, you’re likely to find a group of folks at a coffee shop proudly sporting one of their many Drupal T-shirts. It’s the job of the Drupal Association to support this diverse community - no matter what you do with Drupal, or where you are in the world when you do it.

We recognize that the intention and the practice have been far apart at times here at the Association. In other words, we’ve wanted to provide more support for and representation of our global community than we’ve actually been able to accomplish. We’ve heard your requests for more inclusion and have taken a few steps forward in the last couple of years:

Community Cultivation Grants: Designed to foster new Drupal projects around the world, we budget $40,000 for these initiatives annually.

Global Training Days: We help coordinate new training opportunities on every continent (except Antarctica!) three times a year.

Community Summit at DrupalCon: Our first global community summit takes place at Prague and has session specifically addressing the Association’s relationship outside the US. I’ll be there all day on Monday, listening and learning.

Continue to read on 'Drupal Association's new address in Europe' here.

Drupal.org related activities in Prague

DrupalCon Prague is less than a week away! Here is a summary of Drupal.org-related activities waiting for you at the Con.

Drupal.org Working Groups

Almost all Working Group members will be present in Prague and the week will be pretty intense for them. There will be 3 public sessions, one for each Working Group. We call them "community conversations", the format is similar to core conversations, only we will be talking about Drupal.org.

Check out links on Drupal Prague itineraries here.

Introducing the Drupal Association Technology Partner Program!

This year, the Drupal Association has focused on better understanding our community so we can best serve all audiences. We so appreciate all of your input through the (many) surveys, interviews, DrupalCon BoFs, and other ways you shared your thoughts and ideas with us. We now have a nice list of new ways we can support you and are putting plans in place to deliver on them.

One consistent theme that came up during our research was the need for information about tools and third party software that can help Drupalers build even better sites. We even deployed a survey on this topic to make sure we understand the community’s educational needs.

The research showed that community members want to learn about a whole host of software tools from development, performance, project management, website optimization and more. As for third party software that integrates with Drupal, the community’s wish list would take this entire page, but the most requested include NoSQL, CRM, ERP, BI, BPM, email marketing services, and marketing automation. Naturally, the community already works with many of these tools and third party software, but there is a desire to understand them better and/or learn about new tools and software.

More on 'Drupal Association Technology Partner Program' here.

Drupal Association Board Retreat: 21 & 22 September

At the Drupal Association, now is the time when we are finalizing our plans and budgets for the following year, so the focus of our pre-DrupalCon Prague board retreat was how to set ourselves up to help our community succeed in 2014. On the table were a few things that we wanted to share and get your feeback about. 

DrupalCons

Selecting DrupalCon locations is tricky business - balancing a variety of community needs with affordable and accessible locations. We've written a little bit about it, but one other important aspect to picking a location is the sheer size of DrupalCon. As our community grows, and the Con grows with it, we have to find ever larger venues near even more hotels. In order to meet these varied needs, we're going to have to start plannign a lot further out.

The fact is that we've outgrown a lot of smaller cities, and in larger cities, we only fit into a couple of venues. So at this time, we're working on city selection for 2015, 2016 and 2017.  We conducted a survey earlier in the year to get ideas for new locations, are vetting them now, and will be sharing with the board in November. We'd love to share the results with you then, but we'd ruin the surprise!

Know more about the Drupal Association Board Retreat here.

When Drupal devs come together, you can be assured that something's brewing, about to brew, or being brewed. Sit back and wait, you'll hear new things soon!