Blog

3 Posts Published by the Drupal Association

Part of improving communication towards the Drupal community, is writing about is done within the DA.
Here three posts that you may have missed:

Thanks to the people working on those.

Drupal Association Retreat

Right now there is still the Drupal Association retreat in San Francisco going on. I, among other stranded members in the EU, participated via Skype thanks to Cary Gordon (Director or Events).

The main focus of this get together is to define the objectives and focuses and what the DA should really do. This includes writing a new mission statement that will capture the essence of who, what, why and how.

There have also been short discussions about the issue of the trademark, local events, local associations as well as marketing and how the DA is perceived in EU and US. In a previous post, I mentioned a questionnaire conceived especially for this retreat. It turns out, we are all not so far from each other and identified all the same issues, that need resolving step by step. I guess we cannot forget that change doesn't happen over night, but that this is a good first step in a new direction.

It was harder and harder to follow the brainstorming and discussions from a distance, so I hope that there will be a public summary of things that have been discussed and decided upon.

Drupal Association Session at DrupalVolCon

As the ash cloud prevented me from going to DrupalCon San Francisco, I decided to join the DrupalVolCon in Antwerp at Krimson's office.

I took this opportunity to do a BoF session on getting feedback from the community directly on the Drupal Association. I based my questions on a questionnaire, that was devised for the Drupal Association retreat taking place today.

A lot of people were interested in the session, around 12 people attended from a total of 30.

After reading the current mission statement to the attendees, I asked what, in their opinion, the DA should be/do.

Many said that the DA should be a formal representation of the informal Drupal community towards other communities, industries, businesses. It should provide a forum for discussion, provide financing and assistance for DrupalCons, centralise knowledge and funds for DrupalCons and then the community adds its local twist to it. The drupal.org redesign was also mentioned as a focus of the DA.

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Lifestreaming of DrupalCon SF sponsored by Brightcove

Trying to get lifestream of keynotes and possibly other sessions. As much as possible that is. Thanks to Brightcove and DrupalVolCon UK for collaboration.

What I learned today

Today, as part of the European education project E-trust, we went to a waste incineration company called IZAYDAS in Izmit, Turkey. 

And this is, among many other things from cultural behaviour to governmental programmes, what I learned today:

  • IZAYDAS bought the facilities from a German company. (So there is a market for second hand waste incinerators.)
  • The Turkish export their waste to German waste incinerator factories as it is cheaper to export than to buy and/or build own factories.
  • German waste incinerator factories don't have enough waste!
  • Italians export their waste to Germany as well.
  • IZAYDAS is the first waste incineration company in Turkey. It is a pilot project and now Turkey wants to implement more factories like this one.
  • All data from the factory is available online publicly.
  • They do not accept radioactive or nuclear waste nor cadavers.

Men in Turkey retire after 22 years of working, women after 20 years. They get a lump sum plus monthly retirement money based on work income. But this might change soon.