Drupal conf heads to Brisbane in 2011 amid 7 release

The international development community of the open source Drupal content management system will gather in Brisbane in January, including the project’s founder Dries Buytaert.

The inaugural DrupalDownunder will run from January 22 to 23, 2011 at the Bardon Conference Centre in Brisbane, Australia.

The event follows the success of the Drupal South event held in Wellington, New Zealand earlier this year.

Drupal's founder Dries Buytaert, who now lives in Boston, will visit Australia for the first time to deliver a keynote address at next year’s event.

Other speakers include, Josh Koenig, co-founder of Chapter Three, a renowned Drupal business based in San Francisco; Allie Micka, a geospatial and financial information Drupal integrator and Josh Waihi, who leads the Drupal7 PostgreSQL team from Wellington, New Zealand.

Coinciding with the event is the imminent release of Drupal7, for which global release parties are being planned for January 7, 2011, however, there has been no official announcement from the project.

See http://www.drupal7releaseparty.org/ for more information about Drupal7 release parties.

DrupalDownunder has been organised by Brisbane development company Marmalade Soul and registration costs $132 for an “early bird” and $154 for the full price. Early Bird registration closes Xmas day.

Director of Melbourne-based Drupal integrator Creative Contingencies, Donna Benjamin, said community events are an important feature of the open source development industry as they provide a rare opportunity for sharing knowledge and expertise in a field that isn't well served by commercial or government training providers.

Creative Contingencies is a sponsor of DrupalDownunder.

Benjamin said switching her company’s CMS to Drupal off an in-house system made a huge difference to its capacity to meet client needs and participating directly in the community is the best way to “balance the scales, and ensure the ongoing viability of an open source project such as Drupal”.

Drupal has proven to be popular with local organisations and counts big names like McDonalds, the NSW government, Melbourne University and the ABC among its user list.

Even Prime Minister Julia Gillard at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is using Drupal for its Web site at: http://www.pm.gov.au/.

“With Drupal 7 I think adoption is set to explode in a big, big way,” Benjamin said. “There are vast improvements in usability and many of the 'must have' modules we relied on for Drupal 5 and 6 have been integrated into the Drupal core.”

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