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Drupal’s multilingual capabilities are essential to it’s success. Most of the people who use Drupal need to do so in a language other than English. While Drupal offers great capabilities for internationalization and localization, it’s a bit of work to set up, and several key concepts come into play. Here are the sessions for DrupalCon Copenhagen that deal with language, i18n, and l10n. It’s appropriate that the European DrupalCon have a strong focus on these topics. Please go vote for them!

• Translation Management for the Enterprise
• Non-English and Multi-Language Search with Apache Solr
• Introduction to Internationalization in Drupal 7
• Backstage with Drupal Localization
• Kick Start your Module Development
• Building Multilingual Projects in Drupal: Tales from the Road.

Today was a big milestone for the Drupal Association and for the future of European DrupalCons. Over 70 people met in IRC for over two hours to discuss and ratify two documents which lay out the process by which we will select DrupalCon locations going forward, and how the production teams to run DrupalCon will be managed. These are the two documents:

• European Regional DrupalCon Organizers
• Scorecard for DrupalCon Europe Location

If you belong to a local group somewhere in Europe and you want to see DrupalCon happen in your city, region, or country, read both of these documents carefully. The time for nominating locations is now open, you can read the exact details of how it is done via the links provided above. Nominations must be submitted before October 1. That means there are only six full days to work on proposals. Nominations are being taken for both 2010 and 2011. The nominations will be evaluated, as per the plans in the documents, by October 15. They then get submitted to the Drupal Association Board of Directors, who have to meet and ratify the suggestions.

The important point in all of this is the level of openness and transparancy that is being brought to the system. The Drupal Association is working hard to involve the community in decisions, and to have well defined proceses for making important decisions, like where DrupalCon is held. Today we had a great discourse, thoroughly discussed all of the points that were important to people, and came to nearly unanimous agreements about how things will be done. That is what makes Drupal a nice community to live in.

Help us decide how DrupalCons in Europe are planned and produced. The draft organizational document is open for feedback and discussion. We’re having an IRC meeting for live discussion in #drupalcon on either Wednesday Sept. 23 or Thursday Sept. 24. If you want to attend please note your availability so that we can schedule the best time for the most people.

I can hardly wait to go do DrupalCon 2009 in Washington DC. If you’re as excited about DrupalCon as I am, but are having a hard time finding the money you’d need to attend, perhaps you should apply for one of the 20 scholarships that are being awarded. Anybody in financial need can apply:

So who will these scholarships go to? People who are actively developing with Drupal, who would benefit from attending DrupalCon, and who are already helping the community.

The applications are being reviewed by myself and Drupal legend Károly Négyesi (aka chx). I’m proud to be able to help out with this process, just as I’m proud that the company I work for is a platinum sponsor of the DrupalCon. It makes me feel good to know that the money being raised by the DrupalCon will be used to reach out and help people attend who otherwise wouldn’t be able to. If your company isn’t already a DrupalCon sponsor, it’s not too late. You can contact the organizors online to become a sponsor and help bring Drupal to even more people.

Drupalcon Szeged was a huge success. This shot gives a feel for the room during Dries' keynote.

I've been having fun making panorama shots lately. I use a program called Calico to stitch several photos together. Check out the full size version for more detail.

With somewhere between 850 and 900 people in attendance, the keynote room for Dries' was quite full and very impressive.

At 1:00, in room 252A, we'll be having a "Birds of a feather" meeting to discuss the future directions of the ApacheSolr module. I'll be giving a short demonstration of what the module can currently do, and then we'll talk about:

- Solr features that aren't yet implemented
- How to expand the test coverage
- The relevance of search results and how to measure/improve them
- The state of ApacheSolr documentation
- ApacheSolr for Drupal 6
- Search and Drupal 7

It is time to get excited about the next Drupalcon. It will be hosted by Yahoo! on their Sunnyvale, CA campus, and will be a sub-conference of the wider OSCMS Summit. I'll be presenting a session on Drupal's search capabilities, including how to extend Drupal search and some of the alternatives that are to be found.

Don't go home too soon!

The fun is only starting at the Drupalcon. On the Saturday and Sunday right after, Lullabot is organizing first a seminar on High Performance and Scalability, and then a Drupal hack-a-thon. The hack-a-thon will be free of charge and open to the public.