One of the great assets of the Drupal Community are its events: from local to regional and specialist meet-ups and user groups, to DrupalCamps and summits, and of course the big international DrupalCon conferences. One of Acquia's core goals is to grow and nurture the Drupal project and spends a lot of time, effort, and money supporting these events. As part of this, I signed up to attend DrupalCity Berlin with Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire and over 300 other attendees eager to talk, live, code, and drink Drupal on September 17th and 18th.
Though I usually give technically-focused presentations, I signed up this time to tell a story about why and how you should contribute to Drupal. I struggled to find the best way to help people understand how to get started contributing to Drupal right now. Then I had an idea...
I present you:
Drupal: 5 Day Challenge
Every day, for the next 5 days, I will contribute 30 minutes of my own time to the Drupal community. That's 2.5 hours of giving back to Drupal next week.
I challenge all of you to join this effort and help make Drupal better!
If just 63 others–63 of the roughly 600,000 Drupal community members–join me, that's 160 hours, one month of 40-hour weeks of contributing to the Drupal project!
Tweet every day using the #d5dChallenge hashtag and help promote this effort! Tweet what you are doing, tweet what needs doing, ideas, and most of all, contribute!
Some suggested tweets:
- I am joining #d5dChallenge to help contribute a month of work to Drupal http://tinyurl.com/d5dchallenge
- Don't know how to contribute to Drupal? Join #d5dchallenge! http://tinyurl.com/d5dchallenge
- How can I contribute to #Drupal this week? Tag your ideas with #d5dChallenge.
For my first d5dChallenge I will like to spend the time on following 5 challenges. You can find your own ways to contribute–go with the things that suit your skills and interests.
- Day 1 - Provide online help on forums, IRC and other support channels. http://drupal.org/contribute/support
- Day 2 - Write documentation, submit at least one revised documentation page or help with the screenshot sprint. http://drupal.org/documentation
- Day 3 - Review a UX design, participate in a usability study, or document a usability problem and file a bug. http://drupal.org/contribute/usability
- Day 4 - Help with marketing Drupal - Publish a blog post, tell my friends about this awesome software or help with designing marketing materials. http://groups.drupal.org/marketing-drupal
- Day 5 - Translate a module or Drupal core or review something in the #d8mi initiative. http://localize.drupal.org
