In his Drupalcon keynote yesterday, Dries noted once again the necessity of increasing the number of skilled Drupal practitioners to sustain the Drupal project's trajectory. The Drupal conference itself, it has been pointed out, mainly attracts the (aging) faithful. Encouraging new talent and growing the skills of the newly interested is really the challenge. We should be taking this challenge on as our job.

Some of us do and have built a business model around the idea of sustaining an evolving Drupal ecosystem via a variety of training, collaboration and community organizing techniques.

There are no official sessions addressing this critical aspect of sustaining the Drupal culture and the Drupal project itself. But now there is a Birds of a Feather discussion scheduled to explore on-the-ground methods of skill-building, knowledge transfer and the business models that can arise around them.

Join us Thursday, 14:45-15:45, BoF Space 4 for Developing Drupal Communities of Practice.

Co-organizers Barry Madore (Advantage Labs), Heather James (Acquia) and Sofian Benaissa (Koumbit) each bring a unique perspective and experience to the discussion. Advantage Labs has pioneered tiered services for Drupal developers and end-users including their innovative "Lab session" model. Heather heads up Acquia's training initiative and uses creative visualization techniques in her work. Sofian heads a Drupal-focused collective in Montréal born from the needs of a group of committed technologists working in the activist NGO sphere.

Join us for discussion and idea sharing. More ideas are outlined in the full session description.. See you there.