We just awarded scholarships to DrupalCon DC to 14 excellent members of the community - congratulations to you all! These scholars are talented developers and active community members, and help out with the Drupal community in many different ways. They maintain modules, patch core, organize Drupal meetups, help with documentation and IRC support, and run usability tests. Some have participated in GHOP and Google Summer of Code, and some are using Drupal at nonprofits to improve worldwide health care and create better and less bureaucratic systems within their organizations. Many are students from colleges like Syracuse University, University of Baltimore, University of British Columbia, and University of Nebraska, and a couple are high school students. We're excited to see you all in March.
We'll be giving out several more scholarships, so if you've applied and weren't picked in the first round, there's still a chance. And if you haven't yet applied, hurry up and submit your application! The deadline is Friday, January 23.
Scholarship Winners:
- Jimmy Berry, boombatower
- Dmitri Gaskin, dmitrig01
- Bart Feenstra, xano
- Bojhan Somers, bojhan
- Charlie Gordon, cwgordon7
- Prameya Bhandari, prameya
- Sloane DellOrto, Sloane DellOrto
- Susan MacPhee, susanmacphee
- Wim Leers, Wim Leers
- David West , dwest
- Joel Kitching
- Becca Scollan, beccascollan
- Stephane Corlosquet, scor
- Carlos Gimenez, with Harlem RBI
A big thanks to Robert Douglass and Károly Négyesi (aka chx) for reviewing the applications!
Congratulations Jonny Dover! You just won a free ticket to DrupalCon DC : ) We just drew the first of two DrupalCon DC admission tickets we're raffling off to people who swag their site with a DrupalCon badge. We'll raffle off the second ticket next week, so there's still a chance you can win - just put a badge up on your site!
To keep the raffle fair we wrote a Python script to do the selecting for us. The DrupalCon DC site tracks which sites are swagged with a banner, and we exported that into a CSV file. The script first loads the CSV file, counts how many records it has, builds a list of all the records, and then selects an entry by choosing a random number within the range of rows in the list. The random number that's selected becomes the list index and pulls the winning site from the list. And that's how we got to Jonny.
A big thanks to the whopping 337 websites that are showing off a DrupalCon DC badge!
Have you swagged your site yet? Put one of these badges on your website, and you could win free admission to DrupalCon DC - plus you'll be helping us spread the word about the conference. All you have to do is swag your site, and then tell us that you did. It's that easy to get entered in the raffle.
We'll pull the first winner this Friday, January 16th, so post your badge soon!
Still need a place to stay during DrupalCon? The District Hotel - located six blocks from the conference venue - is giving DrupalCon attendees a 15% discount on rooms, making the price for a basic room about $140 per night. All rooms in the hotel have wireless internet and come with a free continental breakfast. The hotel is also very close to several restaurants and bars - including our favorite Thai restaurant : )
To book your room and get the discount, enter code 1440 when you reserve a room online and also add it in the comments. This will guarantee you the discount no hassle. Note: Online registration isn't currently working, but you can reserve a room by emailing stay@thedistricthotel.com or calling 202.232.7800.
Here's a map showing the hotel and nearby amenities.
DrupalCon DC will hit the news stands in the March issue of the Linux Journal magazine. We're happy to announce that Linux Journal has thrown their support behind DrupalCon and has given the conference a full page ad in its magazine, along with an ad on their website. Here's a look at the ad that will be in the magazine:
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Many thanks to Jonathan Talbot for making this happen!