Drupal.lu

What is COD?
COD stands for Conference Organizing Distribution and the goal of the project is to facilitate coordination of and participation in conferences via the conference website. COD can improve the efficiency of setting up a powerful website for both Drupal and non-Drupal conferences and events and provide value to non-developers and developers alike.
COD existed as a group of modules for Drupal 5 and the Drupal 6 version is a rewrite with similar goals.
While COD draws on patterns used by other Drupal event websites, DrupalCamp Colorado 2010 was the first event to specifically use the Drupal 6 version of COD, and volunteers from that event contributed a great deal back to the project, specifically to the COD Support project which has been the main development focus thus far.
Key modules used in COD are the Signup module for managing lists of attendees, Ubercart for accepting payment for registration, and the UC_Signup module for simplifying the process of registering for an account on the site, entering attendee profile information, and paying registration fees.
The short term development goals for COD include developing a proper fully packaged Drupal distribution for COD that includes the COD_Support and other required modules for the project in order to facilitate easier installation and collaboration in the issue queue, so that we can improve COD as a community.
The chart below lists features that COD currently provides and could provide in the future, the level of configuration required to use those features, and the level of documentation available for each feature. These features are organized by general user role on the site (not necessarily a Drupal user role in the technical sense). For each role, a "user dashboard" is suggested, with the goal of making it easy for users to access information and perform tasks relevant to them.
ND = Needs documentation. Most of COD ND, though having a COD-specific document that points users to the documentation for the underlying modules will be appropriate in many cases.
Below this chart is a list of miscellaneous tasks and their related Drupal.org issues, where applicable.
"Needs more roadmap!"
The destination, briefly: "Fully featured, easy to use."
Yes, it's true that this document is more of an overview than a traditional roadmap. Right now, COD has several useful features, and is somewhat easy to use for site builders and developers who are familiar with Drupal. The overall goal for COD is to make it very easy for non-developers to build a fully-featured event management website. Therefore, the immediate direction for COD should be to add and improve the key features listed below in ways that make COD powerful and easy to use.
A critical short-term goal is to make COD and the COD_Support modules available as a fully packaged Drupal.org installation profile.
How can I get involved?
You can get in involved by:
- Working on "Getting Started with COD" documentation.
Right now, folks can install COD but it might not be clear what they can do to set it up and start using it. Documenting the basic setup steps for the features in the chart below would be extremely valuable to helping folks who are new to COD get it set up.
- Identifying a feature below and opening an issue in the queue of cod_support or a dependency module to discuss how the feature should be implemented, and ideally provide a patch.
- Using COD and providing feedback :)
Key COD features, based on user role
Attendee

Use-case
Setup required
Documentation?
Notes

View basic event information (what, when, where, etc), official hash tag
Basic content creation
ND

Signup and pay
Add user profile fields if paying, remove signup.module form field
ND or work for removing signup.module default form field on sites where registration is free

Provide contact/profile information
Fill out core profile fields
ND

View Session proposals
Provided by cod_session
ND

Submit sessions
Provided by cod_session
ND

Vote on sessions
Provided by cod_session
ND
Based on Flag.

Submit session & conference surveys online
Not currently provided. Requires configuring Webform.
ND

Create a personalized session schedule
Provided by cod_session
ND
Based on Flag

Check in quickly and easily
Some View building required. Better default views could be provided
ND

Connect with other attendees through profiles and forms
Enable forum module, configure profile fields
ND

* Potential dashboard:
o official announcements
o sessions, forum posts with tags I subscribe to
* As the event draws closer easily change homepage from sessions to announcements and include BOFs, Food, maps front and center
Checkin Administrator

Use-case
Setup required
Documentation?
Notes

Turn attendee data into badges
Attendee views could use a CSV export
ND

Find attendee records by email, name, username
Adding custom fields to attendee admin view. Could use better defaults
ND

See who has paid
UC_Signup has Views integration that connects signups to orders, but could provide a better default admin view. UC_signup could store the signup ID in the order
ND

Easily mark attendees as checked in, have an accurate count of how many people attended
Signup allows admins to mark users as checked in or not checked in. Could use an ajax toggle link for faster processing. Signup.module provides a count of who is attending
ND

Session Organizer

Use-case
Setup required
Documentation?
Notes

See submitted sessions, votes
Provided by COD_Session. Needs a view for accepted nodes
ND

See number planning on attending
Provided by Signup module. Could be made more visible and placed in a dashboard.
ND

See self-described skill levels of people who plan on attending .
Core profile field configuration
ND

Schedule sessions
Requires configuring room and timeslot fields and then placing them into a view. This could be streamlined further.
ND

View session surveys
Full configuration of webform.
ND

Mail users by session acceptance status
Could be added using Views Bulk Operations and additional view exports.
ND

Mail users by proposed sessions last year, not yet this year
Could be provided by VBO
ND.

* Potential Dashboard:
o sessions proposed
o most popular sessions by comments
o most popular sessions by votes
o recent session review submissions
Event Sponsor

Use-case
Setup required
Documentation?
Notes

See sponsor benefits
Submit content
ND

Sign up, pay for sponsorship
We could facilitate this process better *
ND

Profile sponsor info (Logo, blurb)
Partially provided by cod_sponsor
ND

Get coupons to sign up other people in company
UC_Signup + UC product kits for sponsorship + event attendees is one solution but coupons are not currently provided but could be with a UC discount module.
ND

Sponsor Admin

Use-case
Setup required
Documentation?
Notes

Receive sponsorship info
Sponsor content type exists, but we could make it easier for sponsors to enter info directly and admins to approve it
ND

Easily create coupons for sponsor benefits
Not currently provided but could be provided with a UC discount module
ND

Attendee relations/Event organizer

Use-case
Setup required
Documentation?
Notes

Add profile fields
Add core profile fields
ND
.

Send e-mails based on variety of factors (below)
Partially provided by Signup and UC
ND

o profile fields
o order status
o previous event attendance and current event status
Misc Tasks

• Make into an actual packaged distribution for easier installation + setup
• Move from Context to Panels
• Re-export features from DrupalCamp Colorado 2010 site, compare changes (and commit back to the project)
  UC_Signup/Signup improvements
• * better locking of signups
• Better default theme than Garland (For admins and attendees)
• Store SID (Signup ID) in the UC order
• Better support for free events (don't use signup template form, add option to sign up on user registration form)

Assorted Ways to make things especially awesome:
Schedule

• Clearly label session tracks and skill level

Sessions

• Embedding videos after the event, making it easy to browse videos
• Selling access to the embedded videos
• Subscribe to sessions submission to a particular tag/track?
• Session surveys via sms (twilio)
• Provide responses to questions like "Next sessions" via sms

Checkin

• Automate checkin process

Other

• Provide rich(er) profiles and easy tools to navigate profiles and contact people for pre-event networking
• Enable working groups to create and manage their own discussion area for pre-conference and post-conference discussion (i.e. OG)
• Profile pages with links to relevant content (sponsor affiliation, presentations proposed by the individual, presentations where the person is a speaker)
• Dashboard and reporting tools (probably a bunch of views) -- What kind of reporting do folks need?
• Ability to hire/advertise availability for services
• show attendee origin maps, distance traveled
• Make it easier to switch between modes of the event and prioritize different information on the site:
  -- 1 Button to end session submission, enable session voting (by changing user permissions)
  -- Make it easier to offer earlybird pricing

Conference Organizing Distribution