Last month, I posted the first ‘drumbeat update’. Since then we’ve made significant progress — getting the web site ready to go, getting projects rolling and locking down plans for our first community events. Here is February’s update.

Headlines

• Generic slides about Drumbeat posted on my blog. Feedback wanted.
• Community growing. 30+ people met to discuss Drumbeat in Europe at FOSDEM in Brussels.
• First ‘local drumbeats’ planned for Rio and Sao Paulo in late March. Notes on event process posted.
• Description of the Drumbeat ‘project process’ posted. Feedback wanted on this as well.
• Developer version of drumbeat.org slated to launch sometime in the coming week. Track progress here.

Participation

• 135 people on mail list, 310 people signed up on newsletter list.
• 29 proposed projects, 6 of which are new since I wrote in January.
• Community members now doing 30 min project presentations on status conference call each week.
• 30+ people attended half-day Drumbeat Europe meeting at FOSDEM in Brussels.
• Strong focus now on new participation from Europe and Brasil, especially for the next few months.

Projects

• Development of ‘bootstrap projects‘ moving fast. A few notable areas of progress:
  • Privacy Icons Challenge -> 30 lawyers met late January to brainstorm a legal spec. Updates based on this coming soon.
  • P2PU Open Web Career Track -> First course will be run by John Britton starting in March. Registration opens late February.
  • WebMadeMovie -> Initial shoots scheduled to take place at Drumbeat Sao Paulo + Rio (March) and ROFLcon in Boston (April).
  • Visualizing the (open) internet -> Tentatively planning to do first visualization demo at Rhizome’s 7×7 event in NYC in April.
• We expect more new project ideas to start flowing in once the web site launches. Until then, please post your project ideas to the Drumbeat wiki.

Events

• Rough notes on Drumbeat event process posted. Feedback happening in this discussion thread.
• Close-to-final dates for Drumbeat Rio (March 20) and Drumbeat Sao Paulo (March 22)
  • Will provide a chance to propose projects, or just discuss the open web
  • Also, will train people from other Brasilian cities to run their own events
  • Contact me if you want to organize an event somewhere else in Brasil
• Rough dates for Drumbeat Boston (late April) and Drumbeat Berlin (early May)
• Also, Mozilla Drumbeat presence at SXSW Austin planned for March

Web site

• Developer version of the Drumbeat web site planned for release within the next week (security review willing!).
  • Main goal: get people leading bootstrap projects can to create a presence on the site and to test our thinking at the same time.
  • Also, we want to get the tech side of our community critiquing / hacking / improving the site.
  • Highest priority hacking: improvements to the ‘project pages’ section of the site.
• We will ‘release’ the site once we’ve had significant input from project developers and tech contributors, probably in April.
• Places we need most help are: Drupal hacking, design and QA. Check out website management page if you want to help.
• Also, interested in feedback on the Drumbeat project process information that will be posted on the site.

The aim with these monthly update posts is to provide a high level overview for people who aren’t deeply involved in Drumbeat. For more detail or to get involved, jump into the Drumbeat wiki and newsgroup.