DrupalCamp Moscow
I was in Russia earlier this month attending DrupalCamp Moscow, where I was invited to present on Object Oriented CSS by my friend and organiser Artem Pankov. I had the pleasure of meeting Drupal enthusiasts and professionals from all over Russia and the CIS, and we generally had a great deal of fun!
While many of the presentations were in Russian, they are working hard to open up the DrupalCamp to a more international audience. There were some great english-language presentations from Martin Mayer, who gave a very interesting, incisive talk on building communities, and Florian Loretan, the local team lead for DrupalCon Munich, who was out there to give an excellent presentation on building multilingual sites with Drupal.
The conference was closed by a personal message from Dries Buytaert, encouraging and thanking the burgeoning Russian Drupal community for their efforts, and reminding them that they are a very important part of the global community.
On a personal level, I also found the conference was a good opportunity to gain some insight into the Russian web industry and business thinking in general over there.
Numerous conversations revealed that web developers and designers are often under-valued, and that many agencies and freelancers struggle to make ends meet. However there was also a belief that things are slowly changing. We often hear that Russia is a growth market, part of the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The web is going to play an increasingly important role in the growth of these nations, and those working with Drupal are very well-placed to lead the charge.