Wellstone Action! is a national center for training and leadership development for the progressive movement. Founded in January 2003, Wellstone Action trains, educates, mobilizes and organizes a large network of progressive individuals and organizations.

The original Wellstone.org website was built using a proprietary CMS system. As the site aged and communications needs evolved, staff had to increasingly work around that system and its constraints. As such, part of the motivation for a new website was to not only present information clearly, but to do so in a way that was open to evolution and improvement over time, making Drupal an ideal fit for their needs.

Wellstone Action's Drupal-powered website launched in the Spring of 2008. With roughly a year of operating perspective, we can begin to assess the overall effectiveness of the project. Accordingly, this case-study is intended to:

1. Document the process used to manage this project and make decisions
2. Discuss the overall success of the project (and thereby evaluate the process)
3. Spark more conversation in the Drupal community about the best ways to produce the best possible results for all of our clients and their Drupal projects

The Drupal core developers have a long history of making user experience improvements. The developers have made it easier to install, to update, to internationalize, to customize, to theme, to find help, to recover from errors, and to interact. A few years ago, the Drupal project lead, Dries, wrote about The Ockham's Razor Principle of Content Management Systems which stated

We finished crunching the numbers from DrupalCon DC. You can check out all the final figures – including attendance stats and financial numbers – in DrupalCon DC By the Numbers: Community, Profit, and Sustainability posted on the DrupalCon DC website. Give it a read, and please post any feedback or questions you have.

Links to all 102 videos were made available on March 13, 2009:

• d.o - DrupalCon DC 2009 Videos
• archive.org - search for drupalcon dc
• dc2009.drupalcon.org (in the comments of each session)

A list of the 9 sessions that were not recorded can be found at:
http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/news/almost-all-session-videos-drupalcon-dc-...
If you have of a recording of any of these and/or any BoF sessions, please post them online and let everyone at d.o know. :o)

Some Stats

• 76 sessions (68%) were online within 24 hours
• 83 sessions (75%) were online within 48 hours
• 102 sessions (92%) were online within 5 days of the conference, including:
  • 97 presentation sessions
  • 4 keynote sessions
  • 1 closing session

Earlier today, Google announced the list of organizations that have been selected for the Google Summer of Code 2009, and we are thrilled to announce that Drupal has been selected once again! This will mark the Drupal project's fifth year of participation in this fantastic program, which provides a great opportunity for the Drupal community to grow our ranks of dedicated and talented new contributors, award existing long-term contributors, and get some exciting new coding projects done at the same time! More information about the program is available in the Google Summer of Code FAQ and program timeline.