Drupal Israel as a COP

Drupal COP fulfills the six prerequisites of a COP
as defined by SDC :

1. Community: The Drupal community has many active members,
   with approximately 600 hundreds active members in the local community (
   with X messages per week ) and hundreds of thousands who participate in the
   global community ( with X messages per week ). Participation in the community is very important
   to members and there are meetings / conventions for both the global and
   localized community.
2. Domain: The Drupal open-source platform has a thematic
   orientation that is neither too narrow nor too large. This domain is
   relevant and meaningful to the members; they are interested in specific
   topics and expect to improve their own practice by sharing experiences
   related to website design and implementation.
3. Practice: Each and every member has his/her own
   practice within the domain of the COP, and members are familiar with each other’s
   practice. The community includes
   graphic designers who create templates, UML experts, system analysts,
   programmers that contribute source code, etc.
4. Motivation: Members have a personal interest in the theme
   and assign high priority to the Drupal COP as part of their daily work. New
   posts by members can be found at all hours, day and night.
5. - 6. Mandate and Structure: There
   is no clear and organized management for the local Drupal COP, but there are
   obvious moderators. Knowledge transfer can be found between all types of
   members.
   1. Core Group : Manager,
      Facilitator and Back-stopper
   2. Inner Group:
      Active Members and active Contributors
   3. Outer circle:
      Interested Members, Contributors and Readers

Localized Drupal Community interaction

Passive interactions
include code downloading, forums and Blog browsing.

Active
interactions include forum discussions and source code contribution (new
modules, extension of the existing source code and bug repair).

Since Drupal is an open-source code which
changes on a daily basis, no detailed books or tutorials exist, thus assistance
with code usage and implementation must be obtained through the community. These
types of connection sometimes lead to partnerships, aid with job searches,
private help and personal friendships.

Development of personal friendships is
very important because faster solutions to problems and more effective sharing
of knowledge can be obtained. High-quality networking was developed within the
local community using the Skype application. Skype’s Chat interface was mostly
used for this purpose, although video conversations were also used occasionally.
Some of the more prominent community members are volunteers at heart and are active
in other communities as well ( ecological groups , PR groups , other CMS
communities, etc. ).