Drupal Developer Days is going to happen this year in Brussels in one month (4-6th of February, 2011). This theme of topical conferences on Drupal getting focus is very popular nowadays. Brussels had an executives meetup in October, Prague just had a designers event in November and this next one coming up is focused on development. While Drupal historically had a developer room at the FOSDEM conference, this year, the project hosts its own event nearby kicking off with a code sprint on Friday and full-on session program on the weekend.
I proposed two sessions: How to integrate the core Drupal 7 usability improvements with your module and Drupal's new localization infrastructure and where do you fit in. I think both are important topics. Drupal needs contributed modules and distributions to be top notch in terms of usability (even more so then core) and it needs localized interfaces and communities to help it spread in all kinds of cultures. While the first session is more coder oriented, the second will hold invaluable information for site builders and translators as well (while keeping module builders in the loop).
There are already almost 300 people signed up for this event, so it looks to be shaping up to be fun and busy again. If you are working with Drupal, do not pass the opportunity to get yourself integrated in the community. This event is great to get started or just keep it up. There are various reasons working on Open Source software is going to benefit your career.