I spent last week hanging out with over 1000 Drupalers at Drupal Europe, the biggest Drupal event of the year in Europe. It was held in Darmstadt, Germany and brought Drupal users of all sorts from all over the world. Most attendees were from Europe, but many travelled from Asia, North America, and as far away as Australia to attend.
What Was Special About Drupal Europe?
Drupal Europe was basically a community-organized DrupalCon. It was a large event that had most of the features that you would associate with a DrupalCon from the professional venue to the DriesNote to the hundreds of valuable sessions to Trivia Night and the large contribution sprint on Friday.
Watching the 12 core organizers and countless other volunteers step up and organize this event was an inspiration. The volunteers are community members and they brought so many great ideas to the event that made the event excellent. Here are some of the things that I loved about the conference:
BoFs (small break-out sessions that are conversations between attendees rather than speaker-led) were incorporated into the main calendar of events making them highly visible. This made it easy to see which ones were going on. This meant that BoFs were popular and all that I attended seemed highly productive.
There were also lots of opportunities to contribute throughout the conference, and reduced-price contributor tickets were available for people who just wanted to work on the project and not attend sessions.
Diversity tickets were available. I haven’t seen the data, but it seemed like a more geographically and gender diverse conference than other Drupal events I’ve attended in Europe.
The Splash Awards that kicked off the Tuesday of the event and highlighted great Drupal work being done. I think this is a great way to integrate more success stories and customers into the community.
The overall conference venue from the way the space and sponsor booths were laid out to the food were all very conducive to networking opportunities. There were lots of different spaces to chat, hang out, talk to sponsors, drink coffee, and contribute. The signage kept everything on track and allowed real-time updates to the schedule as needed (thanks Gabor Hojtsy!)
Updates from the Dries Note
If you didn’t attend the event, I recommend watching the DriesNote to get an update on what’s happening with the Drupal project and the community as a whole. Dries talked about the roadmap for Drupal. He touched on recent work on improving the evaluator experience, the work being done on the admin UI, and updates to drupal.org.
Drupal User Experience Study
I spent some of the week co-ordinating efforts around the Drupal UX Study that I’ve been working on. I got to meet with Cristina Chumulls and new contributors. We worked on the wireframes for the new Admin UI. The work we’re doing was promoted at the DriesNote, so watch from here to find out more.
If you want to get involved in helping us do user testing to improve the Drupal Admin UI, find us on the Admin UI channel on the Drupal Slack.
Working Together to Market Drupal!
I also spent a lot of my week talking to folks from different parts of the community about how we can work together to better promote Drupal. This resulted in three separate community efforts: creating a starter kit to help local associations promote Drupal, hiring a marketing manager to create materials for local communities, and a marketing pitch deck for the Drupal project as a whole.
Get in touch with me on the #marketing channel on the Drupal Slack if you want to get involved in these efforts and I’ll connect you to the right person! (my username is pixelite).
Where’s All the Drupal Talent?
Many Drupal agencies face challenges recruiting new talent. When we talk about marketing Drupal, the need to bring new people into the community always comes up. At Drupal Europe, I participated in a panel about how to recruit Drupal talent organized by Josef Dabernig. I talked about our efforts to Axcelerant. I also learned a lot about how other Drupal teams are organized and innovative programs for on-boarding junior developers.
Drupal Association
This was the first big Drupal event that I attended as a member of the board of the Drupal Association. I attended a board retreat the two days before Drupal Europe and got up-to-speed on what the Board is working on. I took advantage of the conference to connect with people in the community who are interested in the Promote Drupal initiative and other efforts of the association. I also sat on a panel about the past, present, and future of the Drupal Association and collected the feedback from audience members who were asking questions about the role of the association going forward.
I’m excited to get started on the board and I’ll post more updates as my involvement advances.
Watch more here!
#DrupalThanks
Again, huge thanks to the volunteer organizers of the event!
