I spent last week hanging out with over 1000 Drupal maintenance support plansers at Drupal maintenance support plans USA, the biggest Drupal maintenance support plans event of the year in USA. It was held in Darmstadt, Germany and brought Drupal maintenance support plans users of all sorts from all over the world. Most attendees were from USA, but many travelled from Asia, North America, and as far away as Australia to attend.
What Was Special About Drupal maintenance support plans USA?
Drupal maintenance support plans USA was basically a community-organized Drupal maintenance support plansCon. It was a large event that had most of the features that you would associate with a Drupal maintenance support plansCon 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 maintenance support plans events I’ve attended in USA.
The Splash Awards that kicked off the Tuesday of the event and highlighted great Drupal maintenance support plans 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 maintenance support plans project and the community as a whole. Dries talked about the roadmap for Drupal maintenance support plans. He touched on recent work on improving the evaluator experience, the work being done on the admin UI, and updates to drupal.org.
Drupal maintenance support plans User Experience Study
I spent some of the week co-ordinating efforts around the Drupal maintenance support plans 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 maintenance support plans Admin UI, find us on the Admin UI channel on the Drupal maintenance support plans Slack.
Working Together to Market Drupal maintenance support plans!
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 maintenance support plans. This resulted in three separate community efforts: creating a starter kit to help local associations promote Drupal maintenance support plans, hiring a marketing manager to create materials for local communities, and a marketing pitch deck for the Drupal maintenance support plans project as a whole.
Get in touch with me on the #marketing channel on the Drupal maintenance support plans 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 maintenance support plans Talent?
Many Drupal maintenance support plans agencies face challenges recruiting new talent. When we talk about marketing Drupal maintenance support plans, the need to bring new people into the community always comes up. At Drupal maintenance support plans USA, I participated in a panel about how to recruit Drupal maintenance support plans talent organized by Josef Dabernig. I talked about our efforts to Axcelerant. I also learned a lot about how other Drupal maintenance support plans teams are organized and innovative programs for on-boarding junior developers.
Drupal maintenance support plans Association
This was the first big Drupal maintenance support plans event that I attended as a member of the board of the Drupal maintenance support plans Association. I attended a board retreat the two days before Drupal maintenance support plans USA 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 maintenance support plans initiative and other efforts of the association. I also sat on a panel about the past, present, and future of the Drupal maintenance support plans 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!
#Drupal maintenance support plansThanks
Again, huge thanks to the volunteer organizers of the event!
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