DrupalCon 2011

It's been far too long since my last blog...quite a bit has gone down in the world since then...in the Open Source world the most newsworthy happening was arguably DrupalCon in Croydon whilst in the real world the most newsworthy events was probably the spontaneous riot outbreaks across London and the rest of the country.

I'm pretty sure DrupalCon and the riots weren't linked in any way though as they fell on separate weeks and most of the thefts involved Nike Air Max trainers as opposed to Drupal hats, t-shirts and mugs. Imagine that, an angry mob of Drupal Developers storming London, flying the Drupal flag...maybe that could be an event for the next DrupalCon in London? In place of a pub crawl, some light looting? I'll drop Dries a line and see what he thinks, although he hasn't been returning my calls so far. He clearly doesn't know who I am.

Back to DrupalCon, it wasn't an event I attended myself. I was very tempted, as i'm pretty sure it would have literally been a meat market of Drupal talent for me to weave and network my way through however I couldn't bring myself to do it. I would like to think that the Drupal Developers I do know have a pretty good opinion of me but I know how many calls they get every day from recruiters and I know how annoying it must be when you're not actually looking for work. I would imagine that most get at least five a day, some closer to ten. So, with that in mind I figured the last thing Developers would want at an event celebrating their vocational passion would be me loitering around in a pinstripe suit flinging out business cards.

However, I tried to keep up to speed with what was happening and all the devs I know who attended gave really positive feedback on the event both from an educational point of view and as a stand alone social event. The drunken tweets of some of the Drupallers who attended the pub crawl on the Tuesday probably said it all!

DrupalCon 2011 has further cemented Drupal as not just an incredibly efficient Content Management System but as a unique piece of kit which has created it's own community and dare I say it, lifestyle. It brings people together and there is no stronger evidence of that than the amount of people who headed to Croydon for this years event.

Croydon owes Drupal a lot as well as I don't think i've ever heard of any other good reason to go there until I heard about DrupalCon.

Until next time!