The combination of interesting technology sessions, friendly people and the spirit of openness and contribution (despite the fact that lots of the attendees and sponsors are in competition), is something unique in my experience.

Is this what people mean when they use the work ‘evangelist’ in relation to open source software, and to Drupal in particular? I’ll be handing out newsletters outside tube stations next.

No wonder people are so keen to get involved and contribute to the Drupal community, in its many coloured splendour.

Pretty much every session I went to was good, a few highlights for me were:

  • The Demo Framework distribution – how to use Drupal in pitches, including showing off how things look on mobile devices 
  • How to manage fixed price projects – a packed room and some really useful insights. In a nutshell – invest lots of effort in agile project management, break tasks down and measure everything
  • Drupal 8 undercover initiatives – lots of good stuff that doesn’t make the Drupal 8 headlines.
  • The nice gentlemen from Acquia who indulged me while I talked about some of our travails in adopting their hosting, despite us being a ‘small’ company. The fact they actually followed this up the week after was pretty good too!
  • The nice lady from SagePay who has set us up with an introduction to their eCommerce partner program.

Lastly copious coffee and food, no idea how this was delivered all weekend when the cost of a ticket for the whole thing was £30! As generous as the event itself.

I came away wondering about communities and contribution – if we can do so much working together to collectively solve technology problems on the web, could we not apply the same model to fixing other stuff like the environment, and our politics? Sign me up...