DrupalCamp Essen - Great to be here again!

The DrupalCamp Essen is meanwhile a firm institution. For the 4th time already the DrupalCamp Essen took place in the middle of the Ruhr area in the  Unperfekthaus and as usual we had been looking forward to finally seeing all the nice people from the community again for quite a while. Since none of the three of us (Kerstin, Jan, Ela) works as a developer, we had been especially curious to see if there would be relevant and interesting sessions for us, and we were not disappointed. 

Of course there were a number of presentations concerning Drupal 8, but, as a solution architect who develops on the brink at most, I rather focused on more general topics. Tobias Stöckler, for example, talked about how to get the most out of a PHPStorm , Karsten Planz covered  PHPUnit Testing and Nicole Schwarz allowed a Blick über den Drupal-Tellerrand and demonstrated, what other CMS can do better, especially in regards to media management and usability.

Stephem Luckow covered a carefree use of  Skype, GoogleDocs und ähnlichen Diensten. This was, at large, not a new topic, but some of the details in the Skype user agreements were quite surprising after all, and it became clear once again, that the awareness in regards to data protection is often forgotten quickly when it comes to one’s own convenience. Manuel Pistner explained, how to create SaaS Anwendungen mit Drupal. Here especially one approach was interesting, where she determined whether it was worth it to invest time and energy into a new idea.

The highlight was, of course, the game show by Mark Engelhardt and Ronald Krentz: Pictionary with Drupal modules. Neither expenses nor efforts were spared to realize the whole thing technologically in order for the audience to be able to follow, and the candidates gave everything - especially during the bonus pantomime rounds. Thanks to you both and all participants, it was really fun!

But even apart from that the community did not come off badly. For one, time was used for personal conversations, to meet new people and spend the night at the Rock & Metal joint. But we also used the opportunity to talk with interested people about the next DrupaCamp in the works, and a member meeting of the Drupal e. V. took place as well.

Since we already left on Sunday around noon and therefore missed the final session, here a virtual applause to the speakers, participants and sponsors and especially to the organization committee: Thank you for making the camp possible once again, we will definitely be back! But for now we will see you in Heidelberg (https://groups.drupal.org/node/466133)or - in case DrupalCamp in Spain comes up at that time for me personally (http://2016.drupalcamp.es/) - in Munich or Frankfurt :)