Changes Coming for DrupalCon Seattle 2019

DrupalCon is evolving and improving to better meet your needs and those of the Drupal market. The goal of the project and the Drupal Association is to grow Drupal adoption and its impact in the world, and based on your feedback, we’re segmenting DrupalCon’s offerings -- which we affectionately call “tracks” -- to achieve this. This also comes with a different price point.

While the programming, speakers, sessions and more still make up the core of DrupalCon, for the first time, we’re retooling and creating more value to serve everyone in the Drupal lifecycle; builder/developers, agency owners, sales teams, content editors, marketers, end-user decision-makers….

The Backstory and Evolution

Growing adoption means inspiring and educating all decision-maker personas, so we’re creating programming and experiences uniquely tailored to each personas needs so that they can all find ways to participate in the continued evolution of the project.

Over the past few years, through surveys, evaluation forms, in-person comments, attendance data and meetings, the community provided valuable feedback and ideas about how DrupalCon North America could best target each of the differing attendees.

While making changes, we also want to make the experience for our alumni attendees even better. We pinpointed common themes and requests; namely more in-depth content, learning opportunities, and concentrated time for networking.

Serving Drupal's Personas

DrupalCon’s overall programming is now a siphoning of who you are and how your role uses Drupal. We’ll carve the Seattle conference center into 4 distinct areas; one for each persona track:

• Builder Track
• Agency Leadership Track
• Content and Digital Marketing Track
• Executive Summit

These tracks can better inform each group, allowing attendees’ time to be targeted and well-spent at DrupalCon as a whole. Each of these tracks will have their own space, their own journey and their own content -- with opportunities to come together in keynotes, social events, and the hallway track for the cross-pollination, community building, and DrupalCon’s culture of collaboration, which remain core benefits of attending the conference.

More About the Builder Track

As mentioned, in addition to expanding who DrupalCon serves, we also want to create a more valuable experience for returning attendees. The Builder Track will be for people who make the software and create the experience, with job roles including but not limited to: back end and front end developers, themers, QA specialists, technical leads and architects, site builders and other technical personas.

Here’s what’s new and different for this track, so that it better serves you:

• Sessions will include multiple topic tags; content will be more accessible to attendees instead of in strict silos; no missing out!
• Due to feedback, we have expanded our one-day programs to run on Monday and Tuesday, and our session, BoF and keynote content to full days on Wednesday and Thursday.
• Adding new summits to provide expanded vertical networking opportunities in strong and emerging industries.
• Increasing our offering of hands-on trainings and labs throughout the week to up-level knowledge.
• We will work to provide more meaningful interactions at Drupal Association hosted social events.
• More featured speakers -- offering new and relevant information from both inside and outside of Drupal.
• Additional grants and scholarships so that a cross-section of contributors can attend.
• An increase in the Speaker Inclusion Fund to ensure diverse voices and perspectives on our stages.
• All-day free coffee (you read that right!)

In Dollar Terms

With all of this value comes another change that we haven’t made in three years, even as our costs to hold and host the event have escalated year over year: ticket prices. After careful consideration and analysis, the prices for 2019 have increased. Prices now align with industry standards in the North American market, yet remain the most affordable across the board. For context, Linux Open Source Summit starts at $950 and O’Reilly’s conferences start at $1,795. DrupalCon remains at or lower than similar events.

New Ticket Pricing:

Supporting Partners’ organizations do a lot financially for Drupal, Drupal Association and DrupalCon. We recognize that many are also sponsors of DrupalCon and send numerous employees to attend every year. As a thanks for funding Drupal.org and the Engineering Team, we’re providing Supporting Partner organizations with a lower pricing tier on DrupalCon tickets moving forward.

To learn more about becoming a Supporting Partner, how fees fund Drupal.org, and how to get the supporter rate, click here.

Easing the Transition

While we are creating more value for DrupalCon attendees, we know it can be a challenge when pricing increases, so for 2019, we have an Individual Alumni Rate. If you have attended DrupalCon twice or more in recent years -- self-funded -- you have the opportunity to register with a different pricing structure. Those who attended both Nashville and Baltimore (or Nashville and Vienna) -- and who have provided us with their email contact information and opted in to our communications -- will be emailed this offer. If you are not opted in to DrupalCon communication but believe you qualify, you can go directly to https://seattle2019.drupal.org/registration. If you are logged in and you qualify, your Drupal.org username will allow you to access the registration button.

Supporting Partner organization employees who are sponsored by their employer to attend are not included in this rate; their early-bird rate is on par with the alumni rate.

Alumni registration opens Wednesday, August 1; General Registration opens Saturday, September 1 -- as does the Call for Papers.

Mark Your Calendars

We are committed to DrupalCon as the go-to event that accelerates the creation of Drupal digital experiences, and the place to collaborate with the largest open source community. The Drupal Association invites you to share what changes about the Con you're most excited about. Watch for our news outlining new programming, and we plan to see you face-to-face in Seattle, April 8-12, 2019!