First time at DrupalCon

I'm Andy, a developer at Ixis and having just settled back in after my first DrupalCon I thought I’d wrap up my thoughts after attending the annual European conference for the first time.

Initially - wow - DrupalCon is big! I’ve only been to some smaller PHP conferences so to see over 2000 people in one place was quite something. What struck me was how well it was organised - everything was on time with very few technical hiccups. I found the number of sessions quite overwhelming - there was so much to choose from, so having the videos of the sessions online with in an hour or so after it finished was really helpful. I’m still ploughing through the ones I’m interested in.

Just a quick note on my favourite session: "Field API is dead. Long live Entity Field API!". It looks like the Field API has really grown up and using some solid OO practices. I think it solves a lot of Drupal-isms developers have had to work with in the past - this session seemed really well received with lots of applause. I really am excited about working with Drupal 8.

It was also the first time for Peter our project manager:

Still under the thousands of impressions what I've received during Drupal con :-) The event was absolutely magnificent, meaningful and enjoyable at the same time. The organisers appeared very keen to provide a high level of technical, catering and professionalism to the event.

What I especially enjoyed was that I could meet the faces of the Drupal community: developers, project managers, company owners, freelancers, people who are working on small to large scale projects. The diversity of the community was amazing. The socials which were organised besides the main event were great as well. I think the greatest challenge on the event was to find enough time to sleep and rest.

I had a number of favourite sessions and it's hard to pick just one, so try to my best and pick two:

How to sell Agile - Vesa Palmu  has really good entertainment skills. It was a well built presentation about Agile's advantages, pitfalls and some honest advice about the limitation of the methods.   

Part 2: Train Wrecks & Ugly Baby Client Meetings - Susan Rust's presentation was more like a discussion about everyday challenges of a project manager, rather then a real presentation, but definitely useful.

So altogether if you haven't been to a DrupalCon we have to tell you it was worth it. Consider next year's European one in Barcelona.