Looking back at DrupalCon Chicago

DrupalCon is a Mecca for thousands of companies and individuals that call the Drupal community home and, naturally, several of the Larks attended DrupalCon Chicago earlier this month.

We’re very involved in our local and global professional communities and we participated at DrupalCon Chicago on several levels, from volunteering to organizing to presenting.

Sessions and BoFs (birds of a feather sessions)

Rain Breaw, who heads up our Drupal training program, presented to a filled auditorium on Views Demystified, a Drupal 7 update to her immensely popular session from DrupalCamp LA and DrupalCon San Francisco. Rain was also a DrupalCon volunteer and you may have seen her at conference registration.

Also at the conference was our Director of Business Development, Cary Gordon. Cary is a Board Member of the Drupal Association, the organization dedicated to Drupal’s funding, promotion and infrastructure, and he has been working to help build the Association’s professional events team. You may have seen Cary at the Library BoFs (I and II), the Domain Access BoF and several of the Core Conversations sessions.

As for myself, I co-presented on Building Successful Local Communities: Insights and Best Practices. I also participated in the DrupalCamp Organizing Round Table, where I shared how the Los Angeles Drupal community, already one of the largest Drupal user groups in the world, is dealing with the growing pains of nearly doubling in size in less than a year.

Drupal Fit: Drupal’s fitness movement and support group

For fun, I participated with dozens of others in the Drupal Fit BoF that ran throughout the entire conference. Drupal and fitness might sound like an unusual combination, but as Dries Buytaert, Drupal’s creator and project lead, once told me, “We want the Drupal community to be fit so that we make better open source software.”

During the conference, I recorded several new Drupal Fit interviews that will shine the spotlight on members of the community who are focused on getting and staying fit.

Looking to the future

DrupalCon is one of our favorite events and DrupalCon Chicago was no different. This time, DrupalCon felt like another turning point for the Drupal community. As Rudyard Kipling once said, “I have struck a city — a real city — and they call it Chicago,” and DrupalCon Chicago has without a doubt left a similar impression on everyone who attended and exhibited.

See you at the next DrupalCon at DrupalCon London!