DrupalCamp Montreal 2011 Wrap up

After 6 months of planning, DrupalCamp Montreal finally came together mid-September. We were all really excited for how this year would pan out. With a smaller, leaner organizational team, the core group of volunteers quickly secured a location, set up a website and selected keynotes. McGill University generously provided McIntyre Medical building as our venue, and we hosted a pre-Camp code sprint at the Notman House.

Gabor Hojtsy and Francesco Placella flew in from Hungary and Italy, respectively, for the sprint. Indeed, it proved to be a very productive week for those involved. Over 15 issues were created, UX improvements were logged, and the multilingual documentation received a major facelift. Despite being scheduled for only 3 days, most of the sprinters continued their effort during the Camp.

The Camp itself went off without a hitch. Attendance, unfortunately, wasn’t as high as we had expected, but the smaller crowd created a more personal feel at the event. We had two powerful keynotes delivered by Jen Simmons and Angie Byron, and a host of presentations by knowledgeable speakers. Jen gave an overview of the progress made in responsive design and what the future holds with HTML 5. Angie talked about how every little bit goes a long way in the community, and how easy contributing to Drupal can be. Both were inspiring speakers whose presentations should be watched by everyone (videos are available here).

Despite the smaller crowd, the Camp generated a profit for the second year in a row. Montreal is a great place to get involved in technology, and our local Drupal community is steadily growing. The funding from the event will provide us with sufficient resources to host more code sprints, meet ups, community BBQs and to foster Drupal growth in the city.

Evolving Web presented 5 sessions during the Camp. All videos are up on the website, and our slides are available below: