DrupalCon Portland: It's About the Community

While DrupalCon Portland ended nearly three weeks ago, some of us are just now decompressing from the experience. Spending a week with 3,300 attendees learning about and contributing to Drupal was both inspiring and instructive.

For me, the standout sessions had a tendency to focus not on what can be done with Drupal but about how the Drupal community is responsible for everything that Drupal has and will become. Below are just a few of the sessions that I managed to attend in person or listen to afterwards.

Core Conversations

• We're getting OOP wrong and there's still time to fix it
  • Mark Sonnabaum discusses why we need to take steps now to implement proper Models that encapsulate business logic in a way that makes them easy to understand and work with. Drupal 8 is more complex than Drupal 7 and we need to take steps now to make it possible for individuals to continue contributing.
• Making core development sustainable
  • Greg Dunlap discusses what steps we need to take to make core development sustainable. The Drupal 8 codebase is big. Really, really big. Greg discusses the need for funding, reliability, and changing release cycles to make Drupal more successful and sustainable.
• Is Drupal a CMS?
  • Larry Garfield discusses what makes Drupal, Drupal and the differences between Content Management Systems and Web Publishing Tools. Adapting Drupal to meet the mental model of each of your end users while also meeting the publishing needs of your end user requires planning and forethought to help distinguish between pages and content.

Core Sprints

• Running coaches wanted! Contribution sprints and trainings
  • Addison, Jess, Andrea, and Cathy discuss the resources available to help you mentor sprints — including the tools available for planning successful sprints, setting up development environments and preparing task lists for sprint attendees. Drupal needs contributors at all levels, including coding and documentation contributions.

Community

• It's not 'their Drupal' - It's our Drupal
  • Morten Birch Heide-Jørgensen discusses Drupal Community growth, what the Drupal Association does and does not do and why nearly everyone comes for the code and stays for the community.

Final Thoughts

Drupal development is driven by the community. Each and every member has an itch to scratch and we find ways to do so using Drupal. Taking time to contribute back in whatever way we can, whether that be code, documentation or funding others helps to sustain and improve both the software and our community. My thanks to each and every person responsible fo rmaking DrupalCon Portland a success.

[Image: Drupal Association]