drupalcon

Drupalcon is Exhausting

Submitted by Brenda Boggs
on March 5th, 2008 at 6:08:53 PM

Note: Not posting this to Drupal planet as it's not really that interesting for most people.

End of day three of Drupalcon Boston 2008. It's been fun, stressful, exhausting, interesting, insightful and I'm incredibly mentally and physically exhausted! I feel like I could sleep for days. I actually did oversleep this morning after a late night over at FELT, the awesome gathering Acquia threw. I was sad to miss the Simpletest session.

So... recap of my day yesterday. I went to the Future of Fields session which was really insightful, but I couldn't get my wireless working during it which tends to make me impatient.

Went to the Google in Open Source session since my wireless wasn't working. It was entertaining, which is always good.

I left early because I had some work to do and quite honestly the crowds of people were starting to get to me. I found out I forgot my hotel key in the hotel room, the hotel help desk wouldn't give me a replacement because I never actually checked in (it was checked in under my co-worker's name who was also staying in the room, nikkiana), and ended up finding the best wifi in this city at the mall across the street from the Royal Sonesta hotel. Woo hoo! Starbucks + awesome wifi = heaven.

Got some work done, yay. Went to FELT and that was fun. Met a lot of people I've been wanting to and played some really awful games of pool, wanted to play Wii but never got it, generally a good time. Stayed up way too late, though.

Today's sessions were pretty interesting. I went to .. ugh, I can't even remember now. Oh, the Dragon Drop session was awwwwesome. I can't wait to implement it in my soon to be released module and use it more in D6! Hurrah.

Went to the Flex/Flash session, that was cool. Something I don't know much about and wanted to.

That's all I can remember right now! I'm looking forward to catching up w/ all the video of the sessions I missed. All in all, a wonderful time, I met some amazing people, and I can see the future of Drupal is bright.

Tags: 
drupal
drupalcon

Drupal Boston - First Day, First Impressions

Submitted by Brenda Boggs
on March 4th, 2008 at 1:45:07 PM

I meant to post this last night but the wifi sucks at the hotel (Royal Sonesta) and I gave up. Here's a recap of my day yesterday, first impressions, general thoughts. Not a whole lot of info on the sessions because I missed a lot of them attempting to get some work done.

This is my first Drupalcon and I've been really looking forward to it for months. So far, I'm mostly star struck. There are a lot of people I know of and recognize from the Drupal community, people I've chatted with on IRC, co-workers I'm meeting for the first time. It's a bit overwhelming, but pretty fun.

My first session of the day was the Usability one which is something I am interested in with Drupal 7. I've been doing some of my own usability testing and hope to publish those results soon. Some interesting tidbits I got away from that session:

  • Content in Drupal is really, really confusing. None of the participants seemed to get it.
  • Taxonomy was not confusing and people understood what it was. Go figure.
  • People use the "Welcome to Drupal...!" screen as navigation, and get really confused when it disappears. This is something I would have never thought about.
  • It's really hilarious to see the quotes of people thrust into the world of Drupal administration. Unfortunately I forgot to write any of the quotes down (but I'm sure there's some transcripts or video).

So that was good. After that was Dries' keynote and it was amazing to see the number of people really here. I am a little sad, to be honest, that I wasn't able to go to a Drupalcon where there were a lot less people. I feel a bit lost in the crowd and am looking forward to some smaller gatherings.

I missed everything after that. Oh, I did make DrupalChix which I just happened to look at the BoF board in time. I think if there were more notice, more women would've made it. Some interesting things about that:

  • There were 17 women there, wow! And I know there was a lot more here at Drupalcon.
  • There was, of course, also a Sprout. Bean joined us later, too.
  • There were women from all sorts of backgrounds, freelance developers, designers, those working for "Drupal shops", those who didn't know much about Drupal.
  • merlinofchaos' wife rocks.

So, yeah. It's been a blast, although pretty exhausting, too. Some other thoughts, in no particular order.

  • When you get beer into Drupallers, things get really interesting.
  • Free coffee goes fast.
  • Having Drupalcon in a freezing city kind of sucks.
  • People are a lot different in person than in real life. People who are curt online I have found friendly in person, people I have talked w/ online have blown me off in person.
  • We need more Drupal paraphernalia.
  • It's hard to talk to the "cool kids" because they are always swarmed by crowds of people. I managed to talk to a few briefly, though.
  • I forgot to charge my camera and couldn't take any pictures. :(

If you're at Drupalcon and reading this, come say hi! I'm friendly, just a bit shy when the number of people is in the thousands.

Tags: 
drupal
drupalcon