Changing Lives & Releasing Drupal 8 at DrupalCon Amsterdam

What brought together more than 2,000 developers, designers, IT professionals and business executives from all over the world in Amsterdam, thus making DrupalCon Amsterdam the largest-ever Drupal event in Europe?

Was it Drupal? - Not exactly.

Were those businesses or brands? - Neither.

As one of the participants and witnesses of the event I invite you to discover the phenomenon of DrupalCon Amsterdam, and perhaps Drupal in general.

5 Countries, 30+ cyclists & 400 kilometers

For many of us, DrupalCon started a lot sooner than the 29th of September. Those amazing people are the participants of Tour de Drupal and they cycled more than 9000 km overall - and all of that to spend 10 days at the DrupalCon. 

Video from SchnitzelCopter.

Bug Elimination Challenge accepted!

For you to understand the whole significance and strong commitment of the Drupal Community members to their work, check out the video of the Bug Elimination Challenge (B.EL.CH), reinventing the Ice Bucket challenge. The B.EL.CH was shown during the traditional DrupalCon prenote and its aim is to help the Community get rid of all those nasty Drupal 8 bugs :)

@robertDouglass became both a great motivator, bug exterminator badass, and Drupal hero of the day :)

Small changes make up a huge change 

From DrupalCon Amsterdam State of Drupal presentation by Dries Buytaert.

It’s no doubt that the most must-to-hear/must-to-watch at the DrupalCon is a Dries Buytaert keynote. This year at his traditional State of Drupal presentation, the Drupal founder and pioneer of open source web publishing talked about the sustainability and scalability of the Drupal community. Here are a few theses from the keynote:  

Open Source projects are public goods

Public goods are built by volunteers and improved by businesses. These efforts result is community benefits. Drupal can be referred to as a public good, states Dries, as it is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. More than that, 40% of people in the world are online now, compared to just 1% back in 1995. The IT sector is growing and Drupal is becoming a possibility for emerging countries to create new jobs.

Watch the full keynote recording here.

And this is how it looked like through the cameras….

Drupal 8 beta release.

Enjoying DrupalCon in Amsterdam.

Massive selfie taking at the pre-note, contributing to Drupal at code sprints, & even “not-to-ever-never-marry” proposals.

Fully packed rooms at the sessions.

Passing Acquia Drupal certification tests.

The youngest participant at the DrupalCon, and lots of Drupal talking and code sprinting

Drupal flu reached Lemberg`s booth at DrupalCon

This is what happens when Wordpress professionals visit Drupal events. This is the Drupal version of the ‘man walks into a bar’ joke.

To put it in a nutshell…

DrupalCon at Amsterdam was a huge success. Intense program of sessions, BoFs and community events was really amazing.

Though the main point is that it is not just Drupal that brought together IT professionals from across the world for DrupalCon Amsterdam. It`s more about the benefits that Drupal brings.

This is not about the brands as well. It is the people in the Drupal Community that matter, community of passionate individuals doing something that matters.

See you next time…

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