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CEO, Co-Founder
Aug 10, 2014
code confusion
In open source, something magical happens when like-minded people meet. You find out somebody else is dealing with a similar problem, you combine ideas and before you know it an ad hoc working group has formed to fix the problem. It's a public secret that at Drupalcon the good stuff happens in the BOF sessions.

As the Drupal community has grown we've seen new community events spring up that catered to whole groups of people that before weren't able to meet and talk:

  • The Drupal Developer Days: a hack fest that has become more and more defined as one of the best opportunities to be part of an epic code sprint.
  • The Drupal CXO days: a 2-day in depth peer-to-peer networking and knowledge exchange event where the owners and managers of Drupal consultancies share their experiences with each other.
  • Frontend United: the event that gave designers and themers a real voice in the community and that has been instrumental in getting improvements like the Twig theming engine into Drupal 8 core.

All 3 events have enriched our community with new momentum. All 3 have helped us make progress we couldn't have achieved without them. Getting their own event gave these communities their own distinct voice, and gave them the ability to champion changes that benefited all of Drupal.

When I was thinking about this a few months ago, I wondered what other sub-communities are currently underserved. That is when it struck me that we don't have events for the people that I originally belonged to, the site-builders. The people who don't want to have to write code - and this might shock you - the people that might not even want to use the command line - Don't get me wrong, I love Drush, but if you are like me and you never really got to practice your programming, it's a real challenge to find sessions at Drupal events that don't make you feel at least somewhat stupid.

As a site-builder I don't want to use APIs, if I know that they exist, that's enough, because I can ask my developer colleagues who are much better at writing code to make a custom module that will solve my needs. As a non-coder I want to use contrib modules with UIs that let me be productive without having to start messing around in a code editor. The Drupal UI is really powerful; this is a really big part of our community's success; this is what gets a lot of people hooked in the first place.

At Drupalcamp Wroclaw I talked about my idea for a "no code" event with Jam and Blair Wadman, they both liked the idea so much that we decided to do a brainstorm right there and then. This is the mission statement we came up with:

"Drupal is one of the most powerful content management tools around. It is one of the only projects of significant complexity built to be set up, configured, and used from the user interface. Following in the tradition of Dev Days for developers, Front End United for the themers and designers, we propose a camp for those who don't have one: The Drupal Users - not your site visitors - the folks who build and maintain your site and all those who plan, write, and add the content to your site. This is "The Missing Drupal Camp": no code, no command line; all the power of Drupal from the UI in presentations, case studies, panel discussion, and more." We still have to start preparing in earnest, but I am really excited about what this event could mean for the wider community. I suspect there is a large group of people that previously were too intimidated to attend or speak at Drupal events, people that have their own problems that previously didn't get the attention they deserve."

If you are a Site builder, editor or content owner, marketeer, product owner, entre- or intra-preneur, digital agency or consultant, and this is the event you have been waiting for, help us spread the word, and sign up, so that we can reach out to you when we have more information available.

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For reasons of convenience I'm publishing this post on the Pronovix blog, as with Drupalcon Szeged, Drupal Dev Days, Drupal CXO Days and all the other events we've helped organize, this will of course also be a non-profit community event, organized by and for the community, anyone is welcome to join.

 

Kristof Van Tomme is an open source strategist and architect. He is the CEO and co-founder of Pronovix. He’s got a degree in bioengineering and is a regular speaker at conferences in the API, developer relations, and technical writing communities. He is the host of the Developer Success & the Business of APIs and the API Resilience podcasts.

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