Drupalaton 2014

I’m impressed by this year’s Drupalaton.

More than seven years have passed since I first met the Drupal phenomenon. I remember we used version 4.7, and barely two dozens people received Dries at one of the CEU buildings. Looking at this with corporate eyes back then, it seemed somewhat an immature but stirring assembly. However, the essence of this thing has been in the air already. I also felt on the occasion of last year’s Drupalcon in Prague and this year Drupalaton: the sweeping power of the community.

I remember, in the corridor of Synergon, I bumped into one of the division leaders, who enthusiastically explained to me that ORACLE bought BEA, which may influence the Plumtree portal engine state. I was thinking, “Man, I don’t care at all. I don’t mean to struggle with Plumtree, neither Sharepoint nor other ‘giants’ offered by a wholesaler.”

Back then, Drupal meant me a kind of returning to roots: it irrevocably turned me from yuppie trend and showed me direction to establish a hippie company.

So I was looking at those guys with their Apple machines in the hands, and I started to realize that the object is not the open-source code. The focus of the Drupal phenomenon is the community. The people coming together on Drupal conferences knows each other; they are smaller — a larger circle of friends who works on the same products at one time. It’s obverse with the typical corporate life and workflow, where the product itself is only for producing money, and that’s all.

During the past seven years, a lot of things have riped. The old kith became companions in the mission, fellow sufferers. Getting organized into companies created some kind of situation where Drupal people can measure themselves to each other. However, it’s good to see that our cooperation can create amazing things, such as Drupalaton.

Since Drupalcon Szeged 2008, it was the first Hungarian Drupal conference that meant attractive and high-quality Drupal event also for the fellows of abroad. For this, of course, it’s essential to have a titan like York, an agile organizer like Zsófi, a dynamic site builder like István, a creative mind like Bálint, and last but not least a sponsor like Cheppers.

The organizer and sponsor team is much longer than I mentioned above, but instead of writing a whole list, I would like to highlight Gábor Hojtsy, who is the chief maintainer of Drupal’s multi-language feature since more than a decade, without his accomplishment neither me or anyone of us would be here and do Drupal for a living.