DrupalCon Austin - A Few of Our Favorite Things

DrupalCon Austin logo

DrupalCon is an amazing experience. We come together as a community and learn and share and have a fun time. The Hook 42 team was fortunate to have 5 team members (Aimee, Kristen, Lindsay, Marc & Patrick) in Austin and we shared an Airbnb house (Casa de DrupalCon) a few blocks from the convention center with two wonderful Drupalers, Darryl Richman and Jon Peck. We had an awesome time and wanted to share some of our highlights with you.

Drupal community at DrupalCon Austin

 

Drupal Community at DrupalCon Austin. Photo credit: Michael Schmid.

Dedication

While we were enjoying ourselves at DrupalCon, one of our wonderful Drupal community leaders, Gábor Hojtsy, and his dear wife were enduring a harrowing experience back in Hungary. We wish them the best and send lots of hugs!!!

Hugs to Gabor & Zsuzsi from the Drupal Community

 

Hugs to Gábor and Zsuzsi. Photo credit: Michael Schmid.

Session

There were tons of great keynotes, sessions, BoFs, and sprints. The keynotes and sessions were recorded so check those out.

Dries wrapped in toilet paper at Super Hero session

 

Dries getting wrapped up in toliet paper at Super Hero session. Photo credit: Michael Schmid.

Aimee’s Favorite Session

Cathy They’s Issue Queue core conversation was the most personally pivotal for me. As my professional responsibilities evolve into more business and less on the technical side, being able to contribute by improving process and educate the masses sounds like a wonderful way to provide a non-coding contribution. We need a “Cloning Cathy” initiative. :)

Darryl’s Favorite Session

Drupal 8 Entity API and Drupal 8 Plugin System talks. Got to get up to speed on this stuff! Also, I took and passed the Acquia Certified Developer exam. I probably wouldn’t have done that if they weren’t offering a free re-take if you failed.

Jon’s Favorite Session

Does sprinting count? Now that Drupal 8 is getting closer to a beta, I wanted to start getting my feet wet, and there was a nice trio of sessions that gave me a good look under the hood from a practical point of view. Started with fago's Drupal 8 Entity API, then fmitchell's 30 Drupal 8 API functions you should already know, and finally Schnitzel's building a full site in Drupal 8 alpha. The annual Drush presentation (Config commands, a Boris shell, Views support, and other new features in Drush 7) was interesting, especially with the potential for collaboration with jmolivas and his fantastic Drupal 8 console scaffolding module generator. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the best (and funniest) session, pirog and populist's Local Dev for the Masses: Vagrant + Virtual Box + Puppet + Kalabox - great tools with a lot of potential, hit up the Kickstarter!

Kristen’s Favorite Session

I didn’t go to many this ‘con due to many informal hallway conversations but Cathy They’s core conversation on making the issue selection process better was my favorite because it is hard and needs to be fixed. I concur with Aimee that we need a “Clone Cathy” initiative! :)

Cathy Theys core conversation

 

Core conversation with Cathy Theys. Photo credit: Mike Gifford.

Lindsay’s Favorite Session

I really enjoyed the Twig Playground talk with Morten Birch. The enthusiasm and excitement about Twig really pulled me in, and the advantages of Twig only grew my interest. Twig is fast, concise, and something I’m really interested in contributing to and learning. Learn more here: http://twig.sensiolabs.org/.

Marc’s Favorite Session

Drupal 8 Entity API, The Battle for the Body Field: Drupal and the Future of WYSIWYG, Viewception are just a handful of the sessions I enjoyed attending. I’m watching the videos to many others still. My learning wasn’t limited to the scheduled sessions. Pretty much everyone took time to share, speak and educate me. Collectively combining all sessions attended, visiting main vendor area, and being involved in the important hallway-chats-between-sessions provided so much knowledge and excitement that anyone would be swept up in the Drupal tide.

Patrick’s Favorite Session

I was thrilled at the Kalabox session run by Mike Pirog and Matt Cheney. It’s awesome to see someone working hard to make a “Pantheon for local development” and I’m excited to hear about the changes upcoming for Kalabox 2.0. It’s a free, one click setup, Pantheon integrated local development beast. Feel free to try out Kalabox 1.0 here but please join me in supporting Kalabox 2.0 here.

Tshirt

DrupalCon Austin tshirts

 

DrupalCon tshirts. Photo credit: Kristen Pol.

There were some really fun tshirts in Austin. We brought 3 new designs of our own, thanks to our very talented team artist, Joe To, including Drup Oil, Features Reaper (happy version), and Drupal Woman (our Wonder Woman tribute) to fill out our growing number of awesome doodles. Going to Amsterdam? Become Aimee’s friend and she might bring you one! ;)

Aimee’s Favorite Tshirt

Four Kittens driving in a matte black, freshly DrupOil-ed El Camino wearing “I Make the Internet” t-shirts yelling “Grüezi Y’all!” (Four Kitchens, Hook 42, Pantheon, Amazee Labs).

Darryl’s Favorite Tshirt

Drup Oil!

Jon’s Favorite Tshirt

Four Kittens (Four Kitchens) was the funniest, DrupOil (Hook 42) was the coolest, but with the close second to the Borg (Cheeky Monkey Media).

Kristen’s Favorite Tshirt

Tough call but I saw a few people walking around with a Cyborg Druplicon tshirt that was quite awesome. Let me know if you know where to get a “fitted style” of one of those! ;)

Lindsay’s Favorite Tshirt

Four Kittens wins. Hands down.

Marc’s Favorite Tshirt

The Borg (Cheeky Monkey Media) really called to the geek in me for my favorite shirt. Several other shirts were really good too.

Patrick’s Favorite Tshirt

No doubt for me it’s the Drupal Watchdog God mode Bull. It’s a Drupal Bull with the DOOM styled God mode eyes.

Food

Pantheon dinner at Eden East

 

Pantheon Partner Dinner at Eden East. Photo credit: Kristen Pol.

Aimee’s Favorite Food

Franklin Barbecue, hands down. And hands full of BBQ sauce.

Darryl’s Favorite Food

A Brazilian steakhouse! Different kinds of meat!

Jon’s Favorite Food

Franklin Barbecue has ruined me. I’ve had regional BBQ in New York, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee... and this was on another level. Also, Craft Pride FTW (beer is food, right?). Huge thanks to Four Kitchens for a unique Austin experience.

Kristen’s Favorite Food

Wow… I don’t eat a lot a meat but had the best I’ve ever had at Franklin Barbecue. The hype is real though I don’t think I’d stand in line for 3 hours like the locals do (I was lucky enough to go thanks to Four Kitchens!).

Lindsay’s Favorite Food

Franklin Barbecue. There has not been a word created to explain the deliciousness of Franklin Barbecue.

Marc’s Favorite Food

The Brazilian meat was really good and there was an endless supply -- I didn’t need to eat for 2 days after that dinner :).

Patrick’s Favorite Food

I had all the white chip macadamia nut cookies. ALL of them. Like a hundred.

Person

Trivia night

 

Trivia night with Patrick, Marc, Lindsay, Darryl & Jon. Photo credit: Kristen Pol.

Aimee’s Favorite Person

There are so many lovely people in the Drupal Community, so I’ll clump them by groups.

Companies: The whole Pantheon team <3, Four Kitchens for being a lovely “guide” to the best of Austin, and all of the generous party sponsors (Lullabot, Lingotek, MediaCurrent, and more!).

Buddies: I loved to experience DrupalCon through the eyes of our three first-time attendees. Being with Kristen and I, they were instantly immersed with the dedicated and passionate core sprint groups, exposed to the the different business folks and agencies from all over the world, and encouraged to explore with fervor (party). Which they did! It was great to hang with our extended family of sprinters (Ryan Weal) and additional “honorary Hook 42 team members” (Jon Peck and Darryl Richman) that shared the AirBnB house. It was a most entertaining time.

New Friends: In the Business Summit I met Brian, a New York transplant who landed in New Mexico working as a Drupal developer. It was his first DrupalCon, he was rolling solo, and he was interested in contributing to core. He was a natural personality fit for our team and joined us for many of our Austin antics. I hadn’t really spent a lot of time with Ryan Weal, but had the pleasure to this week. He really is a bright and passionate fellow. And FUNNY!

Darryl’s Favorite Person

I enjoyed chatting with John (I have to dig out his card from my swag bag) at the Community Summit. He was leading the “micro sites” topic. Hanging with the Hooksters was great!

Jon’s Favorite Person

Don’t make me choose! This is not in particular order, I’m going to forget to mention some people and feel terrible, so I’ll have to blame beer and hope to be forgiven.

It was great to see all sorts of people and groups who I usually interact with through a webcam. Four Kitchens was great, including Matt Grill, Mike Minecki, Caris Hurd, Suzy Bates, Chris Ruppel, Todd Nienkerk, Leah Mason, Elia Albarran, and Cecy Correa - wonderful conversations and great hosts. Also, meeting in-person with the end clients was fantastic, it’s one thing to work together, it’s another to enjoy BBQ and relax and see people in a different context.

The Kalamuna crew kicked all sorts of ass, of course. Mike Pirog had a great presentation, networking and collaboration with Andrew Mallis on shuffleboard (team beard dominated, of course). Glad to meet John Ouellet, Emanuel Greucean, and Thiago de Mello Bueno. Thanks also to Alec Reynolds, Andrew Ward, Shannon O'Malley, and everyone else for your hospitality and being awesome!

It was awesome collaborating with Ben Jeavons on site_audit and security_review integration. Had a really productive conversation with John Pugh and the Hostmaster (Aegir) team about adding more providers to Switchboard.

Nice catching up with WNY / DUGTO friends like Darko Antic, Cleaver Barnes and Chris Luckhardt, along with the SANDCamp crew like Jacob Tooman, Matt Young, Doug Hoffman and Tim Bozeman. Good times with Ricky Pugh, Matt Cheney, Ben Sheldon, Josh Koenig, Suzanne Aldrich, David Strauss, Nick Stielau, Timani Tunduwani and Jessi Fischer from Pantheon. Hope I get to see Jesus Manuel Olivas, Matias Blazquez and others down in Bogotá!

Finally, thank you to the entire Hook 42 crew - it was wonderful sharing such a great event with you, including many great nights and talks! To many more!

Kristen’s Favorite Person

I got very stressed out on Wednesday after an unexpected experience so was shaky and distressed. I got a big hug from Cathy Theys which was a great help and Brian, an EMT from New Mexico, gave me his chair, reminded me to take deep breaths, and suggested I eat some chocolate. So, remember, when you get stressed out: 1) get hugs, 2) relax and breathe, and 3) eat chocolate! :)

It was also great fun to hang out with the new Hook 42 teammates and our extended team buddies, Darryl & Jon.

Lindsay’s Favorite Person

So many people, but if I have to pick out one person, it would be Morten Birch. 1. He is a complete badass. 2. Facial hair. 3. His undying enthusiasm and excitement for Twig.

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Morten Birch at trivia night. Photo credit: Michael Schmid.

Marc’s Favorite Person

Collectively the whole community really impressed me. Being a noob to DrupalCon, I admired the collaboration between all levels of companies and attendees. Everyone had the same goal, openness, natural drive to help and grow one another in whatever capacity they were. I am thankful for the sponsors (big & small) to hold this event and the attendees for attending - there are too many to name.

One person who really impressed me was Chris Weber from The Nerdery, who took the time to show some very helpful tools in PHPStorm to use with the GIT-hokey-pokey, code review, patch install, etc... In fact, a whole crowd gathered behind the few of us at the sprint table to watch also. Going one step further, Chris went to the adjacent room with the video and presented the same helpful tips for a greater audience.

I really enjoyed and felt motivated from keynote speakers Erynn Petersen and Hugh Forrest.

Patrick’s Favorite Person

Suzanne Dergacheva is my favorite person right now. She really helped me feel at ease while I was lost in session trying to figure out exactly what was being said. We really bonded over our mutual love of teaching others anything that we know and how it leads to the best feelings in the world. She’s a kindred spirit, and she added me on LinkedIn confirming our friendship for life.

Social Event

Wow! The social event calendar was packed for Austin. We had a hard time getting to everything but did what we could. ;) 

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Pantheon Party at Banger’s. Photo credit: Pantheon Systems.

Aimee’s Favorite Social Event

Pantheon Party!! YAY!! Bangers, bands, buddies, and brews!!

Darryl’s Favorite Social Event

Pantheon Party!! YAY!! (but the one on Sunday night)

Jon’s Favorite Social Event

The after-sprint event at Craft Pride was the best conclusion to a great event; so many awesome people in the shade of a pecan tree enjoying a fantastic beer selection.

Kristen’s Favorite

Lots of great ones, but definitely trivia night for me. I got to judge this time and got to use my Bad Judgement to give Drupalers who were trying to lose a +1 instead of a +0. :P

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Trivia Night at DrupalCon Austin. Photo credit: Michael Schmid.

Lindsay’s Favorite Social Event

Pantheon party. All she wants to do is dance, dance, dance.

Marc’s Favorite Social Event

Pantheon Party; the food, people, fun and music were all great!

Patrick’s Favorite Social Event

It was definitely Lullabot’s Wednesday night bar hub. It was a great night where I got to spend time with so many interesting and new individuals in my life such as Suzanne Degacheva, Lindsay Gaudinier, Aimee Degnan, Brian, Patrick, and so many more. It also ended by being biked home by a fellow Boston native who has moved out to Austin… which is something I might be doing in the very near future.

“Keep Austin Weird” Experience

Nothing would be complete without some “Keep Austin Weird” experiences. Hope you got a little taste of Austin weirdness too! :)

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DrupalCon Austin Dries Bat. Photo credit: Paul Johnson.

Aimee’s Favorite “Keep Austin Weird” Experience

An ornately framed piece of red velvet in the master bedroom in our AirBnB house. It has a random scratch through the center. It has been named “Scratch on Velvet”.

Darryl’s Favorite “Keep Austin Weird” Experience

Bizarre “closed sidewalk” that you could take three steps around at either end and use the sidewalk, which other than the fencing, was in good working order.

Jon’s Favorite “Keep Austin Weird” Experience

Singing show tunes at the Swan Dive at midnight. Yup, that happened.

Kristen’s Favorite “Keep Austin Weird” Experience

After trivia night, a few of us got tacos at the Bomb Tacos truck. The Drupaler next to me (Shawn De Armond) had a beetle on his shoulder so I grabbed it so that it wouldn’t crawl into his hair… then I hear, ‘That’s not a beetle, that’s a “water bug”’. Fortunately, we had already eaten. ;)

Lindsay’s Favorite “Keep Austin Weird” Experience

Taking a pedicab around 2 am around Austin. That’s what sold me. Thanks Austin!

Marc’s Favorite “Keep Austin Weird” Experience

Psycho Dog: On a walk back to the house with Lindsay in the dark - this little dog flew out of nowhere barking with teeth showing and both of us were startled. The next fleeting thoughts were of Garfield (the cat) booting Odie (the dog) several feet. Luckily this ferocious dog decided it would be wiser to stop about a foot or two from us.

Patrick’s Favorite “Keep Austin Weird” Experience

I unfortunately had experienced Vertigo on Monday and my world was spinning for about 48 hours. I ended up leaving DrupalCon one day as I was too sick to function and walking the mile to my temporary casa which was locked not by key, but by a code. After about a half hour of entering the code correctly and being unable to open the door I ended up breaking into the own area I live. By removing the window from its frame and climbing in all while humming this pop culture tour de force song in my head.

That’s a wrap!

Thanks to the Drupal Association and all the volunteers for making DC Austin a huge success. Please leave a comment with some of your favorite things! And… see you in L.A. :)

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DrupalCon Austin Bat Glasses. Photo credit: Paul Johnson.