Cheppers at DrupalCon Amsterdam 2014

5 team members of our company had the chance to spend 6 amazing days at this year's DrupalCon Europe. Péter Oroszvári CEO, Gergely Csonka CTO, Ákos Tóth developer, Attila Cs. Nagy developer and myself travelled to Amsterdam to meet old friends and get to know new ones.

For three of us, Attila, Ákos and I this was our first DrupalCon, and obviously this allowed us to enjoy these days like real newbies (ie. we had to see _everything_, be _everywhere_, with _everyone_, doing the real fun). We’ve heard so many stories from previous years’ conferences, but it didn’t take too much for us to realize that a DrupalCon is something you have to experience yourself, and any story cannot really tell the real deal.

Getting acclimatized in Amsterdam is pretty easy, especially if you arrive to the city to enjoy a week full of Drupal. We left Budapest on a really cold Sunday dawn to arrive to the Dutch capital which was full of sun, and even if the plane left pretty early in the morning, we didn’t want to skip the community happenings of the day. So we headed to VondelPark where a party was thrown to celebrate the brave ones joining the Tour de Drupal trip. The fun in the park was a great way to dive into Drupal before the actual rush started - seeing familiar faces from this year's previous Drupal events truly felt like 'arriving home'. (My favourite surprise was Steve Purkiss, wearing the Drupalaton t-shirt... heartwarming and made me really proud.)

Tour de Drupal! Next year we try to join from Hungary ;)

Throughout the week we went to the business and community summits (I’ll share some details about this one in another blogpost), and the days were mostly about visiting interesting sessions and business partners, meeting old friends and make new ones, and talk a lot about where Drupal is going to and what part of it we enjoy the most.

Drupal as public good

At this point we can freely say that Drupal is not just a product anymore - it makes us a living, connects people from diffferent cultures and most of all creates a common sense. Dries Buytaert’s (pretty academic and very interesting) keynote about how sustainable and scalable the Drupal community is and how Drupal becomes a public good was a good confirmation and proof that what we are doing in this business actually makes people's lives better.

(This slide is from his presentation, and might seem to be a bit cheesy, but if you look into it, like ‘really’, you’ll see that this is 100% true. You can rewatch the full Driesnote here)

And most of all - the companies, the brands, the money in it are secondary factors, the Drupal Community is what keeps everything together.

The most overwhelming experience during the whole week was to see many many Drupalers having fun, discussing business and new tech solutions, drink together beers (and some pálinka), or just enjoy being together. And of course - everywhere you look, there is someone you know from another Drupal conference. We couldn’t really go through the Exhibit Hall or the sprint areas without bumping into friends :)

Group photo! Can you spot us? :)

Finally, the only thing I can say is a huge thank you to the organisers and a sad but hopeful goodbye to everyone we won’t see for another few months. And see you in DrupalCon Barcelona next year! We'll be there! ;)