Drupal

The Bay Area Drupal camp -BADCamp makes its mark in the Drupal world as the largest free Drupal gathering on earth. The recent Badcamp in Oct 2011 confirmed its reputation as the most significant Drupal event, attracting 1500 attendees and drawing on the brightest minds in Drupal. This event was bigger than any of the previous DrupalCon events. Speakers included the Dries Buytaert and Jeff Robins from Lullabot. The event included training workshops, presentations, a job fair, gathering and parties around Berkley.

The inspiration behind BADCamp is BarCamp, which are open international workshop events and are based on a variety of topics from politics to health. The open nature of this conference encourages open communication and sharing on the web, in the form of twitter and blogging. Barcamp’s success and large attendance has inspired other more focused conferences of this nature, including WordCamp, which focuses on Wordpress.

Drupal’s original creator and founder, Dries Buytaert was the one of the keynote speakers at this year’s 2011 BADCamp. The other keynotes were Jeff Robbins from Lullabot and Danese Cooper from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The preconference activities included Drupal training workshops, and summit events for non-profit, higher education and the west coast core developer summits.

BADCamp took place over 2 days. Each day comprised of sessions, gatherings and presentations. Coder sprints were available, which is a lounge for any participant who wants to contribute to a Drupal task. There was also a “Users Helping Users” session, in which Drupal users help each other with any Drupal issues being encountered. Drupal DropIn was a similar event, in which questions can be asked to experts, whoh can answer these questions. On the first evening, the keynote speakers gave their talks, followed by the party. On the second day, the Drupal Job Fair was on, in which those looking for jobs or a career in Drupal can network with employers seeking Drupal developers.

Whether you are an experienced or beginner Drupal developer, BADCamp is probably the best event to connect to the Drupal community. It is an opportunity to access the brightest minds in Drupal. If offers sessions where you can ask all the questions you might have about Drupal or offer your Drupal expertise. This open and participatory event is in the spirit of open source. The events of BADCamp and DrupalCon are one of the biggest reasons that Drupal is one of the best content management systems.

Mitchel Xavier attends Drupal events worldwide and is a Drupal Developer and Drupal development specialist.