Another Awesome Drupal Camp

We pulled off another Drupal Camp yesterday. It was awesome -- definitely the best one yet. Everything went as smooth as silk and, although I was utterly exhausted when I got home, I will filled with bliss and the after effects of a whole day spent in "flow".

I woke up very early and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up around 5 and started getting ready. I made some last-minute adjustments to the schedule, tweaked the opening remarks a bit to reflect that, and had the first of many cups of coffee.

The setup went smoothly. I went early and walked around to unlock everything. John Parker and Rick Hood showed up early. Cheryl Handsaker arrived and set up the registration table. People arrived. Everything was great.

Kelly Albrecht and I gave the opening remarks. Kelly welcomed people and thanked the sponsors. I had two small statements that I had wanted to add:

(Kelly) Welcome to the third Western Mass Drupal Camp! We have a great program lined up -- hopefully with something for everyone. We have a great keynote speaker this year: Jason Pamental is here. In addition to talks we also have trainings and a BoF track and some good panel discussion. So whether you've been here before or this is your first time, we're glad you're here and we hope you have a fun and informative day with us.

(Steve) Some of you may have noticed that we added a "code of conduct" to the site this year. This was not in reaction to any problems we've ever had here, but rather to comments about other tech conferences elsewhere in the world, including the recently 29c3 conference in Germany, where a number of women expressed concerns about harassment and misogyny. After consulting with the "Women in Drupal", we've posted the Drupalcon Code of Conduct and have identified some specific people who are available if you have any problems while you are here: Josh Beauregard is our designated community volunteer, but feel free to speak with me or Cheryl Handsaker or Kelly Albrecht. We want you to have a great time while you're here.

(Kelly) There is huge list of people to thank for making Drupal Camp happen. We need to thank Steve Goodwin, the Dean of the College of Natural Science at UMass Amherst, for providing us with this amazing venue. And our many sponsors: Left-Click, Acquia, Own-Sourcing, Knectar Design, User25 iDonny, Clearbold and Origin 8. Coffee is thanks to Knectar and bagels are thanks to OwnSourcing. Pizza and soda by left-click Advanced will be for lunch, User25 iDonny has provided funding for this years various marketing materials. Finally, we'd like to acknowledge the Drupal Camp Steering Committee that worked behind the scenes to make everything happen from managing the website to building the schedule to requesting the wifi to making the nametags -- we couldn't have done it without these folks: Cheryl Handsaker, Rick Hood, Matt Mattingly, John Parker, Jim Skowrya, Tom Hoogendyk, Josh Beauregard.

(Steve) Finally, I wanted to take a moment to have remember us Aaron Swartz today. Even if you didn't know Aaron, you probably know some of the things he worked on, like RSS and the Creative Commons and Demand Progress, the organization that fought off SOPA and PIPA last year. Aaron was a tireless advocate for information freedom and the potential for technology to empower people and transform lives. Unfortunately, Aaron took his own life last week after the Department of Justice decided to make an example of him for his activism to make data created with public money available to the public for free. The current Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is currently so broad that all of us probably technically violate it every day. There is an effort -- called Aaron's Law -- currently underway to reform the act. I urge you to get involved. But let us please have a moment of silence to remember Aaron.

I also wanted to let you know of another upcoming event: on March 28th, the UMass IT Program is having the ICT Summit with UMass alums from Industrial Light and Magic with technology demos and panels all day.

I had scheduled an Open Atrium BoF for the first time slot in the Computer Resource Center, but decided to give over the lab space for the Drupal Training that was oversubscribed. Nobody came to the BoF anyway. But I made good use of the time, helping with some technical support issues in the workshop and networking with people.

In the next slot, I sat in on Cheryl's Security Panel. I had recruited Gary Parker, the OIT Drupal sysadmin. It was a good discussion with thoughtful questions -- mainly from a practical site manager/sysadmin perspective. The only gap: We didn't really talk much about Drupal architecture or programming practices. But you can't do everything in 45 minutes.

During the lunch hour, I hung out with Buzz Hoagland. We sat in a corner and chatted amiably about stuff. I'm trying to recruit him to participate in the upcoming ICT Summit. As lunch wrapped up, I organized a Group Photo taken by Matt Mattingly which turned out great.

Based on a recommendation by Jim Skowrya, we'd invited Jason Pamental to deliver the keynote. He delivered a thoughtful, insightful lecture that was both highly theoretical and yet entirely practical about the role of design in web development and how the web is evolving. I thought it was great in that it had something for everyone.

Jim also led the Business Leaders panel that followed. Being in academia, I tend to be insulated from a lot of the realities of running a business (for which I am unfailing grateful), but its interesting to have a window into that world from time to time.

Next, Tom Hoogendyk and I gave our presentation about the digital sign system that we created. I was too busy in the weeks leading up to the presentation to spend much time getting ready. Tom and I met a week ago and sketched up an outline. And we got all the stuff together, but we hadn't really practiced the presentations, so we were a bit disorganized. Still, we had some cool show-and-tell stuff. We showed our existing system and told the story of how it was created, led people through the architecture, and then passed around a Raspberry Pi to describe where were going. Unfortunately, fact that the wired network is mostly turned off in the ISB bit us again. We tried to share our Wireless connection via Ethernet, but it claimed that since we were using 802.1X, we couldn't do that. FAIL.

After we packed up all our stuff, I was just dead, so I mostly just sat during the last period and looked at my twitter feed, to see what people were saying about the camp.

As the last session came to an end, I roused myself to help put the tables away, clean up, and then walk through everything one last time to power off projectors, lock up, and make sure everything was in good shape.

I went to the after party briefly and had just one beer (that Cheryl bought me. Thanks!) It was nice to see everyone and then head home to rest. It was a lot of work, but the team has gotten really good at pulling these off. The first time, everyone was afraid that they'd get sucked in for more than they'd bargained for -- I know that's how I felt. But it hasn't worked like that at all. What a great bunch of people!

I slept well last night.