Drupalcon Wraps Up

After the closing session of Drupalcon, we started our last evening with a sprint working on the Amherst Media website. I found and fixed several problems and we identified a code fix that will need to be written. I know *what* needs to be written, but I don't have all the info for how to write it. I'll take a run at it when I get home.

Afterwards, Nick and I had dinner in the hotel. It's a beautiful spot on the 18th floor with a nice view of the skyline, but it was almost totally empty. There is a lot of good food nearby, but it seems a shame to waste the space. We dined by ourselves in a large dining room and enjoyed the view.

We tried out Lyft to get a quick ride over to the Congress Street bridge to see the bats. Lyft is just moving into Austin and is currently battling the entrenched interests that enable taxi service to be a profession that can pay a living wage, rather than an army of contingent freelancers. Currently, to avoid violating the law, you can't pay for the service (although the drivers are getting paid by Lyft). A young woman picked us up within 3 minutes and gave us a friendly, courteous lift to see the bats. I can see that Lyft is going to destroy taxi services, but will in turn get killed by self-driving cars as soon as those become a thing.

Watching the bats is a celebrated event in Austin. Hundreds of people turn out to watch them fly out at night. Last time I had stood down in the park, but this time we stood on the bridge (since I figured that the hundreds of people up there couldn't be wrong). In point of fact, you couldn't see them very well from the bridge. You can't really see them that well from anywhere: they wait until after dark and are themselves dark. You really only get a glimpse that suggests their outline as they fly. We were in fact standing at a great spot and could see gales of bats flitting out along the riverbank. There was a boat with red light illuminating the bats for a river cruise and now and again, you could see how many bats were coming out.

Finally, we participated in Drupal Trivia Night. An MC provided entertaining patter while asking 6 rounds of increasingly obscure questions about Drupal and other CMS technologies. Our team was composed mostly of newbies and we only averaged about 25%. But we weren't worst -- mostly because a couple of other teams seemed to be competing for lowest score.

My initial take on Drupalcon was biased by my experience in the exhibit hall and the first couple of days of the schedule. The longer you wait, however, the more the technical discussions come to the fore. I probably would have had a better experience if I'd simply skipped the presentations and only attended the BoF sessions. But several of the presentations were quite good. And I learned a lot about Drupal and the Drupal community, so I have no regrets about coming -- it was totally worth it.

I was disappointed that the next US Drupalcon is back on the west coast. Since it had been in Portland last year, a lot of us were hoping -- indeed expecting -- an east-coast location next year.

This morning, I fly back just in time for Hack for Western Mass. I'm sad to miss the Drupal code sprints, but will be glad to do my civic hacking for Holyoke too.