Community Building: Drupal Cons, Camps, Sprints and Meetups

As I write this I’m sitting on a plane flying between Philadelphia and San Francisco, on my way to participate in this year’s BADCamp. I’ve been asked on more than one occasion why I would travel up the Turnpike to New York, let alone across the entire United States, to attend a regional Drupal Camp, and while I am always looking for an excuse to get on a plane, and The Bay Area is my second favorite city, the real reason that I’m traveling thousands of miles from home is community (and of course my love for everything Drupal).

Community is what drives the Open Source movement, and there’s no question that Drupal has one of the most powerful online communities. But when it comes to building and strengthening the community there are few more important tools than Drupal Cons, Camps, Sprints and Meetups. It’s hard for me to stress just how these “offline” events are. I’ve heard countless stories of modules that were thought up and built, APIs that were conceptualized and realized, and seemingly insurmountable technical hurdles leapt over. But, it is really the community building that makes these events so incredibly invaluable.

Keeping any volunteer organization strong is hard work, and when that community exists primarily online it can be close to impossible. People can be grumpy, angry, flaky, annoying, and many more nasty things, and, because of the anonymity of the online world, these traits are often amplified and multiplied online. These things are usually simply annoying, but for a community of volunteers they can be toxic. But, luckily for all of us who love Drupal there is an antidote: actually meeting, hanging out, drinking, and working in person.

Now, I readily admit that I am biased here. My own Drupal life has revolved around these offline events for online communities: I made the jump from a technology job to politics because of an early Drupal-enabled organization (the Dean offshoot Music for America), and then, when I got burned out on politics, I got the idea to start building sites with Drupal for a living at a political MeetUp. I met my business partner Jody at the Philly Drupal MeetUp, ZivTech became a partnership at the Boston DrupalCon, and of course our business has grown and gotten stronger because of the clients and partners we’ve met and gotten to know at these offline events.

There’s something beautiful about a strong community building strong communities all over the earth, and I’ll fly as far as I need to go for the privilege and pleasure of being a part of it.