varn.dev

Since 2008, I’ve been primarily a Drupal developer, focused on the front end and site building side of things. I love Drupal, even if I don’t always agree with the direction the software itself is going.

What matters more to me than the software though, is the Drupal community itself. When I first got into Drupal, the guy I was working with at the time told me about a local meetup, and a statewide event for Drupal. I attended the Meetup and met some great people, a couple of whom, even 18 years later, I still see regularly at our every-other-month meetups. Software doesn’t live in a vaccuum, it is made by people, and the community behind it is incredibly important. One of the tenants of the Drupal community is “Come for the Code, Stay for the Community”, a sticker I have on my laptop as I write this.

Since 2019, I’ve been involved as an organizer for Florida DrupalCamp, one of the longest continually running annual Drupal conferences in the world. Each February, we welcome between 100-150 people to Northbridge University in Orlando for 3 days of training, sessions and community contribution. As an organizer, I’ve gotten to hear literally hundreds of people speak and present on the minutia to the grandiose with Drupal, as all of their thoughts and contributions have helped shape the direction of where Drupal is going. I look forward to this every single year, despite all of the work involved in organizing a conference (hotel booking, t-shirt ordering, catering juggling, after-party partying, sponsor wrangling and so much more), as I get to see so many friends I’ve made over the years, as well as some co-workers who often come to speak and attend (my company is fully remote). The 2027 Florida DrupalCamp will be our 19th in a row and as I’ve only missed two in that entire time, I’m very much looking forward to it as I start ramping up all of the planning for it in the next few months.

I was also fortunate to be invited to be involved in the planning of DrupalCon Orlando, which will take place about 6 weeks later, also in Orlando for the first time ever. It’s going to be a great opportunity to showcase the Florida Drupal community itself and, as it is taking place at a resort rather than a conference hotel, will be unlike any other Drupal event ever (hopefully for the better!) I’m tasked with help come up with social events and things for the community to do, as the entire event will be pretty self contained at the resort. We are looking to have a talent show, food trucks and a whole lot more as we welcome hopefully 1500+ people.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without a strong, welcoming Drupal community. Many conferences, especially related to software and technology, fizzle out after a few years, but the dedication of contributors and the time and effort they put into building that community is often self sustaining, as new people see the work that older people in the community have put in and want to be a part of it too, considering how open and inclusive and welcoming the community generally is to folks of all walks of life. That’s not to say that there isn’t disagreements and assholes - every community sadly has them - and the fact that DrupalCon, the largest Drupal event in the world, is in Florida (and the US) hasn’t gone without comment and complaint. I’m not going to get into that here, because I can see the perspective, but will just say that for those of us who live in Florida (and the US), we are just doing the best we can.

As an organizer though, and I’ve heard this from others, it does appearing that the Drupal community, despite its longevity, is shrinking. Whereas Florida DrupalCamp used to bring closer to 300 people every year in its heyday, now we are down to about a third of that. DrupalCon numbers too. I think that there are a number of factors behind this:

• The community is aging. I started when I was in my mid-20s, and am in my 40s now. Some people started later in life than I did of course and so they naturally age out.

• Drupal events are very insular - it’s a great way to meet and hang out with friends you’ve made over the years, but its not inclusive to everyone, including new people to the community, women and people of color, sometimes including harassment. If you’re a white dude then you’ll see a lot of people like you but for everyone else it can be a crap shoot. I realize this is a huge problem in pretty much every tech space, but if we are to pat ourselves on our back for the Drupal community, we need to be eyes-wide-open about what the experience is for EVERYONE. And attendee feedback and dwindling numbers back this up I think.

• Drupal just isn’t “it” anymore. There have been a lot, lot, LOT of pivots within the community over the years to try to use the software itself to bring people in. First it was a shift to enterprise focus; then it was on better site building tools; now it’s all in on AI. It’s hard for any open source community, especially one the size of Drupal, to sustain itself forever, but it’s hard not to feel like the community is throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

How do we fix this? I don’t know. In person events are great, but I think that the community needs to accept that the halcyon days of Drupal are behind us (it used to be that we were “competing” with Wordpress. I think we all know how that turned out) and have lower expectations for big events and what they should be. I realize that it’s weird for me to say, as someone helping organize a big event, but from my own personal experience, I just don’t get as much from a big conference as I do from smaller events.

Perhaps it would be better if, rather than putting on a massive Drupal event twice a year (once in North America, once in Europe), the Drupal Association instead put it’s resources to growing communities that already exist in Drupal. Camps, unconferences, meetups, that sort of thing. The community already self organizes like this, and I just think that if we resources were spent on sustaining these Camps, letting them flourish and grow and spread out more, you’ll get a better grass roos community, and bring Drupal back to it’s roots. The same sponsors for DrupalCon often sponsor DrupalCamps, so its not a net loss for sponsors. And given the price of travel, cut technology budgets and more, you’ll probably draw more folks in who can drive two hours rather than fly across the country (or world).

And that doesn’t even mean that, should DrupalCon be paused, that you can’t bring it back later. If the community reasserts itself and grows through grassroots support, that will bring in more people and that will make DrupalCon feel bigger and more important than just another annual tech conference.

I don’t have all the answers here, just my own experiences. I’ll still stay involved in the community as long as I can, because I love it and organizing and helping bring people together. But any community that doesn’t pause and look at itself in the mirror once in a while, is doomed to eventual splintering and dissolution, and that’s the last thing I want for Drupal. We’ve already made it 25 years, now we just have to sustain for 25+ more.