DrupalCon Chicago
I know it's been over a week, but I'm finally getting caught up on sleep and email after Drupalcon.
This was my first DrupalCon - well, my first anything-con, really - and it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I don't mean that in a bad way: I just didn't really know what to expect, I guess, so reality wasn't quite what I was imagining. I had a lot of fun and learned all sorts of things, but I definitely learned some important lessons for next year.
Sleep more the week before the con. This one is obvious, and I even had fair warning that it would be a sleep-deprived week, but because of other projects I didn't get to stock up as much as I should have. Frankly, I got a solid 6 or 7 hours every night I was there, but there was so much going on all week that it was far more exhausting than a regular week at home.
Meet more people. My one disappointment is that I didn't get to meet more people. I did meet some new folks and spend more time with people I had met briefly at the DC Drupal meetup, but I was expecting to get to know a lot more people. When I arrived at the Sheraton on Monday, I wandered around the hotel a bit to see what was where, and found tons of people working on their latops. I thought that on that first day, everyone would be catching up with old friends and hanging out, not elbow-deep in code. I'm not sure how that observation really applies to my "meet more people" plan, but I'll have to keep it in mind next year.
Find more time for community. This one is less about DrupalCon specifically, and something that I need to focus on year-round. For DrupalCon specifically, I'd like to take part in more BoF's and get involved in more projects next time around. On the morning of the second day, Ben and I were talking about deciding between sessions that were in the same time slot, and he pointed out that we could attend one and watch the video from the other one after the con. That's when I realized, we could watch all of the videos later on, and spend the rest of the day in BoF's, since those wouldn't be taped and it was the only chance to experience them. I only wound up attending a few BoF's, but it was enough to show me that the sessions are for people that want to learn someting, while the BoF's are for people that want to contribute and get some work done. I definitely want to attend plenty of these next year.
Similarly, I want to make more time for the community in the time between cons, too. There is so much happening on groups.drupal.org and in the project issue queues, and I've barely scratched the surface in terms of involvement. I honestly don't know how anyone can keep up on groups, maintain a couple projects, and still follow conversations on IRC, but I would like to start including them at least a little bit.
Find more time to contribute code. I now have two contrib modules available on drupal.org, and would like to add more. There are a few other modules that I need to clean up and document before releasing them, and a couple more ideas that I haven't started yet. Furthermore, I know that I should be submitting and reviewing patches a lot more than I have been again.
For both code and community, I need to make more time: not find time, but make time. Something else is going to have to be displaced in order for me to do those things, and that's always the tough part for me. I had dinner a couple evenings with my coworkers at the con, and had an encouraging conversation with them the one evening. I'm hoping that we as a company can allow a little bit of time to contribute code and maintain some modules, but I know it's difficult to work that in around client work.
So: it was a good week. I learned a lot, both about Drupal, and about what I can be doing for Drupal. I hope that by the time the Denver con rolls around, I'll be a lot more involved and have a couple more modules under my belt - and certainly, I'll get more sleep beforehand.
