drupalcon

As it often is, sexism in the tech industry was the topic of a lot of back-and-forth on Twitter this past week. It started with the revelation¹ that a modeling agency in Denver had been contracted to staff "booth babes" in the DrupalCon exhibit hall back in March, and continued (as it so often does) with debate over what behavior is appropriate at professional-ish industry events like DrupalCon.

The issue of "booth babes"² is the one that got under my skin the most, so let's talk about that. First, allow me outline my basic position on the issue:

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.

I never did get around to writing anything about the Webchick Drupal 7 Tour after the Lullabots came through DC a few weeks ago, but at this point, DrupalCon looms much larger on everyone's mind.

I couldn't be more excited. Even though I worked for four years at an event management company, and handled on-site IT for several technology conferences during that time, I've never actually attended a conference. I started working with Drupal just a few months before San Francisco, so it was too late to make arrangements to go by the time I really got into the project, and I couldn't afford a trip to Europe for Copenhagen. But, I have spent the past year attending the Drupal meetups here in town and occasional training events (like the Webchick tour), and from everything I've seen, next week is going to be a big hotel full of 3000 people that I'd really like to hang out with. They say, "Come for the code, stay for the community," and it's true: the Drupal community is so much friendlier and more welcoming than that of any other open source project I've dealt with.