This week we're excited for the return of an in-person, Twin Cities Drupal Camp!
After several years of pandemic-related postponements, we're finally ready to begin the 10th annual conference, dedicated to all things Drupal and hosted in the Minneapolis-St.Paul area.
Electric Citizen is proud to once again be supporting Camp as a Platinum Sponsor of this outstanding, volunteer-driven regional camp.
From Thursday September 14th to Friday September 15th, this year's Camp will be held on the Minneapolis-campus of the University of Minnesota. There are two full days of sessions planned, along with three nights of social events, code contribution, networking, and professional development. (There's still time to register at https://2023.tcdrupal.org!)
I'm back as a lead organizer for camp, along with a great group of fellow volunteers. I've been working on everything from venue and menu planning to sponsors, budgeting, book keeping session scheduling, badges, stickers, signage, organizing camp planning sessions and so much more.
Restarting an in-person camp after three years of pandemic postponement has been a huge challenge.
We initially had cancelled our 2020 Camp due to the scheduled presence of DrupalCon Minneapolis. When the pandemic forced DrupalCon online, we were grateful that we (at the very least) did not have to worry about cancelling our Camp as well.
What we didn't expect, however, is how long the pandemic would continue to affect in-person conferences. By the time we were ready to restart our Camp, it had been a full 4 years since the last one! Getting the ball rolling again took some effort.
We were fortunate to still have some money left over to begin camp planning. But so many things had changed. Our previous venue was no longer an option, forcing us to find a new location. Some of our previous sponsors and attendees had moved on to other things. Any moment we had used to carry us into the next year was long gone. We were all older, and everything seemed to cost a bit more.
Starting in late 2022, we conducted a survey of past attendees, asking them what they wanted out of an in-person conference, if they were still interested in attending, and what kind of format made the most sense.
One of the big changes we're trying out this year include a move to a 2-day, weekday only schedule. So many more attendees these days are coming on behalf of their employers (versus hobbists), and attendance frequently dropped in half for our Saturday sessions. So we moved the schedule to Thursday/Friday.
While attendance is sure to be less than pre-pandemic numbers, we are well over 100 attendees to date, and hope to gain a few more in these last few days. More importantly, we've restarted the engine, and put Twin Cities Drupal Camp back in action. The hope is that next year (assuming we have it) will be easier to maintain, and hopefully continue to grow our community.
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