DrupalCon Asia 2016 – Experiences from India
Last month, I spent more than three weeks in India. The main reason for the trip was of course DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai, but I also wanted to use the opportunity to exchange ideas, collaborate and network with other drupalistas around the world - while touring the country!
In light of statistics, the conference was quite exceptional in many ways. The number of attendees (over 1000) was huge, considering that it was the “third DrupalCon” - an additional incubator event that is sometimes organized besides the DrupalCons in North America and Europe. 82 % of the attendees were first-time DrupalCon participants. The gender diversity was significantly better than usual, and also the number of nationalities was high for this size of an event. Quite naturally, the vast majority (81 % ) of the attendees were from India, but all in all, there were people from 32 countries around the world. And last but not least, the sprints were a huge success with more than 350 people taking part in them. That’s about one third of the attendees - quite impressive!
A year ago I attended DrupalCamp Delhi, so it was great to see many familiar faces again at the event. Local people were very open-hearted and hospitable towards visitors from other parts of the world, and the community had done a great job in arranging lots of social events and activities, such as visits to local attractions, dinners and even a movie in Hindi. Needless to say, the atmosphere was great!
Awesome sand art by @PoojaPotghan @DrupalConAsia. Yet to complete!#DrupalCon pic.twitter.com/j6mDb0vwgc
— Ajit Shinde (@azeets) February 18, 2016
Work-wise, I found the BoF sessions the most interesting parts of the event program. As one of the Drupal core subsystem maintainers, it was interesting for me to participate in these discussions and to hear what kinds of thoughts people had about the future of Drupal. Progressive decoupling and Drupal's front-end future was a particularly valuable session, which I also got to moderate with Preston So. In the first part of the session we defined the problem on a concept level, whereas the second part was about finding solutions. The group was split into two, one group focusing on REST technology, the other one in User and Themer Experience.
Some of the next steps were defined and we'll keep the discussion going until we get to plan things further and create an action plan at DrupalCon New Orleans. For those interested in the topic, I recommend this blog post by Dries Buytaert for getting the big picture: Turning Drupal outside-in.
In addition to the locals’ enthusiasm for taking selfies, I was surprised by how much potential there is in the Indian community; the size of it is simply impressive. There are loads of active people dedicating their time to helping the community grow and thrive.
After DrupalCon, I traveled to Delhi and Goa together with five other Drupal contributors. One might think that it was pure leisure, but in fact we did get some work done as well! In addition to doing my day-to-day job, I also created two session proposals for DrupalCon New Orleans with Scott Reeves: Just Right: Goldilocks and CMS theme systems and Drupal 8 theming in depth, which is a continuation of the same topic I spoke about at DrupalCon Barcelona last autumn. Hopefully these will be accepted into the program!
Despite all the knowledge sharing and networking during the trip, I must say that the most memorable learning for me this time happened in a local nightclub, where we had a Bollywood dance lesson. And no, there are no pictures of me dancing (hopefully)!
Banner image: "Official Group Photograph - DrupalCon Asia 2016" by Michael Cannon is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
