Grow as a Drupal developer: embrace the community!

So far in our series of posts about helping you become a better Drupal developer,  we’ve talked a lot about contribution from an individual point of view. But Drupal is community first! Even if you believe you’ve already reached your potential as a developer, remember people before you said and subscribed to the motto: 

Come for the code, stay for the community

By attending community events you not only grow as a Drupal developer – or as a tester or simply as a user – but you also create links and relationships that could last decades. You learn new perspectives and new realities, and discover new and better ways of using Drupal, its components and tools.

I know; I’ve been in your position. EVERYTHING seems more tempting than attending an event where a bunch of nerds sit down and talk about code, terminal, container, webserver, cache (oh, cache… you DO want to avoid that topic!). But you can’t be more wrong.

Take the London Sprints for example. I’ve been one of the organisers of the last maybe 10 sprints and I haven’t written a single line of code! 😀

I’ve always eaten delicious pizza, had a few beers on most occasions, learned more about Chatbots, even had a 2-hour conversation about WordPress Gutenberg with one of the contributors. All mixed with laughs and ending with faces leaving the venue looking forward to next event.

And the boring indecipherable talks during Drupalcons? With attendees from all around the world… nothing could be more scary!?

Well, that means you’ve never been at Robert and Jam’s opening “Prenote”. If you are one of those, I suggest you read Jam’s blog post “So It’s Your First Time at DrupalCon”.

And you can always start with something in the middle, between a local meetup and a big conference, by attending a Drupal Camp, usually a smaller version of a conference.

You have only to pick the next event close to you and give it a try. Start either by checking if there is already a Drupal group for your city or country, or look on Drupical or Drupal Groups Events for events in your area.

But before you do that, here are some dates you may want to add to your calendar right now!

Drupal Global Contribution Weekend, 25-27 January 2019

Small local contribution events everywhere (well, not everywhere, but anywhere), held during from Friday January 25 to Sunday 27 2019. Check the full list of events, and if you happen to be in the London area come and join us.

Drupalcamp London, 1-3 March 2019

The second biggest camp in the world, with people all around the globe coming to speak or attend sessions, as well as make new friends and meet old ones! Get the details.

Drupalcon Seattle (US), 8-12 April 2019

The biggest Drupal event happening in US. Sessions, summits, BOFs, drinks, sprints, fun. See the details.

DrupalDevDays – 10-14 June 2019

From the Drupal Dev Days website: “Drupal Dev Days is the main international Drupal developer-oriented conference in Europe where we are gathering together community members to share knowledge and ideas, to contribute and have fun”. This year it’s happening in Transylvania. See the details.

Drupalcon Amsterdam (EU) – 28-31 October 2019

The EU twin of the one above. This give you even more options to meet the community, learning and even teaching Drupal. See the details.

BADcamp – dates TBD

The biggest BADCamp (Bay Area Drupal Camp) is an annual celebration of open-source software in Berkeley, California. Join us for four days of talks, training classes, summits, contributions, and socials with some of the brightest minds from all over the world. Get details.

Hope to see you at an event soon!