Florida DrupalCamp 2010 Semi-Quick Wrapup

While it is still fresh in my mind, I wanted get some words down about Florida DrupalCamp 2010 that took place over the weekend of February 20-21. I'll be writing up a much more detailed case-study in the coming days, but I wanted to get some thoughts down while they were still fresh in my head.

First of all - wow, wow, wow. If last year's Florida DrupalCamp showed what was possible, this year's camp shows that the Florida Drupal community has arrived. We sold out at 150 attendees (at $5/each) nearly three weeks prior to the event and eventually had a waiting list of rougly 40 additional people. Rather than completely turning away the wait-listers, we decided to do a two-hour "Intro to Drupal" session (led by DrupalEasy's Ryan Price) on day 2 of the camp that was open only to people on the wait list. In the end, more than half of them showed up for the free session (and got free lunch and a swag bag as well!)

The first day of the camp had three tracks of session, including a comprehensive beginner track with each session building on the previous. We also had an intermediate track and a special topics track where we has sessions on topics such as GIT, could-based hosting, community building, and other. Addison Berry, Drupal's documentation lead, was our keynote speaker and rocked the house with her talk on the Drupal Community and strategies for being a successful contributor.

Day two of the camp was a "Coding for a Cause" day where we built sites for both Junior Achievement of Central Florida and the Central Florida Mothers of Twins and Triplets. Over 50 people participated, including many beginners who worked alongside more experienced developers as a continuation of their learning experience from the day a. Unfortunately, neither of the Coding for a Cause sites were 100% completed, but more than a few participants have already committed to finishing the projects in the very near future on their own time. We learned alot about how to prepare and manage a Coding for a Cause day (including many "lessons learned") and will share everything we learned in a more detailed post later.

Thanks to the amazing generousity of our many sponsors, we were able to provide everybody food, drinks, t-shirts and swag over the course of both days, including a full burrito bar for lunch on Saturday and boxed lunches on Sunday. We also gave away over 30 Drupal books from virtually all major publishers. I would be remiss if I didn't mention three of our sponsors in-particular who when above-and-beyond in helping make the camp a raging success. The Central Florida Computer Society, a 501(c)3 organization, helped us with the financial aspects of the camp and also provided a number of volunteers who helped with registration, setup, cleanup, and the general awesomeness of day one of the camp. I can't even imagine how we would have pulled off the camp without their help.

Salim Lakhani and Jeff Decker from WebEnabled.com flew in from various parts of the country to help out at the camp, particularly during Coding for a Cause. They set up (and continue to provide) free hosting and SVN services for the projects and were on-site to help us troubleshoot any issues that cropped up. Without their assistance, we wouldn't have completed as much as we did.

Finally, MindComet continues to be the de-facto home for the Drupal community in Central Florida. They not only allow us to use their offices for our monthly meetups, but for the past two years they've allowed us to invite the entire Florida Drupal community in for DrupalCamps. I'm pretty sure Florida DrupalCamp 2011 be somewhere else next year (only due to space contraints!), but we all owe a huge "thanks" to them.

We've received some great feedback from the camp - here's just a small sample:

I want to congratulate and thank those that worked to organize FL DrupalCamp this year. It was truly an outstanding job with great presentations all around. I really got a lot out of it.

Wow!!! it was a great event. Next year should be even more super awesome!!! Glad the weather got nice for our out-of-town visitors. I am sure they will spread the word - Florida is "the" place to be for February Drupal Events!!!

A rainy, jammed commute in South Florida only reminds me of how much I wish there was more #fldrupalcamp.

DRUPALCAMP FLORIDA BROKE MY BRAINS. Battery 0%.

We had a number of people taking photos and posting them on Flickr using the tag "fldrupalcamp". Thanks to everyone who has posted pics so far!

(warning: shameless plug ahead...) Want to hear more about how we pulled it all off? Vote for my Ten Tips to Supercharge Your DrupalCamp session proposal for DrupalCon San Francisco.

(Originally, this post was titled "Florida DrupalCamp 2010 Quick Wrapup" - until I finished writing it and looked up at how long it was!)