DrupalCon Los Angeles and Where DrupalCons are Headed

pantheon-party-la

DrupalCon Los Angeles took place from May 11 to 15 and three of our team were there.

Three of our team joined over 3100 people who crowded into downtown L.A.

We’ll recap our favorite sessions in another blog post, but here are some thoughts on DrupalCon L.A. and where DrupalCons are headed.

Thoughts on Los Angeles as a venue

The L.A. Convention Center was a great choice. Some recent DrupalCons have been inside huge venues where 3000 people can seem like a small group.

L.A. had the perfect size of venue for 3000 people. The auditoriums, sessions halls, bird of a feather and exhibitor rooms were right next to each other so getting around was easy.

In fact, the whole location was great. The convention center is right next to the Staples Center where the LA Lakers and LA Clippers play. There was NBA playoff basketball going on for 2 nights we were there which added to the excitement around the venue. The local area was full of hotels, restaurants and things to do.

Because it was L.A., there were parties in wonderfully ornate and interesting hotels. Pantheon hosted an enormous party right that took up a whole block in the heart of L.A.:

pantheon-party-la

(thanks to Kim Pepper for the photo)

Thoughts on DrupalCon as an event

If you’ve only been to PHP, WordPress, Joomla or other open source events, you really should make the effort to attend a DrupalCon. Everything is larger and more professional than you’re accustomed to. The Drupal Association really knows how to do a conference well. The whole event flowed smoothly. Even the wi-fi ran without a hitch all week.

However, there was a definite drop in the size of the event compared to Austin. Here are the last 6 North American DrupalCons:

  • San Francisco, 2010: 3,000
  • Chicago, 2011: 2,881
  • Denver, 2012: 3,127
  • Portland, 2013: 3,000
  • Austin, 2014: 3,500
  • Los Angeles, 2015: 3,186

So attendance was about average for the last 6 years, but a drop of around 10% compared to Austin. There was also a decline in the number of sponsor booths. Why was there a drop?

  • Perhaps it was cost. DrupalCon tickets have risen from $200 in 2010 to over $500 this year.
  • Perhaps L.A. was not exciting enough as a destination. Certainly the choice of New Orleans next year should fix that.
  • Perhaps the decision to offer many different sponsorship levels this year meant that not everyone needed a booth.

DrupalCon does seem to have hit a growth plateau growth since 2010, but nevertheless, 3000 attendees is enough for a great event:

drupalcon-la-group-picture

(thanks to Amazee Labs for the photo)

Thoughts on the professionalism of DrupalCon

We had one member of our team in L.A. who was new to DrupalCon and in fact to Drupal as a whole. He was really impressed by professionalism of the event and particularly by the Acquia employees and Acquia Partners. The fact that these companies are competing successfully and building enterprise-level sites for Fortune 100 companies was something he hadn’t expected would happen with an open source CMS.

The biggest sponsor splash at the event was made by the new FFW.co, which formed after the merger of Blink Reaction and Pro People. With over 400 employees they claim to be the biggest Drupal agency in the world. They had an enormous booth and FFW people were everywhere at the event.

drupalcon-la-ffw

(Thanks to FFW for the photo)

Overall thoughts

DrupalCon seemed like an interregnum conference. Drupal 7 is still the king, but Drupal 8 is tantalizingly close yet not ready for use. DrupalCon itself is still a high-class event, but it’s not growing in North America.

It will be fascinating to see what happens next year in New Orleans. Will Drupal 8 kickstart another era of expansion or was Austin 2014 the high watermark for DrupalCon North America?

Maybe DrupalCon’s expansion will be overseas. The conference closed by handing over to DrupalCon Barcelona (the European events continue to grow) and to DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai where growth has only just started. Here are the last 6 European DrupalCons:

  • Paris, 2009: 850
  • Copenhagen, 2010: 1,200
  • London, 2011: 1,751
  • Munich, 2012: 1,700
  • Prague, 2013: 1,830
  • Amsterdam, 2014: 2,300

Author

  • Steve Burge

    Steve is the founder of OSTraining. Originally from the UK, he now lives in Sarasota in the USA. Steve's work straddles the line between teaching and web development.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
3 Comments
Oldest
Newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
carson3511
8 years ago

Steve, from your experience at Drupalcon events, what would you contribute the reasoning of the large attendance numbers at DrupalCons compared to Joomla and WordPress events even though the global community is smaller than the other two?

stevepurkiss
stevepurkiss
8 years ago
Reply to  Mike Carson

I’m a different Steve, but as you didn’t specify I’ll take the liberty of providing my thoughts too 😉 LA was my seventh DrupalCon, 3rd in the US. My 1st tech event was 25 years ago so been to a few! What I see at DrupalCons is threefold:
– more people due to many involved in building the product itself (module maintainers, core developers, etc.)

– a wider range of people than just coders – project managers, business owners, documentation teams, etc.

– people who have failed to find support via other routes and DrupalCon is their only option left
The first two are fab as the project itself gets bigger the more people involved in building it, and due to a wider range of backgrounds and not just coders I believe we have a far better product.
The last is IMO a big problem as there are plenty of places to get support but many are quite techie – I don’t see many non-or-less-technical people using IRC for example. A lot of work is being done on improving [url=http://drupal.org]drupal.org[/url] which is great, but for real effective help just more local events everywhere are needed. IMHO, YMMV, etc.

steve
steve
8 years ago
Reply to  stevepurkiss

Hey other Steve, sorry I didn’t see in L.A.
One big difference is the professionalism of the Drupal Association. It’s such an enormously complex task to hold an event for 3000 people that takes a team working full-time, year-round. Very few other projects have such a team. The DA does.
Beyond that, I suspect there’s more people making good money in Drupal and more large organizations. DrupalCon is easily a $2000 or $3000 investment for most people, plus the cost of a week away from work. So you may need to be charging $100 per hour or working for a large company.

3
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x