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Hello, Universe.
(the web is wider than you think)
That’s the theme of the first-ever Drupal Camp on the Niagara Frontier—Friday Oct. 14 & Saturday Oct. 15—drawing from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Upstate NY and Southern Ontario.
It’s two days in Buffalo’s historic downtown core. Special thanks to Ag level sponsor Main Washington Exchange for provisioning brand-new coworking space on our light rail line, easily adjacent to hotels and nightlife.
We are offering sessions on all tracks and experience levels, loads of BoF breakouts, and the chance to network. For the Drupal-curious to full-on ninjas, we are making this event the place to be as the Web matures. Au level sponsor Acquia is bringing in national keynote speaker Tom Geller, their director of Content and Communications. He also has several video series on lynda.com and is the author of the new book Drupal 7: Visual QuickStart Guide.
We didn’t even mention the giveaways, chow, jobs board and after-parties . . . plus a day left over to take in the Falls and autumn in WNY.
Don’t wait. Register now and sign up for both Friday and Saturday at DrupalCampWNY.org and participate.
Lead a session. Volunteer. It’s too easy and rewarding to pass up.
Now, shuffle!
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DrupalCampWNY 2011 is possible thanks to a Community Cultivation Grant from the Drupal Association.
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2011 camp retrospective
The inaugural Western New York State Drupal Camp ran as scheduled in downtown Buffalo, October 14 and 15, 2011. The theme—“Hello, Universe. (the web is wider than you think)”—nodded at Drupal’s global community and its role in mobile-first.
Planning began in March but peaked in the summer. We secured primary funding from the first round of the Drupal Community Cultivation Grant in late August. Sponsorships, promotional considerations and in-kind support followed to make up the bulk of the sub-$10k budget.
Part of the grant allowed us to offer gratis admission to the first signups . . . which gauged demand and created unique value for twenty lucky Early Birds. Dozens of additional registrations, walk-ins, suppliers and support staff drove the impact of the grant to well over one hundred people.
Unexpected expenses above our fixed costs made grant funding essential. Our lead sponsor also stepped up when the original venue hit capacity and our overflow space became unavailable. The strategy to hold the event along Buffalo’s downtown pedestrian mall paid off when attendees walked across to the new venue.
The draw of DrupalCampWNY 2011 reached across the state as far as Brooklyn, north to the Greater Toronto Area, and even midwest states. Ohio author and video course luminary Tom Geller gave an optimistic keynote on Drupal amid growth past its original scope as a CMS plus another talk on distros.
Roughly fifteen other accepted sessions and one panel discussion spanned tracks of code, site building and business. Topics included site deployment optimization, single sign-on, training clients, and lean management with Kanban. Birds of a Feather breakouts took place both days as well.
The success of the event was clear in the way we clung as a captive group. Whether it was from the programming, clientele, venue, chow (be it catered or taco truck) or freakish storm, everyone derived benefit from this unusually smooth D-camp.