DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019 Recap

DrupalCon — what is it? An annual gathering of more than 1500 of the top minds in the open source community who use Drupal every day. Attendees of DrupalCon Amsterdam left with learnings from amazing sessions and keynotes, great memories, and enough swag to build an entirely new wardrobe. Gatsby and Funnelback socks were some of the most popular, keeping everyone cozy while they learned a thing or two about the upcoming features of Drupal 9, Open Source, Security and Kubernetes.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city with bicycles everywhere. That ringing bell in your ear may sound adorable, but watch out, it’s probably ringing for you!

Day One began with booth setup. amazee.io shocked the floor with an actual shipping container, which was also convenient for nightly booth lockup. Talk about extreme security!

We had amazee.io M&Ms to hand out which quickly turned into a give-away guessing game to win the dispensers. At the end of the conference, we diligently counted up the candy in the dispensers — the grand total was 1195! Congratulations to Philip Boenisch and Ben Tisdale for the closest guesses (1170 and 1247) Happy candy dispensing!

Also on Monday, Felix Morgan presented a session called: The Good, The Bad, and the Data: Marketing Strategies for Open Source Companies. She covered marketing best practices specifically for businesses that are creating, customizing and contributing to open source software for their clients.

We wrapped the first day with a brewery tour and team dinner with 27 coworkers from around the world, including attendees from both amazee.io and Amazee Labs. Great food and Amazeeing company!

Day Two began with an embargo on coffee until 10 am, how was I supposed to function? Once liquid gold started flowing, booth duty went more smoothly and we happily answered the two most common questions of passers-by: “So, What do you guys do” and “What’s with the Container”. Luckily, the answers to both are the same. We specialize in containerized hosting that’s entirely open source. I eventually ventured away from the booth for a session called “Linux Deep Dive”, renewing my interest in Linux and security.

DrupalCon at 8 am = The calm before the storm. Day Three rolled in with a light sprinkle on the walk to the conference center, this time I swung by Starbucks in case of an embargo repeat. As I unlocked the container and set up the booth, the only people walking by were the ones serving coffee. Our team joined together to moderate and sit on the Kubernetes Panel “How companies are currently using Kubernetes with Drupal”.

In this session, people who are using Kubernetes, in one way or another, in conjunction with Drupal discussed what exactly they’re using it for, and how they’ve implemented it and are maintaining it. There were lots of great tips, tricks and war stories on the ups and downs of production.

Will the real Thom Toogood please stand up?

I fondly referred to these three mini-talks as The Art of Sleep via Asphyxiation, Ruining Movie Plots in Three Simple Steps and Yoga Heard around the World.

The evening ended with an invitation-only amazee.io happy hour at The Roast Room. It was a great time to connect with old friends and new friends, current clients and prospective clients. The ambiance of the room was, unique, well… I’ll let you judge with a picture.

The final day of DrupalCon gave everyone the opportunity to contribute to the Open Source movement of Drupal. An absolutely amazing amount of people (more than 300) showed up after the booths were gone to learn, mentor and work together for the greater good of Drupal. Between the community, social events, amazing sessions, and picturesque setting, Amsterdam set a high bar for what DrupalCon can be and how a city can bring people together. I can’t wait to do it all again next year!