Virtual Drupal Camps
Drupal events have a lot of positive things for Drupal users. We highlighted them in the previous blog post. But there are many Drupalistas around the world, who can’t attend such events, due to the expenses, time, work responsibilities, and many other reasons including the fact that many don’t live near any of the available Drupal Camps. With that, they are automatically deprived for knowledge about Drupal. And that knowledge may come in hand for them, especially if they professionally work with Drupal. Luckily, organizers came up with one of the solutions. It’s online or virtual Drupal Camp.
Global Drupal Sprint Weekend took place more than a week ago. In our office as well. Besides Sprints happening all over the world, there were, in the past, ones which had happened online as well. They had connected people all around the world and had helped developers in writing code, even if they were not in the same room. That will not be the case just for sprint anymore, because camps are also stepping forward. And with that, the ideas of evolving Drupal forward will come in a »larger portion«.
The Slovenian mastermind in Drupal and its connection with media Janez Urevc, said in our interview over time that »Drupal events, especially DrupalCons, are, because everything is large and on a professional level, losing the personal contact between the attendees«. That being said, virtual camps can only grow in its popularity, so organizing them in a greater extent will cross some important minds in Drupal Community sooner rather than later.
The best example of Virtual Drupal Camps and the problems they create
One of the earliest attempts of organizing a virtual Drupal Camp was DrupalCamp24x7.org. But the greatest example of virtual Drupal camps was Drupal 8 Day, which was a completely free, online Drupal Camp, which took place on 19th November last year. It was dedicated to Drupal 8’s first birthday. It had 17 sessions with direct stream on YouTube, defining on which hour they were streamed on a specific place on earth. One of the topic was SEO for Drupal 8 Sites, by Ben Finklea, who recently published a book on that subject. All presentations were later accessible again on YouTube.
