walkah: DrupalCon Barcelona wrap-up

430+ attendees. 5 sessions. 4 days. One hell of a time.

I have to say, I might be addicted. The post-drupal conference mixture of utter exhaustion (plus jetlag) and renewed energy and excitement is a feeling that I've really grown to look forward to twice a year. This is one great community full of great people. i love you all!

My personal highlights:

• Having my son, Andrew, along- definitely mitigated some of the usual homesickness and was hopefully an experience he'll cherish as long as I do.
• My socks! I love 'em - and they made chx jealous :)
• Seeing Dries, Gabor, Bert, Adrian, and all the other non-north american drupal folks that I feel like I never get to see enough of
• Hanging out with the amazing team from Lullabot: you're rockstars, each and every one.
• A great venue and superb planning - hats off to Robert Garrigos and crew!
• All the amazing energy behind image/file handling, OOP and other awesome stuff to come in Drupal 7

As promised, I gave 3 presentations... all of which went well (I thought):

• OpenID: it's in core... now what?. Another variation on my OpenID theme. Boris wanted more discussion on directions - but we're still educating, IMO. We'll get there, Boris, promise! (slides | pdf)
• Image handling in core... for real this time.: Possibly my favourite session. Lots of good energy and good discussion - and already some subsequent action. I'll definitely be posting more on this topic! (slides | pdf)
• Drupal and SimpleXML: This session was fun, and better received than I'd expected. I'm not the only one excited by PHP5! (slides | pdf)

In addition to those three, I also took part in a couple of panels: the live podcast was a lot of fun - go check it out!

I was also on the Drupal Association panel. This was interesting - it was clear that as a young organization - we still have a lot to learn and a lot to do. I was sympathetic to the concerns raised, but there has been a lot of discussion amongst association members since the panel and hopefully we'll see some positive changes forthcoming.

*phew* ok, that's enough for now... although I've left out a bunch. Jetlag calls... g'night planet drupal!