MidCamp 2025 in Focus: Inside the Drupal Event Built by and for the Community

MidCamp, the Midwest Drupal Camp, returns this year from May 20 to 22, 2025, hosted at DePaul University’s Lincoln Park Student Centre in Chicago, Illinois. With a reputation for combining technical depth and open-source community spirit, MidCamp 2025 promises three days of talks, workshops, contribution opportunities, and social events designed for everyone from developers to project managers to first-time attendees.

To understand what makes this year’s event different, The Drop Times connected directly with MidCamp’s organising team, who shared detailed insights on session priorities, contribution support, volunteer coordination, creative proposals, sponsor engagement, and community-led events happening outside the official schedule.

The organisers emphasised that MidCamp 2025 is shaped by a wide-ranging focus on inclusion and role diversity. 

“The session selection committee prioritised having talks that cover a diverse variety of topics: for example, community, site building, business owners, project management, front-end development, and back-end development. We specifically wanted to make sure there were sessions at MidCamp that addressed the needs of people who use Drupal but aren’t developers.”

To reflect that goal, this year’s session tracks include content for non-developers alongside technical sessions. First-time attendees and seasoned professionals alike will find value across the schedule. In addition to role-specific tracks like Site Building and Business Strategy, MidCamp will feature a two-day training on Agile and Git Workflows for Web Developers, and a full-day Contribution Day on Thursday.

Contribution Day opens with a First Time Contributor Workshop and continues with guided mentorship and topic-specific tables.

“We dedicate the last day (Thursday) to Contribution, starting with a First Time Contributor Workshop and continuing by providing Contribution Mentors throughout the day, organising tables by topic.”

When asked whether attendee demographics are tracked, organisers said MidCamp does not collect personal data such as age or background.

“In alignment with our Code of Conduct, we do not ask attendees to divulge personal demographic information. However, we do ask them several questions when purchasing a ticket.” 

These questions and metrics can be reviewed at:
https://www.midcamp.org/2025/about/by-the-numbers

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One of the more unexpected and imaginative sessions that made it onto the official schedule is titled “Levelling Up Content: Integrating Drupal with Godot for Game Development.” It explores how Drupal can be used to manage game content—an unusual but innovative use case for a CMS traditionally associated with websites. The session can be found here: https://mid.camp/8707

When asked what attendees absolutely should not miss, aside from the keynote with Dries Buytaert, the organisers pointed to the Unconference and Lightning Talks. 

“There are so many great things. But, probably one of the don't want to miss things outside of socials are the Unconference and Lightning Talks on the second day. After attending two days of sessions and focused trainings, the thought leadership shines at the Unconference with a focus on next steps to solve real problems and concerns. Additionally, Lightning Talks are like a nice cherry on top, often a lively and always creative way to celebrate each other’s passion topics.”

MidCamp is entirely volunteer-run, which makes the scope of the event even more impressive. Each core function is managed by its own team, with more than 20 different groups covering everything from accessibility and AV to speaker support and finances.

Indeed, accessibility was at the core from the beginning.

Something that stands out from the very first MidCamp is when we taped down walking lanes to help prevent crowded hallways, direct traffic flow, and encourage accessible spaces and access to rooms. I also recall having to explain this process (and get permission) every time we had to change venues, often to the initial confusion of the event staff. This is just one of the early ways we focused on physical accessibility which has always been integral to our event.

Kevin Thull a long-time organiser recalls. 

"As the main lead organizer, I consider MidCamp to be THE premier camp BY Organizers FOR Organizers. We have lots of ways to get involved and often a team for each responsibility. Here is the current list of teams," explains Norah Medlin. 

She types for us the list of the teams (You need to be logged in to MidCamp Slack to access the links, I presume): 

• #accessibility | Overview
• #av | Overview
• #catering | Overview
• #contributions | Overview
• #ddi | Overview
• #finances | Overview
• #inventory | Overview
• #marketing | Overview
• #print | Overview
• #outreach | Overview
• #recordings | Overview
• #registration |Overview
• #sessions | Overview
• #socials | Overview
• #speakers | Overview
• #sponsors | Overview
• #trainings | Overview
• #unconference | Overview
• #venue | Overview
• #volunteers |Overview
• #website | Overview 

“We are always looking for help on all teams as we roll on and off team leads every year.” 

Norah Medlin is currently serving the first year of a two-year term as lead organiser and is seeking a junior lead for 2026 who can transition into the main leadership role in 2027.

Sponsors play a crucial role in enabling the event, and their involvement extends far beyond logos. Core sponsors for 2025 include Evolving Web, Acquia, Kadabra, and Amazee.io, whose financial support ensures the camp’s continuity.

Amazee.io is not only hosting the MidCamp website but is also providing free access to Amazee’s AI tools for all attendees, speakers, and trainers via its Provider Framework module. Two staff members from Evolving Web, Simon Morvan and Rich Lawson, are also leading sessions on Decoupled Drupal and Ollama AI.

In-kind sponsors offer services in exchange for visibility. These include:

• The Drop Times and TheWeeklyDrop (media partners)

• Drupalize.me and JetBrains (raffle license sponsors)

• Drupal Forge (raffle hosting plans)

• Story Tech Media (onsite media)

• ImageX, which has led the MidCamp marketing campaign across digital channels for several months

A full list of sponsors is available at:
https://www.midcamp.org/2025/sponsors

Social and informal community-building events are integral to MidCamp’s culture. The Welcome Social takes place the night before the event kicks off:
https://www.midcamp.org/2025/topic-proposal/welcome-social

Other planned activities include a White Sox baseball game on the first night, a board game night and taco truck on the second, and possibly community-organised karaoke, spearheaded by JD Flynn, on the third. The full social schedule is listed here:
https://www.midcamp.org/2025/socials

When asked what they hope every attendee walks away with, the organisers were unequivocal:

 “Connection to the community, hands down. We would like to inspire our attendees to continue growing and supporting those connections afterwards, as well. Telling stories about the impact and solutions that Open Source and the Drupal Community can bring to and attract new opportunities.”

MidCamp 2025 aims to be more than a conference. It’s an open space for knowledge exchange, real-world collaboration, and building relationships that extend well beyond three days in Chicago.

More information, registration, and schedule details are available at:
https://www.midcamp.org/

Special thanks to all the MidCamp organisers for taking the time to speak with us and share their insights, including Norah Medlin, Avi Schwab, Kevin Thull, Kristin Wiseman, Andrew Olson, Fredric Mitchell, and all the other dedicated volunteers working behind the scenes to make MidCamp 2025 possible. We asked around 16 questions via a shared Google document, and the organisers sat down on a group call with the collaborative doc to fill in the answers as detailed as possible. It was the true sense of open source collaboration, which you could only find in free software activist groups! Here, we believe, we could capture the essence of that conversation.