My father and I left for a two-day trip to another state. It wasn’t a vacation, so we hadn’t planned anything. We still had a few hours to spend before we set to head back home.
My dad then realised he knew a friend from college who lived there, so he dropped in a message. It wasn’t till the last moment that we decided to meet.
Meeting a friend from college almost 30 years later, the first thing you can think of is to connect over ‘the major you studied together in college’ and how almost none of you work in that field anymore. That final topic of discussion was probably what they discussed last on graduation day too.
As rightly said by TV character Cornell Graduate and runaway manager Andy Bernard from the hit show ‘The Office’, ‘I wish there was a way to know you’re in “the good old days” before you’ve left them,’ we sometimes do wish, don’t we?
Now not to get all teary-eyed, but can we all take a moment to think about the friendships made over the years? It is a tale as old as time, the nature of passing moments and the yearning to make them stop for a few seconds.
DrupalCon has been a place to reconnect. Meeting up with your mentors, people that started their careers with you, an internet friend. DrupalCon has proven a space for much more than simply ‘work’. It shows community.
Over the past few days, TheDropTimes (TDT) has thoroughly covered DrupalCon. With our Team TDT physically present at the event, we received the action taking place at DrupalCon Pittsburgh 23 with photos, voice and video clips provided by Aiden Dean Dunn, Varun Baker and Anoop John; coordinating with sub-editors miles away, we published a few writeups so far; some exclusive content was on our official LinkedIn page. Also, find the stories on the website: Day 1 ‘DrupalCon Ignites With a Spectacular Start’ and A Glimpse into Day 3 at DrupalCon 23.
At DrupalCon Pittsburgh: Dries’s Inspiring Keynote Address was the First Day’s Major Takeaway, and Randy Fay was awarded the 2023 Aaron Winborn Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Drupal Community. 5 Winners were also awarded the Pitch-burgh funding Totaling $78,000 at DrupalCon.
Aidan Dean Dunn interviewed Dries Buytaert, founder and creator of Drupal: ‘Good Sleep, Superpowers, Open Source: An Interview with Dries Buytaert’. Aiden also spoke to Fei Lauren, scrum master at Renesas Electronics, on Neuroinclusivity and People-First Leadership. He also covered a session by Kevin Quillen, 'Could OpenAI and Drupal 10 Play the Master and the Muse?' and wrote a detailed feature on Lullabot’s Road to Becoming 100% Employee-Owned.
Meanwhile, I had the privilege to write about The Cycling Drupalers: a 330-mile cycling trip, by Aaron Winborn award winner Randy Fay and his spouse to attend DrupalCon NA. Kazima Abbas, sub-editor at TDT, recently interviewed Suchi Garg, technical manager at Salsa Digital and organising committee member at DrupalCon Pittsburgh 2023.
TDT also interviewed Bert Boerland, co-initiator of the DrupalJam movement, a handbook writer and a Drupal evangelist, to ask all about his Drupal Journey and the recently conducted DrupalJam; A Drupal Multipotentialite Bert Boerland. In the past week, Dries also announced that Lauri Eskola is to Become Drupal Core Product Manager
We posted a video from a session in DrupalSouth, Drupal in New Zealand Gov Ecosystem and DUG Berlin had a Summer Festival on July 6.
That’s some of it, Folks, You can always turn to The Drop Times to read more.
Alethia Rose Braganza
Sub Editor, TheDropTimes
