Hey! All you 1400+ beautiful & awesome geeks that were so lucky to get tickets… Here’s an update from the King of Denmark.
It was awesome to see that many people yesterday to the pre-party yesterday night. I hope everyone came home in good order. Even though the bartender couldn’t really figure out when he wanted to close the bar down, it still looked like everyone had a good time, and as always it’s a blast to be among Drupalers.
Tonight we have a “good-to-see-you DrupalCon DC Kick-off Party“ at the Stetson’s Bar and Local16 Restaurant. Both places are up at U street and a short two stops on the subway from the Convention Center.
There are food & drink happy hours until 9 pm at both places, so come hungry and plan to eat dinner and then hang out late with the whole Drupal community. Both places will open just after the last sessions let out. :)
Its really easy to go to just take the metro, and if you want to share a cab it will be cheap — $6-7 bucks. Development Seed is hosting the party, and they’ll have volunteers in the subway directing traffic to make sure you don’t have to think about where you’re going. :)
Use the Twitter, Luke
We are a lot of people!
We need to spread out, so we don’t end up filling one bar up, and the rest of the 800 people have to go home because of the lack of space. We don’t want anyone ending up all sad because they coudn’t hang out with the cool geeks. ;)
So the masterplan is that we will use Twitter to coordinate where people are gonna be at. Use #drupalcon, and tweet @drupalcon and we’ll pass on any info.
If you’re really clever, tweet ‘em to me @mortendk then I’ll make sure that everyone in the Kingdom of Geek will know about it.
Now that DrupalCon has begun, there are 1,400 people cruising around the convention center looking at their schedule books, the TV screens, and asking each other which of the 106 sessions to go to next. Want one more way to keep up? Check out http://drupalcon.mobify.me/.
The team at Mobify.Me has created a really cool app that turns other websites into mobile versions quickly. They just got the DrupalCon site mobified yesterday, and it’s awesome. Nice work!
There were several popular t-shirt designs from the design contest that didn't make it as the official DrupalCon shirts, but their designers respected popular demand and had some printed up. We thought you might want to know.
Get your very own DC Takeover Shirt
The once volunteers-only shirt is now available to all for purchase. Even if you didn't get a ticket to DrupalCon, you can still rock the shirt. You can purchase the shirt for $15 (plus shipping) using PayPal or credit card at the DC Takeover Shirt Shop.
The shirts are being printed in a small batch by Union Press in Kansas City to ensure a high quality product. If they sell out another run will be printed to bring to the conference, so if you don't see your size available send a message via the contact form at the DC Takeover Shirt Shop.
Snag a Jolly Drupal Shirt as well while you're at it
This one came in a close third in the design contest and was another popular choice. Is it a nod to secret societies or an anti-establishment statement? You be the judge. The Jolly Roger Druplicon has plenty of fans. Order yours here. Men's and women's styles, as well as black, white, and other colors are available.
Shout out for more designs
Anyone else who has made DrupalCon shirt designs available for sale, please post links to your shop or site as a comment to this post. Thanks again for all the design submissions! They were great.
The first DrupalCon events officially start tomorrow, though some Drupalers have been in town for days and having impromptu gatherings around the city. DrupalCon is going to be incredible with all of the great sessions (106 total!), but the three keynotes are going to be particular standouts. Here’s a preview of what’s coming — these sessions are all going to be too good to miss.
Wednesday, 10:15 am
Dries Buytaert will be sharing his usual “State of Drupal” update on Wednesday morning, and it promises to be particularly interesting this year. Expect highlights to include significant Drupal 7 updates, usability (add1sun just finished up some serious testing, and Mark Boulton Design is signed on to help with Drupal 7), the Drupal.org redesign, and more. Dries started Drupal and guides the project today. Enough said — you want to be there for this one.
Thursday, 10:15 am
David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and most recently, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, will be joining us for a talk titled “Is Drupal Moral?” David is one of the great thought leaders talking about the ideas that move the web, and his talk promises to be interesting and unique. He’s told us he’s really excited about some new ideas that he’ll be sharing with us in his talk. This will be a great talk to get us thinking about some big picture issues as a community.
Friday, 2:30 pm
Chris Messina has been around the Drupal project for a long time — he built the original theme for CivicSpace Labs, one of the first Drupal companies, and helped create the Spread Firefox site on Drupal for the Mozilla Foundation that helped launch Firefox. Since then, Chris has gone on to work on numerous projects, including the push for the adoption of microformats and other open standards. Chris will be giving a talk on online identity and sharing identity between websites – something that will be essential for all of us to think about as online social networking continues to grow and develop (and for that matter, the whole web).
DrupalCon DC kicks off tomorrow with registration starting at 4:00 pm and workshop for presenters starting at the same time. We hope you’re as excited as we are. We wanted to share some logistical information here so everyone can plan their trips.
DrupalCon is taking place at the Washington Convention Center, which is located at 700 L Street, NW. The metro runs directly to the Convention Center – just take the Yellow or Green line to the Mount Vernon Square/Convention Center stop and take the exit towards the Convention Center. As soon as you get above ground, you’ll see an entrance to the Convention Center itself. Walk in there and you’ll find DrupalCon.
Here’s a map of our space in the Convention Center.
If you can’t register until Wednesday, please plan to arrive early – doors open at 8:00 am and the first session starts at 9:00 am. There will be plenty of coffee to wake you up and keep you going!
Also, we will be serving lunch at DrupalCon – so please plan to eat with us and on us. There will be lots of options for vegetarians and meat eaters alike. If you need a vegan, gluten-free, diabetic friendly, or other special type of lunch, please just ask the catering crew.
See you soon!