Event Organizers: Event Organizers – 2024 Year in Review
The Event Organizer Working Group marked two major milestones in 2024. First, it’s been 5 years since our charter was established in 2019. Second, 2024 is the final year of service for the last two of our founding board members.
Community events have changed drastically in this relatively short period, but our mission has not.
The Event Organizers Working Group supports community-led teams to grow Drupal through local events. Our vision is to establish a worldwide network of Drupal experts who organize events and aid one another to do the same.
This year, the group has focused on three major initiatives – growing our central source for promoting community events, building a reusable platform for running community events, and continuing to get the word out about our resources.
Redesigning /community/events
Launched in 2020, the Drupal Community Events page is intended to serve as a consolidated listing of Drupal events across the world to facilitate promotion, encourage collaboration, and give the community more data about what’s happening in the space.
In 2024, almost 300 events were posted in over 30 countries, bringing the total number of events posted in 4 years to over 1100! We saw a surge in Local Meetup postings, with many events shifting their postings from other platforms.
Download a PDF of this data and events broken down by country.
At DrupalCon Pittsburgh 2023, we began an effort to refine the display of the Drupal Community Events listing – the data was good, but the display had become cluttered.
During Drupalcon we iterated on some ideas but lost momentum during the post-DrupalCon/summer slump. With support from b_man and drumm, we were given access to a Drupal.org dev environment and were able to mock up changes to /community/events’ Panels and styles. These changes consolidated the page into a single list of events, with a legend providing access to events filtered by type.
At DrupalCon Portland 2024, we gathered our forces once again and completed a review of the changes. The Drupal Association team committed them soon after. Community members are welcome to review the new design for /community/events and share any other feedback you might have on the meta-issue.
Iterating on the Events Platform
After a major development push in 2023, the Events Platform continues to move forward thanks to mandclu. Two minor releases have been pushed this year, including one major minor that introduces Drupal 11 support! Martin did a presentation on the Events Platform at the DrupalCon Portland 2024 Community Summit and documentation has also been greatly improved.
DrupalCamp NJ and PNW Drupal Summit both spun up new sites with the platform, as did DrupalCamp Berlin, who also wrote up a fantastic blog post about their build. If you know of another site using the Events Platform, please let us know.
Connecting Event Organizers
We’ve continued making connections between event organizers virtually and in person. Our monthly open meeting via Slack on the 2nd Tuesday of the month starting at 16:00 UTC / 12:00 pm ET (listed on a Google Calendar) has been a great way for organizers to share information and catch up on what’s going on.
Other ways to get in touch:
Looking forward
With leslieg and I (froboy) rolling off the board after two full terms and a new slate of board members and advisors joining, the EOWG has a bright future ahead of it. Volunteer-driven events need all the support we can give them in the best of times, and the power of community continues to drive the Drupal project forward.
Thanks to everyone participating in Drupal community events and the Event Organizer Working Group this year. We’re all important in keeping “… stay for the community” alive.