This year's DrupalCon in Austin, Texas was another great one. It was exciting to visit Austin for the first time and to be at the largest DrupalCon yet.
Takeaways
One thing I consistently hear from DrupalCon veterans is: Go to a BoF instead of a presentation if you find your schedule conflicted. The reason is because the Birds of a Feather discussions are not recorded and available to watch after DrupalCon like the formal presentations. I took that to heart in Austin and attended many more BoFs than sessions in the program. Some of the BoF highlights for me included: Drupal in Libraries, Islandora, Meet the Yeti! Zurb?s Foundation Drupal Theme, The @amitaibu show (unplugged), and Partial to Partials: Organizing SCSS Partials for Drupal. There were some great formal sessions as well. (See the schedule for videos of them: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.) The focus on what will be new in Drupal 8 made me eager to start working with the next version.
Giving back
My favorite part of DrupalCon this year was the Friday after the sessions were over. I participated in the Code Sprint that day. Probably due to a little of @btmash?s influence, I decided to help with the Import API in Drupal 8 Core (Migrate in Core) project. I?ve been involved in a fair number of data migrations myself, so I felt I had at least a little experience that I could bring to the table. What we were trying to accomplish at the sprint was to continue identifying the parts of a Drupal 6 to Drupal 8 migration that aren?t working correctly. (Drupal 6 to Drupal 8 is the first focus, D7 to D8 will follow.) Once previously unknown failures were found, we created tickets and then started updating tests. I managed to update two tests for parts of the migration that were failing. I added scenarios that would cause the migration to fail so that follow-up patches could be written to address those scenarios. One of my issues has already been Reviewed & Tested by the Community (RTBC) (with further contributions from others), meaning it is ready to be committed to Drupal core.
Beyond DrupalCon
Since participating in the sprint, I have attended a weekly Hangout with the others working on the Import API and pledged to continue working on the other issue I found, as well as more that come up when I have a solution. After this DrupalCon, I definitely feel like more of a contributor to the Drupal Community. I encourage everyone to get involved in any way they can. It is lots of fun! And, I'll see you in Los Angeles next year!