I checked out Drupal Design Camp here in Boston yesterday. This wordpress girl has been suddenly thrown into the drupal world as a in-house designer dealing with this site. I wanted to dip my toe in the community and get a feel for what’s happening. Here are some thoughts on my first camp experience:

Location

First off, this camp gets an A+ on the location. The MIT Strata building was an amazing place to be gathered, and easy to get on public transportation. The building kept surprising and delighting me with its way-finding, innovative interior (chalk boards in the hallways!), and of course the show-stopping architecture.

Community
Drupal folks really are a community that loves what they do and talking about what they do. I guess I wasn’t expecting this level of passion. It was fun to step into it, though I’m so grateful for twitter (#d4dboston) or I’d feel really outside of it all as a new comer!

Presentations
The presentations themselves tended to be anti-climatic (or at least the fundamentals track started off too beginner to keep me engaged). Staying with the flock in the auditorium seemed to lead to engaging content and speakers.

Slides
Thankfully many speakers post their slides online after their presentations, or offered to email them. I’m really looking forward to getting Jared Spools intuitive design presentation in my email box – but here is a quick list of others:

• Drupal site planning – letting user experience guide workflow by Dani Nordin of Zen Kitchen
• Accelerated Grid Theming Using Nine Sixty by Todd Nienkerk of Four Kitchens
• I’m quickly becoming a fan of Four Kitchens – I loved their From Photoshop to Drupal Theme slides from the SF Drupalcon.

Overall the emphasis on grids, wireframes, and workflow in general was refreshing and a good reminder to step out of photoshop and try to solve site mapping and UI issues before even opening the program. This is a great take away, and worth the whole experience!

Giving back
I should first mention that the camp itself was free, which is pretty amazing. There is a huge emphasis on open source in this community and sharing resources/knowledge. I find it not only helpful, but very refreshing!

In that theme, this pilot project was mentioned several times on twitter. Two developers are wanting to teach kids drupal in an after-school program in the Dominican Republic, and develop the experience into curriculum to share throughout Latin America. I’m resonating with the idea of bridging the informational divide and equipping these young minds to engage with the online community, bringing their own cultural paradigms to the dialog.

As the online community has been my best co-worker to advance my own work, and not sharing this community with those around the world puts up a new kind of border of those who are plugged in and those who are not. Efforts to bridge that need to be nimble and innovative, and I am excited to see where this one goes. Even some of the vendors like Austin based Volacci jumped in by donating tshirt sales to the effort.

Overall the camp was a great experience. I wish I had more of a clear schedule to take on both days, but I’m very glad I went for what I could! Many thanks to the organizers (all ladies! cool!), volunteers, sponsors and attendees for helping this newbie get plugged in.

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