DrupalCamp Stockholm or, wow, what a camp!
I'm still reeling and recovering from the massive effort it took to organize the greatest DrupalCamp Sweden has ever seen. Everyone had a blast and we couldn't have hoped for a better turnout when the fifth DrupalCamp in Stockholm took place on Friday.
DrupalCamp Stockholm has come a long way since May in 2009 when the first camp took place. Back then it was organized by NodeOne under my direction. I'm an idea-driven person and having been to DrupalCons in Barcelona and Szeged, the idea of a camp stuck with me and I was sure that Stockholm needed its own camp. I eventually managed to convince the other owners of the company of the value in creating an event like this. It would create visibility for Drupal, it would give energy to our growing ecosystem of buyers and web shops and would be an arena to learn and exchange ideas. It took place on May 29th with an attendee count of 80.
Fast-forward to November 2012. It had been a year since our last camp. By now we have split the camp into two separate events. One focused on the local community with a low entrance fee and one for business professionals with a higher entrance fee but with speakers from a wider geographic area (meaning higher costs, needed to be offset by entrance fees). I invited everyone who'd been involved that last time for a start meeting and we got the old gang together to pull of another camp. We got the ball rolling in November and the massive effort was split over a team.
Thanks to the awesome work of everyone, this camp has been better than any of the previous in every regard and also hit a record attendee count of 270 (out of 300 registered attendees, 10% no show). My part was selling sponsorships and managing sponsor relations. Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors we could get an amazing venue, offer free coffee and two meals as well as evening entertainment. Furthermore, it allowed us to pay the travel costs and offer great lodging to our speakers coming from abroad.
The day was a 12-hour event, running from 09.00 in the morning until 21.00 in the evening, featuring sessions on code, design, project management and WordPress (!). The camp ended with a panel discussion featuring new and old faces. The highlight was the live voting session when the winners of the Swedish Drupal Awards were picked. It was a real nail-biter and some awards were close to ties. The evening entertainment was provided by the Kitten Killers, making a surprise concert at the camp.
Shannon Vettes (Commerce Guys) and I also presented our session titled "The Science of Guessing: Drupal Estimation Techniques from Project Managers" (based on the session we did at DrupalCon Munich) in front of a packed room. The slides from that session can be downloaded here. We were very happy which is evident from the photo above. :)
Naturally there are a lot of lessons learned and I keep learning, even after doing this for the fifth time. I hope to be able to compile it and build upon my previous guide to DrupalCamps.
Thanks to everyone who made this possible!
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