Reunited in Berlin - DrupalCamp Berlin 2024

10 years after DrupalCity Berlin 2014 the community kicked-off another DrupalCamp in the heart of Europe, bringing together the global Drupal community. With the addition of the Drupal Business Day at JAKALA’s Berlin office and the Splash Awards, both held in Berlin, the event became a full Drupal Week.

Meet the people behind the event

Hi, I’m Norman Kämper-Leymann, senior full-stack developer at 1xINTERNET, Drupal User Group Berlin co-organiser and one of the organisers of the DrupalCamp Berlin 2024.

Let’s start the recap from the beginning. So, what’s the first thing you need when you say you want to realise a DrupalCamp? You need organisers, of course. You need sponsors, absolutely. You need volunteers. And you need a website. Immediately after the decision was made to organise a DrupalCamp in Berlin following the Splash Awards in November, the first recurring meetings were set up where people could get involved to make it happen. Leadership was taken by Niklas Franke from Factorial from Hamburg taking care mainly of finding a good location for the event and the first sponsors, and Norman Kämper-Leymann from 1xINTERNET taking care of the website that needed to be built to call for sessions first and later provide a full event schedule.

Building a strong community through collaboration

During the course of time more and more people joined the organisational planning meetings - Drupal User Group organisers, volunteers from Drunomics in Vienna, members of the German Drupal Association (Drupal e.V.), Drupal Bulgaria Association and Drupal Austria. The initial goal was to have the website completed by DrupalDevDays 2024 in Burgas, in order to announce the DrupalCamp Berlin for the first time. It was a great pleasure to see that when the call for sessions finally opened how many proposals we received in only a short period of time, which made us much more confident that we might be able to reach the milestone of 150 attendees later.

The venue: a historic gem in Berlin

The location which finally was chosen for the Splash Awards and the Camp turned out to be an absolute gem. Right in the centre of Berlin, with the iconic TV Tower just around the corner watching over the venue for the whole time, we had the pleasure of hosting the event at Alte Münze - a former coin-minting plant dating back to 1280. High ceilings, big windows, multiple smaller and larger rooms with space for sessions, keynotes, co-working and booths. And all of that just next to the river Spree floating peacefully through Berlin.

Final preparations before the big day

The closer the event came, the more tasks needed to be done by the organisers and volunteers in a short time. Sessions needed to be selected and the schedule needed to be finalised, swag produced, lunch organised, drinks bought and delivered and the shifts for the at-event volunteers needed to be planned. With the design for the event website provided by Ángela Saldaña from 1xINTERNET, we had a cohesive brand identity for the Camp from the start. This logo featured the Berlin Bear, key visuals with an illustration of some beautifully stylised eyes and colours oriented on the official Drupal brand guidelines. This design was then used as a basis to have the exclusive event t-shirts made - printed and sponsored by the Drupal agency erdfisch. Attendee badges, stickers and even coffee mugs were also produced with the same look. Maria Totova-Cholakova transferred the design to the official event slide templates which were widely used by the speakers in their presentations.

A successful opening day and engaging sessions

At the day of the grand opening of the DrupalCamp Berlin 2024 it was finally clear that we had indeed succeeded in reaching the 150 attendee milestone. Volunteers at the registration desk welcomed everybody, handing out the badges and event t-shirts, monitoring the session rooms and fixing last-minute issues helping everybody to find their way through the Alte Münze venue. At 10:00 in the morning Niklas and Norman officially opened the Camp and right thereafter the first keynotes, sessions and BOFs started. The volunteers who were monitoring the session rooms confirmed later that every session had at least 5 attendees, listening and engaging in discussion of the presented topics. Thanks to the immense support of videographer Nils Nitschke and photographer Stella Priess the Camp was able to record and photograph almost all sessions  - stay tuned as the videos and photos will be published soon.

1xINTERNET's contributions at DrupalCamp Berlin

1xINTERNET was not only the proud main sponsor but we also had the pleasure of having 5 sessions accepted for the Camp:

• Baddy Sonja Breidert with a keynote about “Shaping the Web - Drupal's Success and the Future with Drupal CMS” about the ongoing development and upcoming possibilities of the Drupal CMS including video messages from Dries Buytaert and Tim Doyle.
• Rouven Volk with a session about “The Fine Art of Auditing Drupal projects” sharing useful tricks and tools for making your Drupal Website more secure, more accessible and faster.
• Christoph Breidert with a session about “AI with Drupal and How to Build Useful Applications for Your Clients?” about Drupal’s AI module family and even with a demo application.
• Yannick Leyendecker with a session about “Polish your Drupal website! Last-minute optimizations before going live” giving you a must-have bucket list to be checked just before your launch your next Drupal application.
• Norman Kämper-Leymann with a session about “The Event Platform Module - And How it Can Help You to Organise the Next Tech Talks and Sessions Event” to make the Event Platform module even more popular as it was used to build the Camp website and took a huge amount of work from the developers shoulders.

Inside DrupalCamp Berlin 2024: Innovations, Awards, and the Future of Drupal CMS

Friday social event at the legendary c-base

One of the highlights of the DrupalCamp was the social event on Friday evening hosted by the local Drupal User Group Berlin at the c-base - a legendary hacker and maker space where ages ago - when Drupal 5 was still the rising star - the first User Group Berlin meetups took place. Right after the closing session after the first full day at the Camp everybody was invited to continue the evening with drinks and friends in a cosy and welcoming atmosphere before heading back to their hotels getting some rest before the second day of the event.

Delicious vegetarian and vegan meals and great coffee

Another highlight was the lunch served at Alte Münze on both days. Delicious Vegetarian and Vegan food from a beautiful buffet left no wish unfulfilled. And regarding coffee, which we know was a big issue at DrupalCon Barcelona 2024, again Factorial stepped in as the most generous sponsor having everybody supplied with that hot and aromatic brew from their supreme coffee maker.

Sunday contribution gathering at JAKALA's office

On Sunday JAKALA again opened their Berlin office for a contribution gathering, with pizza and drinks included. You can see 10 issues tagged DCBerlin24. Big applause to all contributors!

Reflecting on DrupalCamp Berlin 2024 - a triumphant return

I think we can call DrupalCamp Berlin 2024 a big success through and through. With the enormous help of all sponsors, organisers, volunteers and speakers it was possible to strengthen the Drupal community again after the global pandemic from 2019-2022. In-person events provide opportunities that aren’t possible with online events. The informal and easy atmosphere at the booths, in between sessions, at the queue for lunch or coffee are something really unique. 1xINTERNET is proud to be part of this movement, of helping to bring people together and stay connected.