conference

The weekend of 28th February to the 1st March saw the second DrupalCamp England event with around 100 people attending the University of Salford, not far from Manchester, for the two day event.

I had submitted a talk and the camp organisers had accepted it and also decided to make me a featured speaker, which was an incredible honour. As such I was part of the communications being sent out in the weeks before the event.

Since this is more or less a local event for me I decided to travel in on both days rather than get a hotel or anything. The rain and wind of the previous week had abated and the Saturday morning saw some of the warmest (and driest) weather we had seen in the north west for a few months.

This year, DrupalCamp Scotland was held on the 7th November, at the University of Edinburgh.

On the morning of the conference I made the quick walk from by bed and breakfast and arrived at 50 George Square to join in with around 60 attendees to a day of talks and chatting.

The morning coffee and a selection of pastries was set out in the corridor outside the main room of the conference. I'm sure a few of the tasty pastries were lost to passing students.

After getting settled in we had a quick introduction session by Stratos Filalthis before we started the day.

April 23rd, 2024 saw the first LocalGov Drupal Camp, held at the Birmingham Council buildings in Birmingham city center.

It's been ages since I attended an in person Drupal Camp in the UK, so when I saw that the LocalGov Drupal people were organising one just down the road for me I jumped at the chance to grab a ticket.

LocalGov Drupal is a distribution that combines Drupal, some configuration, some contributed modules, and some glue code with the aim of making it easier for councils to generate sites.

This year's DrupalCon Europe was hosted between the 17th and 20th of October, in the French city of Lille. My DrupalCon adventure began early on Monday morning when Chris Maiden picked me up to drive to France via the EuroStar train. We arrived in Lille a little after 4pm, which was really good going for a nearly 400+ mile trip.

DrupalCon Lillie was a first for me as I was there representing Code Enigma, who had sponsored the event and organised a booth (well, a table). The booth wasn't so that we could sell anything, it was more more because we wanted to support Drupal and the sponsorship came with a booth. Driving to Lille allowed us to fill the car with 200 coffee cups, which we gave out at the event.

On the weekend of 2nd and 3rd March I went down to London to attend DrupalCamp London 2019. This weekend I went with 9 other colleagues from Access, which is almost certainly our biggest company outing to a camp.

For the second year running I attended BSides Manchester conference, held at the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School on Thursday 16th August. This is a technical cybersecurity conference that is organised by a dedicated team of volunteers. I was really impressed by last years conference so was really keen on attending this year.

It's been a couple of weeks since DrupalCamp London 2018 so I thought I would try to write up my experiences for the weekend. DrupalCamp London ran from 2nd to the 4th of March and consisted of a CxO day before a 2 day conference.

Getting to the conference this year was a little more troublesome than usual. The snow and frost from that week had caused chaos on the trains (not to mention the roads) and so after many cancellations and delays I eventually made it to London the night before the Saturday/Sunday conference. The snow didn’t just affect me though, a few people couldn’t make it and a few sessions had to be rearranged. Thankfully, everyone made it to the camp in the end.

The PHPNW 2017 Conference was run over the weekend of the 30th September to 1st October at the Manchester Conference Centre and I went along to participate. PHPNW has now been going for 10 years and it looks like this will be the last (more on that later) but this year was just as good as ever.

DrupalCamp London 2017 was held on the 4th and 5th of March at the newly refurbished main hall of City, University of London. The new facilities are really nice and keep the conference in the same area, but they aren't too small that it feels cramped.

The 9th PHPNW was held on the 1st and 2nd of October 2016 and I was in attendance with around 400 people. The venue was the Manchester Conference Centre, which is where the event has been for the past few years. It's a nice place with helpful and friendly staff, lots of rooms, great food and even a good bar. After a quick introduction from the organisers Jeremy Coates and Rick Ogden) and a session from the platinum sponsors UKFast we started the conference proper.