Mark Ferree - Open Source Web Development

I spent the first part of this week attending Drupalcon in Boston.

Other than jQuery Camp 07 this is the first time I've attended a meetup focusing primarily on open source technology.

I would highly recommend attending these type of events to anyone that participates in open source, either as a user or a developer. Participating on the forums, mailing lists, and issue queues of a project can be exciting, but this can have the unintended effect of dehumanizing what is happening.

When you visit one of these conferences you begin to realize the true nature of what open source is, and how big of an accomplishment it truly is. There is nothing like being in a room full of your peers who all laugh at a joke that only a Drupal developer would laugh at.

Overall Drupalcon has inspired me to make my personal contribution to Drupal much more significant, as well as making me much more excited about Drupal in general. This kind of excitement is great for open source, and I'm already looking forward to the next Drupalcon.