DrupalCon Europe plays an important role in moving Drupal forward. However, with waning attendance and financial losses, it’s time to find a new path forward so it is sustainable and continues to provide unique value. This blog discusses the process the Drupal Association used to turn community input into a sustainable, valuable DrupalCon. This blog is part of a series that includes:  

1. The problem we need to solve for financial sustainability

2. The problem we need to solve to create unique value

3. Results from a proposal based on community input

4. A new path forward for DrupalCon Europe

As mentioned in previous blogs, by meeting with over 40 community members and having 500+ people participate in a community survey, we learned that the many personas that make up the European Drupal community have a wide spectrum of wants and needs for DrupalCon to address. And we need to find a way to address the high priority needs in a financially sustainable manner. The Drupal Association staff worked with the Drupal Association Board of Directors and community members to find a new path forward. This post explains the process we used and the outcome, which we found did not result in a highly desirable product.

Picking a Strategic Direction

Given the wide spectrum of expressed needs in the last blog post, we required strategic direction for the event especially around picking the primary stakeholder to serve so we could have focus. That strategy comes from the Drupal Association Board of Directors, who provide strategic direction to the organization and our programs, including DrupalCon Europe. Once we get this direction, then, Drupal Association staff uses it to inform our execution plan.

In February 2017, the Drupal Association Board met to discuss the strategic direction of the event. They reviewed all of the community feedback and went through strategic planning exercises to answer key questions like What is the goal of DrupalCon Europe? and Who is the event for? That discussion resulted in the following:

Who are the event stakeholders?

The board identified that the stakeholders to serve are:

• Contributing community members, primarily.

• Secondary are newcomers, who can learn Drupal as well as learn the value of contributing and being part of the community.

What is the event’s goal?

The board chose these stakeholders to keep the community spirit alive and sustainable so contributors are re-energized and return home, infusing others with the passion of Drupal contribution. They also wanted this event to help newcomers deepen their Drupal skills so they can build something amazing as well as learn what it means to be a good Drupal citizen (culture, contribution, etc).

What strategies should be used to achieve the goals?

The board advised that we use the following strategies to meet the goals above as well as to make the event sustainable:

• Be a smaller event so we can get back to a more intimate space as well as control costs

• Co-create programming with the European community

• Don’t compete with Camps; Dev Days, Front End United so we provide unique value

In short, the decision was for DrupalCon Europe to remain a developer event to meet the needs of deepening the community volunteer bench and growing the talent pool. We chose not to make it a business / marketing event for various reasons including

• Change takes time and changing just the developer programming with such little capacity is challenging.  

• Today, The Drupal Association does not run business events and we do not have the lists to get the right people in the room. Operationally, we need to make changes or invest differently to meet this need. Can we make this change? Yes, but not quickly and not without partnership and financial support from the Drupal shop / digital agencies.

• Our current attendee base does not want a business event added to the developer event.

Co-creating a re-imagined DrupalCon

With this strategic direction identified, we went back to the community leaders who run European Drupal events like camps, Dev Days, and Frontend United. We also met with other community stakeholders such as sponsors, mentors, trainers, and more. We shared the strategic direction that came from the Board of Directors and asked for ideas of how they would want programming to achieve the event goals. The feedback was incredibly helpful and we used it to create a proposal which we brought back to them for feedback. The next section describes the proposal created from the community members’ ideas.

The Proposed new DrupalCon event plan

With the community’s input, we created the following proposal.

Since some aspects of DrupalCon Europe already achieves the goals set forth by the Board of Directors, we proposed that many elements would remain the same, especially in comparison with DrupalCon Vienna. For example:

• It will be a 3 day conference, followed by one day of sprints

• Dries will open the event with his Driesnote

• It will be a technical event focused on contribution, collaboration, and growing Drupal skills. However, it will not have distinct content / programs for the Drupal business community (no business track or CXO event).

• Advanced Drupalers will have access to sessions about other projects, which is content not often found at other Drupal events (Horizons and PHP tracks)

• Social aspects will remain intact

  • Welcome reception / kick off party

  • Trivia Night

However, to make DrupalCon Europe squarely meet the outlined strategic direction and be sustainable, the following changes were proposed.

• It is a smaller, community event with about 1,000 people to foster the more intimate community feel that community members requested. A smaller event also helps us contain costs.

• Ideally, ticket prices are lowered to around €250-300, but modeling out venue pricing and other expenses will dictate if this is possible. We may be able to keep price down by not offering lunch and asking attendees go outside the venue for the meal.

• We would build out a more robust scholarship / grant offering to encourage new contributors to attend who would like to become stronger contributors.

• Marketing would include a more concerted local outreach to bring local Drupal talent into contribution, possibly involving free / greatly reduced ticket price or gift package.

• The schedule structure will change to accommodate new ways to hold sessions and sprints

• • We will have 3-4 sessions per day, with a longer lunch break

  • Probable tracks: Coding and Dev, Core Conversations, Contribution, DevOps, Front End, Horizons, Other Projects, Site Building, UX, Design

  • Sessions may/will include longer 2 hr slot sessions or technical trainings (trainings will be woven into regular program)

  • There will be a large sprint room throughout the week

  • The sprint day will have 5 focused sprint rooms as well as a large general sprint room

  • BOFs will remain, but will be integrated more into the flow of the event - possibly around the outskirts of a sprint room for example.

• DrupalCon t-shirts would come back

• Sponsors will be integrated throughout the event rather than focused in a traditional exhibit hall

Proposal feedback

After we created this proposal based on community member feedback, we shared it with the community members. In short, it didn’t hit the spot. While some were happy to see DrupalCon still exist and cater to the developer audience, others felt it should be a marketing event, while others felt it still overlapped with Dev Days since it was a technical event. Sponsors, especially those seeking a technical audience, said they would still support the event, but would spend less due to the smaller size. Drupal shops / agencies did not see an increase in business value so their sponsor support would not increase.

Event logistics

While we were getting feedback on this proposal, staff conducted a search for a venue that could host a 1,000 - 1200 person event in an intimate setting.

We worked with our site selection partner, Helmsbriscoe to find venues that matched the venue requirements. In the end, we found that moving out of a convention center to a hotel was more expensive and created more financial risk. There were additional costs setting up the right level of WiFi, and catering costs were higher (and required). Plus, the hotels required us to secure larger room blocks, and the European community is staying at the host hotel less often, meaning it would be too risky to sign a commitment to a large room block.

Other venue options didn't have the combination of small session rooms / breakout space and a larger sprint room. Ultimately, it meant going back at a convention center. In the end, after modeling out the proposal with the revised venue costs and lower number of ticket sales, we found that we could not afford to reduce the ticket price.  

Summary:

While we could move forward with this proposal for DrupalCon Europe in 2018, it will not meet the variety of community needs in terms of programming, intimate venue, and cost savings. We believe that DrupalCon Europe is essential to moving the project forward and we are committed to finding the right solution with the community. But looking at the kind of event we would produce in 2018, we ask: “Is this the best way to serve the European community?

Our staff capacity barely allows us to produce two events a year that are roughly the same concept repeated again and again. There isn’t enough capacity to slow down and do strategic planning with the community to come up with the a new concept that better meets the European community’s needs or a new operational model that makes the event sustainable.

As I look at this outcome I think of Einstein’s quote: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”. It is clear we need to find a better way to serve this community, and it’s not good for the project to invest in resources that aren’t moving the right needles forward.

We need to approach DrupalCon Europe differently.

Our next blog shares what we think that looks like and invites you to share your thoughts and ideas.

And, if you are going to DrupalCon Vienna, be sure to join the discussion at the Community Summit and the two Tuesday BOFs (10:45 & 14:15)