Come for the code, stay for the community. That’s the mantra of the Drupal community. It’s the reason many of us are here. It’s why we contribute in our spare time, spend our weekends organizing Drupal events, attend week-long DrupalCons. As a community we are continuing to grow and change, just like the project. DrupalCon programming should be changing too.

In particular, we at the Drupal Association want to make sure that the community programming at DrupalCons best serves the community it is made for. And that means that we need fresh voices, more support, and new ideas. We are asking for a new crop of community leaders and leading companies to step in and help us move community programming at DrupalCons forward.

How community programming got here:
Originally, community conversations at DrupalCon took place in sessions for the community track, running alongside all the other content at DrupalCons. The community track allowed for presentations on topics related to our community and although it was valuable to raise the topics, there were concerns that the session format made it difficult to continue the momentum after the Con. Further, the community track was not well attended.

At DrupalCon Prague in 2013, we launched the first Community Summit, a day-long event, on the Monday of DrupalCon week. Morten DK, Addison Berry, and others (thank you all - you have been great collaborators) ran the program and led a number of very useful conversations.

At the past few DrupalCons, Donna Benjamin has stepped up to lead unconference-style Community Summits open to anyone who wants to join, contribute to, or lead a local community. Through the unconference format, the Summit has been able to foster conversations about nonviolent communication, camp budgeting, public speaking, local community activities and more. Unfortunately, unconferences seem to stop once the Summit is over, and continuing conversations and action plans prove difficult with a community spread across the world.

Where is community programming headed?
As we continue to grow as a project and community, we recognize that we need to make sure we have the right format and space for our community to continue to grow and learn from each other.
Community programming needs some new faces to help move us forward into a world of Drupal 8, new camps, project-wide discussions, etc. We are a community full of incredible leaders and we are putting out a call for some of you to stand up and help us design the future for our community.

Community programming also needs a fiscal champion - a sponsor who fully recognizes the importance of investing in our community. Our community leaders are volunteers and e want to minimise barriers for participation. To date, the Community Summit has been free to attend. We’d like to keep it that way. But we’d like to provide attendees with lunch, and workshop tools like post-it notes, markers and flipcharts. Because we offer the Summit at no cost, we have needed to limit the space available which has meant it has booked up early, and many who would have liked to attend, have missed out.

We need you to contribute to community programming
We need you. And we are asking - can you contribute? We would love a team of community organizers to work with the Drupal Association on community programming at DrupalCon Baltimore and beyond. We need a sponsor or two to financially support the Community Summit and allow us to continue to grow it.

We are close to finalizing our space at the Baltimore Convention Center and are also nearing our online registration launch. We need to determine what the Community Summit will be so we can allocate the appropriate space and include tickets on our website. If you can help, take action now by contacting us at the Drupal Association before November 21, 2016. There are a few ways to get involved:

• Can you help coordinate and organize programming (summits, bofs, etc) at DrupalCon? Great! Email amanda@association.drupal.org.
• Can you sponsor the Summit and show how much you value the community? Please reach out to carrie@association.drupal.org to pitch in.

Are we supporting new initiatives like Drupal Diversity in the best way that we can? Are we providing our Camp Organizers with the opportunity to convene and share tips and tricks to running amazing camps around the globe? What other programming can we be providing?  Comment below to let us know what you’d like to see from community programming at DrupalCons.

Thank you for your endless support of this amazing community.