You may have noticed that after three years of being the primary sponsor for DrupalCon Europe we've chosen to skip the traditional sponsorship this year. Many people have asked why, so here’s the answer.

For a long time we treated DrupalCon in Europe as a marketing investment. We did this even though it didn't create even nearly enough leads to justify the investment of time and money. In real life it was an HR investment, our staff liked it and it helped in our hiring. And DrupalCon is an awesome event that we are proud to support, could we support it in a better way? There is a real difference between DrupalCons, and in fact technical conferences in general, between Europe and the US. Customers don't go to technical events in Europe. The participant profile is much more technical in Europe. This makes DrupalCon in Europe a very attractive marketing opportunity for hosting providers, ISVs and other parties who target to developers and Drupal shops, less so for Drupal shops. After DrupalCon Amsterdam we sat down with the DA in order to come up with a better way to support the event. Traditional sponsorship wasn't working for us and we wanted to help improve the event. Our own staff is a big part of the Drupal community, so naturally we asked them what would make the DrupalCon even better. After considering quite a few different ideas, and learning a lot on the strange limitations conference venues have in the process, we decided to make contributing to Drupal more comfy. We do this by bringing loads of beanbag chairs to the venue. Naturally we paid the DA for the privilege, and in order to keep our financial support on the same level as before we also decided to be the first company to sign up for the new signature level supporting partnership. We have more ideas in store for the future years and I would also like to hear your take on how to make DrupaCon even better. Is there something we could do to help?