This past weekend I got a chance to attend the first ever Drupal Camp in Moldova - Moldcamp. It was also the first Drupal event I attended. Propeople was one of the main sponsors and together with all my colleagues, both developers and PMs, we were happy to be a part of this big step for the local IT community. Our best developers from Moldova and Ukraine offices did their best in preparing keynotes and we were all excited to have useful fun together.

I dropped in to different sessions during the two days, but the two that appealed most to me both happened in the first day - these were Radu Trifan’s ThemeSnap case study and Viktor Levandovsky’s keynote on selling Drupal.

ThemeSnap case study

Radu Trifan started with comparing two business models - Agency (custom development for every client) vs. Themes (develop once, iterate and sell to different clients). Obviously, he was insistent on convincing us that the second option is much better than the first, bringing more arguments in it’s favor and trying to distill all that could be against.

His case study compared side-by-side major theme marketplaces like ThemeForest, MojoThemes, CreativeMarket and ThemeSnap. He states that ThemeSnap has major advantages over the competitors in giving the developer more control over the pricing and packaging of the products he wants to sell. This includes features missing at the other marketplaces, one of them being the ability to buy a subscription to an author’s products.

Radu also talked about the life cycle of a theme. According to his data, the average time you can make money off a theme without updating/modifying it is one year, then it becomes outdated. He also provided a link to a landing page where Moldcamp attendees could go to sign up on better terms than the rest of authors.

Selling Drupal

Viktor Levandovsky’s keynote was less formal, did not bring as many numbers, but was still interesting and engaging. His main focus was on how/why/when to sell Drupal and what obstacles he encountered in his practice with clients.

He started by making fun of open-source skeptics and continued by listing strong arguments in favor of Drupal: large community, quality code, lots of extensions, stable security solutions and popularity on the world market. The audience was mainly geeks (developers, architects), probably no designers, so as expected - topics like UX were not event mentioned, etc.

Viktor sees Drupal as a framework more than a CMS and claims that he has yet to meet a functionality that cannot be implemented with Drupal. He’s seen only one project for which Drupal was a poor match.

The second part of his presentation focused on relationships with clients - teaching them to trust professionals, declining projects with bad requirements from the start.

Event as a whole

Overall, I think it was successful, especially comparing the stories I heard from Romanian and Ukrainian guests about the first Drupal camps in their countries.

There was a heavy focus on networking, both me and my Propeople colleagues got the chance to interact with representatives from different companies in the area, as well as from abroad. Most of the speakers were very sharp, there was no bubble talk - true leaders that all beginners in the Drupal community of Eastern Europe can look up to. The knowledge shared was presented as accessible as possible, without loss in quality. Many presenters showed code pieces, and real-life examples - not just the theory that anyone can find in a codex or wiki. Every session had Q&As during or after the keynote, keeping communication going two ways.

Among other perks of attending the event: coffee partnership with Marcu’s Coffee (great coffee shop, by the way, check them out when you’re downtown), a wine break and branded pens that write really well (I’d buy more and an extra notebook if they’d be sold).

Still, no event is perfect. I look forward to better WiFi coverage at future Drupal camps and hope that I will not have to bring along my own 3G connection.

I’m definitely planning to attend next year, even more so if there will be more sessions targeted on business people, managers and marketers. Translating geek Drupal talk to businessmen is one of the topics I hope to see addressed in the future.

The organizers efforts deserve applause and acknowledgement. I think all participants will agree that we had a great time both at the event and at the afterparty. A big thanks to them, to the speakers that worked hard and to everyone else who attended.

If anyone wants to get to know Drupal or learn to master it, Propeople Moldova will be organizing an internship this summer with a real job opportunity afterwards. If you’re interested, send your resume to hr@wearepropeople.com.

And if you’re already a Drupal Jedi interested in working with some of the brightest web development minds in the area, drop us a note at the address above.

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