Drupalcons have always been the big ticket events in the Drupal community. There are typically two Drupalcons per year, one in North America, and one in Europe.
Drupal is in an interesting place right now. For the last few months I've been saying that we have all the pressures of a large commercial software project with none of the resources.
Last week was BADcamp and like many I opted to join in on getting some Drupal work done before and between sessions. Step one, looking through my dashboard to see what's in the backlog.