Last week, I joined the ranks of several thousand geeks as they descended upon Chicago and took over the Sheraton Hotel in a bi-annual event called DrupalCon. At first blush you might imagine rooms filled with khaki pants and golf shirt wearing technophiles comparing specs on the latest gadget and talking in abstractions about the future of teraflop and petabyte capable computing power. Not at DrupalCon. While this crew was not quite the type you rub shoulders with at a Rammstein concert, as far as new age open source hippy nerds go, Drupal people are the rock stars of the CMS world.
The show opened up with a lovely recital featuring some brass and an Alphorn - shuffle the feet and with a flourish - tada! Dupal! Some Introductory notes, and then the rock god himself, Dries Buytaert took the stage. He set the tone for the whole conference, pointing out that the explosive growth of Drupal, while something to be proud of, has also introduced some new challenges. Growing pain was a running theme throughout the conference, and was examined at a higher level in Jeff Eaton's discussion about emerging complexity, the Platypus Effect. As a huddle of villagers evolve into a large ecosystem (another much used word this week) many concerns arise over long term vision, architecture and community participation.
I will attempt to best summarize what I was able to grok at this intense cultural immersion within a series of articles, starting with the biggest question: What is Drupal?