For years, community members from Chattanooga talked about their local camp. These community members routinely support other camps, through attendance, volunteerism, and by giving talks. It was our time to return the favor.
Hook 42 not only sponsored the event, but delivered a training and two sessions. From our team Jonathan and Adam attended, and they really enjoyed the time there.
Adam’s Experience
I was grateful to have the opportunity to deliver a full-day training on GatsbyJS on Friday and one of the featured talks on Saturday. I want to recognize my training peer Ryan Bateman who helped out with many of the preparations for the training. I also want to thank attendees who came to either.
The training was an end-to-end GatsbyJS primer. We set up a Pantheon instance running Umami. We walked through a series of primers and hands on lessons. Most in the room were able to deliver a working Gatsby recipe site to Netlify. It was fun to cover so much material and watch people go from nothing to a functional site. Feedback was positive and it was very helpful to have the super fast Chattanooga internet speeds.
I prepared a brand new talk entitled “Evolving Priorities: Tech, Community, and Impact.” I looked at topics like technical skills, emphasizing the needs of people, and changing our individual frame of reference to what has an impact on the world. I also shared some thoughts on the evolution of Drupal, both from a community and a product. I appreciated those who attended and subsequently gave me feedback for future improvements.
Many people from other close by camps were able to attend. It was so nice to see friends from Asheville and Atlanta to show their support for the deserving Chattanooga crew. Doug Vann, Mike Herchel, Aaron Feledy, and Jordana Fung, among others, also attended from the broader community. It was great spending time with everyone.
I found the camp to be friendly and represent the spirit of those giving back to the Drupal community. Organizers selflessly volunteered their time and committed to helping their guests have a wonderful time. In particular, I was able to go to Rembrandt coffee, Freemont (burger and craft beer night), and Heaven and Ales brew pub. It was a beautiful area with green scenery and beautiful waterways.
Jonathan's Experience
And so we meet again. 2019 was my 2nd year at Drupal Camp Chattanooga, and it was even better than the first. Hanging out with the locals and those visiting from other areas is one of my favorite parts of attending a Drupal Camp. Last year I had to rush home and didn’t get much of a chance to get the full experience, but this year was different in all the best ways.
We started the camp off right with a game night at Code Journeymen’s offices and had a rambunctious night of accusing people of fascism while enjoying each other’s company. It was a welcoming and comfortable atmosphere that, as a camp co-organizer myself, I admired greatly.
After I had a short adventure of being lost in the parking lot, the camp itself seemed to go off without a hitch. They had a lot of really great presentations. I evolved my priorities with Adam, learned about fixing my mistakes as a developer with Jordana Fung, finally got to see Mike Herchel’s Front-end Performance talk, and over lunch looked at some code and talked about custom composite/rich fields with Hawkeye Tenderwolf. It was great times all around.
It was also a great enjoyment to have the opportunity to give my presentation, Glitch: Love to Learn the web again, as the Glitch product and community are a topic I’m very excited about. Reception of the talk seemed to be good as well. There were multiple outstanding questions that I tried my best to answer, and I even remembered to repeat one of them back on microphone for the recording. Otherwise, it was basically a blur of me gushing over Glitch. Check it out!
After camp wrapped up, we were off to the arcade. Rather, a pinball museum, where we played some games older than anyone I’ve ever met and played on another machine that had to weigh over 1,000lbs. We enjoyed a round of pizzas and beverages before hitting the town, exploring a few of Chattanooga’s secrets.
All-in-all, what a great camp experience. As a co-organizer of Drupal Camp Asheville I have some sense of what it takes to make a camp happen, and those Chattanooga folk make the hard work look easy. I can’t recommend enough that you try to attend Drupal Camp Chattanooga 2020.
*Image taken at Drupal Camp Chattanooga, borrowed from Twitter.