Summary: It's the DrupalCon Portland Floor Show! I went around the exhibitors' area and through the halls of the Oregon Convention Center asking two vital questions to our community: What is your favorite thing about Drupal? Why should other people come to DrupalCon? This week's podcast is a selection of some of the answers I got and the conversations I had with (not nearly enough of) you wonderful Drupalists! Drupal's new spokesman? The answers of the Con, for me, came from Drew Jarvis of Sandstorm Design in Chicago. Picture him doing amazing yo-yo tricks during the entire interview, because he was. Me: What is your favorite thing about Drupal? Drew: The fact that it gives me super powers! Without it I would be "just" a front-end developer who could make things look pretty and make things responsive, but with Drupal, I can do all sorts of back-end stuff that I don't really need to understand ... and could never write myself. Me: Why should other people come to DrupalCon? Drew: If you are not already sold on Drupal, you can see the power of it. You can see that there is literally an army of nerds from all over the world working constantly on it. I think that if you are sold on Drupal, there's just so much that you can learn! You can get inspired by the community. It's a very open community; it's people who want to give back to each other and celebrate Drupal and try to do good with it. Thank you! David Huang, Common Sense Media - "Come to DrupalCon. You'll see that we're all in this together. There are people working on the same hard problems as you and we come to solutions together." Allison Steele, Acculynk/PayLeap - "Drupal can handle enterprise-level accounts. It's really cool how easy it is to integrate our product into Drupal through Commerce Kickstart." Chris Vanderwater, Commerce Guys - "You should go to DrupalCon because it will change your life; it certainly did mine." Ray Saltini, Blink Reaction - "My favorite thing about Drupal is that it levels the playing field for everyone. You will love Drupal for what it can do for your business, and what it can do for your cause." Erin Marchak, My Planet Digital - "DrupalCon is a really interesting place to go to. As a woman developer, I get a lot of excitement out of seeing the other women also working in the community. Sometimes you don't realise how diverse the Drupal community is." Jason Yee, OpenSourcery - "My favorite thing about Drupal is how flexible it is. I like the idea of nodes not being pages and the idea that what you're building doesn't have to be a website ... it's content and you can use it however you want." Drew Jarvis, Sandstorm Design - "Drupal gives me superpowers." Awakash Bodiwala, American Civil Liberties Union - "Come to DrupalCon to learn all about Drupal and all the technologies around it." Tim Deeson, Deeson Online - "My favorite thing about Drupal is the flexibility it gives you to create solutions that aren't defined by anyone else. It really means you can create anything you need to and scratch you own itches, which I think leads to the innovation and creativity that you see Drupal used for." Amitai Burstein, Gizra "My most favorite thing about Drupal? It pays my bills. DrupalCon is the essence of Drupal." John DeSalvo and everyone else I spoke with, thank you, too! drupalcon_portland_floorshow_final.mp3
