Examiner.com is a very proud sponsor of Drupalcon Denver. Part of the sponsorship includes ads on the Drupalcon site. The team at Examiner.com decided to have some fun with them. Five members of the team were chosen to be "subjects" of each ad. Marc Ingram is the fourth in a series of five stories chronicling different community member's alternate time-lines.

Prologue

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home", Marc muttered as he tapped his ruby slippers together and fiercely rubbed his Druplicon stress ball. The damned community had gotten him into this mess - but, frankly, it had also gotten him out of worse messes in the past. Toto jumped out of the basket and ran down the street directly at a man in a blue suit. "Oh Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!" Ingram quipped. This was because the man wasn't in a seersucker suit, a tuxedo, tailored, or even a cheap suit of the rack. This man, was more ball-like and alien than man-like. Who on earth was this and why would he put up with wearing the "ball"?

Toto sank his teeth into the man's svelt and hosed leg. The man screamed. Ingram looked down at his frock and cursed, "I blame the whole event on the 10 pints of beer I had...." The truth was, the beer had nothing to do with this situation. Fortunately, the situation had helped him focus on the "REAL Marc" - not the one in the pretty dress. He closed his eyes and slipped back into his happy place. That badass kick-boxing place. A place where his code reviews ROCKED and where he had pwned Drupal. A place where that damnable Toto had never come into his life.

Examiner.com is a very proud sponsor of Drupalcon Denver. Part of the sponsorship includes ads on the Drupalcon site. The team at Examiner.com decided to have some fun with them. Five members of the team were chosen to be "subjects" of each ad. Kevin Bridges is the third in a series of five stories.

Kévin DuPont was the gatekeeper and blacksmith in the Town of Master's Branch. Not only did he create the things that held the town together - nails, hammers, picks, and saws, but he also watched carefully to ensure the evil and dark mole creatures could not, would not ever enter the town.

He was named DuPont because his father had build the one and only bridge that crossed the mystical lake to the island. The island became a walled city - safe for all those inside, built stone by stone by the band of protectors. The bridge served as the one and only entrance to the magical town and was known as the Terminus.

The water surrounding the walls was filled with magic that repelled all those that didn't know the special key - the sorcerer's name and the sorcerer's secret words. This Halt Terminus Access spell was designed to only allow those who knew the special words a way in. Those who were granted access would experience such wonders! The city was full of flowers, fine tapestries (made from the fur of chipmunks, river otters, and voles), and libraries full of books. All of these wonders were discoverable by the Indices of Mongo the Great.

Mongo was one of the greatest magicians the creator had ever brought forth. His speed was beyond compare. He had an older brother - a brother who had been relegated to the basest of functions in the town. He would wake the town up if the town ever slept. He was responsible for each of the doors in the town. He kept the town census. My Sevinus Quirrel was often known simply by his initials - he quietly kept things running in the background.

From Corporate Land:

Why on earth would you need or want to go to this Drupalcon thing? It sounds an awful lot like your just going on a trip on the company's dime! Can't you just learn this stuff from a book?

If you want to go, you need to pay for it yourself and take vacation time.

From Agency Land:

We can't really afford to send all of you, how about we give you a fixed stipend to offset the cost. But we do really NEED all of you to go. Who knows who might be there who is looking for a job that you might be able to recruit. So, you all need to go.

From Independent Contractor Land:

Dear Husband/Wife - Drupalcon just seems like an excuse for you to spend our travel money. Why should you get to go to [insert city here]? And twice a year? We simply can't afford for you to do this!

So, what is the return on investment by going to Drupalcon? How will your experience change over several Drupalcons? What are the best reasons you can give your employer and/or significant other why you should go?

Voting has opened for Drupalcon Denver with hundreds of submitted session proposals. The choices are wide and varied.

There are those trying to buy votes. Folks like Morten are trying to advocate change to how sessions are chosen.

Over the last 15 years or so, I've spent time in a variety of different shops building software. The last five have been in Drupal shops using the framework to create cool sites for clients and over the last two, I've been working with Examiner.com building one of the largest Drupal sites out there using technologies there are now becoming more mainstream. I have worked with distributed teams and with local teams - in agencies and internally for large and small companies. My work as a stage manager and technical theatre practitioner all colour my views on managing a project from ideation to delivery.

183 days and counting. That seems like a big number but is, in fact, shockingly short. We have 183 days until the opening days of Drupalcon Denver. To be truthful, it is fewer days than that when you take into account preregistration and training days. That is roughly 26 weeks - or just about 6 months.

This post isn't just about the con - it is an illustration of contributions that make the community hum.

My friend Rick over at Monarch Digital in Colorado Springs wrote a blog post about his journey to being part of the local committee working on making this conference a success. I think his points on inclusion are really good. My early days as part of the community really were saturated with the idea that the most valued contributions were code. I've spent a fair bit of time writing and talking about alternative contributions in the Drupal community. In fact, as Drupal becomes an older and wiser platform, more folks from the Project, Product, and Business management world will be (are) needed to help the project move forward. These points are strongly made by the necessary contributions to organize a Con or a Camp. To be fair, at the end of the day, all contributions service the code we use in our hobbies and jobs.

Today was a pretty terrific day. The DCon Denver conference site has launched.

As folks, no doubt, have noticed - the overall theme for this convention will be mobile.

DrupalCon Denver's theme, "Collaborative Publishing for Every Device," is a study on the shift of web access from traditional desktops to mobile devices, phones or tablets, and with it the greater combination of platforms Drupal leverages and integrates.

Over the last couple of months we've had a quite a bit of interest in volunteering for Drupalcon Denver. Thanks to those who have expressed interest. Our conventions, going back to the first small gatherings, would not have happened without a motivated crew of Drupalistas looking to further our community collaborations.

So where are we at right now?

1) Currently we're working on the first launch of the denver2012.drupal.org on Drupal 7, you can read more at http://drupal.org/sandbox/sirkitree/1108474.

2) A few folks from the team will be at Drupalcon London to promote, if you're going to be in London let us know! Potential volunteers who will be in London can contact Jon Clark (jon [at] atendesigngroup [dot] com or on twitter @juaneclark) or Matthew Saunders (matthew@dogstar.org or on twitter @creech.)

3) Also, we're talking about content already for the conference, like our keynote speakers and content tracks.

Little did I know roughly 4 years ago when I was in a Spanish town wide eyed and somewhat new to Drupal, that I would end up on the organizing committee for a Drupalcon myself. A number of months back, when I found out that Denver was in serious contention for the event, I offered to help out. Before I knew it, there was an IRC channel that was secreted out to a small group that, "were in the know" and a Skype back channel. We were all sworn to secrecy until the event could be announced in Chicago - but the planning had already begun with a sub group of our committee having already figured out the "where".