On May 11, the entire ActiveLAMP team headed to the Los Angeles Convention Center for DrupalCon 2015. Not only did we gain an immeasurable amount of knowledge, but also an immeasurable amount of free T-Shirts and swag. It was a first-time experience for most of the team, and there was something for everyone. Each one of us learned a great deal, here are some of our memories -

Martha Saavedra - Sprint Master

Since the moment I was exposed to Drupal I have heard about Drupal's community and how great they are. It wasn't until DrupalCon that I realized how amazing it really is. As you may or may not know, Drupal lives in the open-source community. A community that aims to spread the open-source concept across domains such as running a business, project management and marketing.

All the sessions that they offered inspired innovation, creativity and collaboration in not only the Drupal arena, but also the general web industry. There were discussions and presentations about current and upcoming methodologies and concepts such as Scrum, front-end architecture, style guide driven development, continuous integration, DevOps, the psychology of user experience and application performance - just to name a few.

At the end of the conference I felt a sense of confirmation that ActiveLAMP was headed in the right direction - doing all the right things, the right way, in the right mindset. I left the conference re-energized, refocused and eager to continue learning and experimenting with the new concepts and methodologies that I had been exposed to.

I was elated to hear that my fellow ActiveLAMPians felt the same way. Not only did attending this conference get us pumped to take ActiveLAMP further, but brought us closer together as a family. It was an amazing experience that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

Alfonso Joven - Hunter and Gatherer

DrupalCon was amazing! It's always fun to realize that your field and specialty is advancing at a rapid pace, and motivates you to step up your game as well. Also, #freeswag

Sam Tabari - The Beard

DrupalCon Los Angeles was incredible! I’m extremely thankful that the Drupal association did a great job of providing a wide variety of sessions, so that both developers and marketers (like myself) could equally benefit. One main theme I kept hearing throughout the business sessions was the necessity to not only know your audience, but also know where they are in the buying process. In today’s world, it’s not enough to have a great looking website, or even to drive traffic to that website. You need to know WHO your audience is, WHICH core offer to present them, and WHEN to make that offer. These are all extremely crucial questions, one’s that we strive to answer for our own clients each and every day. Overall, DrupalCon was an awesome experience and I can’t wait for it to come back to Los Angeles!

Evan Jenkins - Señor Developer

DrupalCon LA renewed my excitement for all things Drupal and where D8 is going. As a front-end developer, hearing the buzz around "Headless Drupal" and separation of presentation and logic has me excited. Ideas were already starting to swirl around on how we can push the limits of our development. Additionally, hearing how other front-end problems were solved gave me insight on how to change some things on our current sites that are using these font-end frameworks.

Attending this conference as a company also promoted bonds between us as co-workers and friends. The time and efforts of everyone that put this on were very much appreciated!

Bez Hermoso - The Magician

DrupalCon LA got me excited to see the direction which Drupal is heading; the adoption of Symfony components and Composer, and especially the "Headless Drupal" initiative.

It was also great fun hanging out with the whole ActiveLAMP family!

Jonathan Westman - The Romantic

DrupalCon was a great experience for our team. We had moments of bonding and growing together as a team as well as a great intake of knowledge. I know my mind was ready to stop receiving information after the second full day of lessons. We were able to see what other people were doing with Drupal. For us, we were able to see what we are doing right and how we can continue to do better.

Each person on the team came away with something that got us excited about returning to work to implement something that we learned. For me, the most exciting takeaway was styleguide driven development with atomic design and CI for CSS or visual regression testing. I can’t wait to start using tools that were mentioned at DrupalCon and seeing how we can leverage the tools to provide a better experience for ourselves and our clients.

Tom Friedhof - Senator for the United States of ActiveLAMP

This was my 8th North American Drupalcon. This year I spent my time attending the business tracks. I really appreciated the transparency of Sean Larkin in the presentation he gave about forecasting your business with spreadsheets. That session was the first session of the conference for me, and the one that had the most impact for me. I also attended the panel Sean was on as well, very good insights from all four panelists.

I had a blast hanging out with the ActiveLAMP team. Lots of memories created that week!

Annie Duarte - Provider of Snacks and Toilet Paper

I have only been part of the web development industry for a year, and when I found out that I was going to get to attend DrupalCon 2015, I was extremely nervous! I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fit in, or understand all of the technical lectures that were scheduled. To my surprise, there was plenty for me to take part in. The business tracks were especially helpful, I was able to take away a lot of value from the lessons. I found the content driven development and client discovery talks most interesting. I look forward to applying what I learned into future interactions with our clients. DrupalCon was an amazing experience, it helped our team grow together and I’m sure we will all be benefitting from what we learned collectively for some time to come.

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L.A. DrupalCon 2015 was an amazing experience for ActiveLAMP. We learned a lot about each other, and grew closer as a family. We learned, played, ate, and partied hard! We look forward to attending future DrupalCons together and are honored to be part of the Drupal community. Thank you to everyone that made this event so awesome!