Counting Community: The DrupalCon take nobody asked for
Consider this my DrupalCon Chicago recap, a little late, with my typical soapbox in tow. If you know me, you know.
I've been coming to roughly every other DrupalCon since Los Angeles in 2015, and to another half a dozen camps in between. Florida DrupalCamp, NEDCamp, and other local Drupal camps deserve mention as accessible entry points with lower costs and commitments.
I have colleagues in this community I genuinely cherish, and work I'm proud of.
The code is real. The community, at its best, is real.
But something has been weighing on me for a while. I've counted a few things that feel related, across five DrupalCons and both of my hands.
Here is an attempt at gently and honestly saying some of that out loud.
What the numbers show
Survey & Drupal.org quantitative data
The annual Drupal Developer Survey is the closest thing the community has had to a census. Let me share just a portion of its picture. It launched in 2018 focused primarily on local development tooling, not demographic data, was revived by Ironstar in 2023 after a two-year gap, and added demographic information in 2024.
Age. In 2024: 648 respondents, 76% aged 30–49, 15% over 50, zero under 21. Zero.
In 2025: with a larger survey of 753 respondents: the under-30 cohort shrank from 59 to 44.
New entry. In 2024: 9.6% had fewer than four years of experience in Drupal, or 62 people.
In 2025: 45 people with under three years of experience. Eleven people out of 753 with under one year.
Optimism. 2024: 80% positive. 2025: 64%.
Gender. Not tracked by the developer survey, so we're missing data.
In 2016, the Drupal Association estimated that 23% of attendees were women. Between 2017 and 2021, contributions from those not identifying as male rose from 6% to just under 11%, ending the series at less than 9% — this is from Drupal founder Dries Buytaert’s annual post, “Who sponsors Drupal development?”, which stops in 2021.
Race. We can’t use the survey for this either, nor the annual Drupal sponsor reports. There is no trend line.
The developer survey measures IDE preferences and hosting platforms. It has not consistently captured key demographic data. It does not ask why people leave, what may prevent event attendance, or what a new developer experiences.
And like any survey, it reflects self-reporting by those invested or passionate enough to respond. Those who experience issues most acutely are those least likely to be counted.
Drupal session qualitative data
At DrupalCon this year, Dries Buytaert asked for a show of hands during his annual Driesnote, around the 37 min mark: “who has been in the Drupal community for more than twenty years?” He raised one hand as an example and shaded his eyes with the other. He responds, "all right, quite a few hands, nice." Then he asked how many people were actually younger than Drupal (twenty-five or under). He shaded his face with both hands to look around. This time he responds, "a few people, yeah, nice!" The room held about 1300 people.
I couldn't see everyone, of course, but my colleagues and I didn't see any hands.
I remember at DrupalCon 2024, near the 21 min mark of the Driesnote, he asked anyone with fewer than three years of Drupal experience to sit back down from a standing room. Almost nobody sat. "Oh wow," said Dries.
Not at a DrupalCon, but I'll call out Drupal developer J.D. Flynn’s Florida DrupalCamp 2026 talk: "Why Developers Don't Choose Drupal (And What We Can Do About It)" (and the related Talking Drupal discussion). His findings included that new developers still aren't showing up; because the "legacy tech" perception hasn't shifted; because we don't meet developers where they are.
What the data won’t tell you
"Come for the code, stay for the community."
This Drupal tagline is everywhere, including the logo for the 25th anniversary gala. It suggests belonging and community as the reward.
The culture that fills this room has a particular shape. There is rockstar, “move fast” developer energy to it, as if commit count confers status.
There is, at the many parties, a looseness that gets called community and sometimes is, and sometimes is something else. Dries mentioned this year, with fond nostalgia, the era when the team would be up until 5 am before his session.
There is also the question of privilege. Dries has acknowledged it directly: the meritocracy myth is wrong. Anyone doing unpaid open source work is more privileged than most. If you're working a second job, caring for a family member, or earning less because of systemic wage gaps, you cannot start your open source career on equal footing.
Who can afford to be in the Hilton Chicago ballroom? Let’s do rough math.
Early bird registration for DrupalCon Chicago was $575 — down significantly from $890 in 2025, a reduction worth crediting. Then it climbs to $700 and finally $850. An industry summit is another $300. A training day is another $500. Then factor in the hotel, the flight, days away from billable work. For anyone with children or pets: add care, multiplied across four-ish days. The realistic cost of attending late starts around $2,000 but could result in much more.
Thankfully, there are a few other options for attendance. Conference registration is still free for speakers. The Inclusion and Community Scholarships consider one's limitations (those were open for under a week last October). I’ve been lifted up in similar ways myself. But not everyone will have the access and the luck that I've had.
Stay… if the community makes space for you, and you can swing the costs.
On the Drupal community
The conference parties, specifically, have their own ecosystem, as noted: from official parties all the way down to after-after-parties that run until that particular city stops serving alcohol.
That looseness is in part understandable. Relationships get formed and deals get made in hallways and bars. But, there can be networking, and hookups, and the two would sometimes merge in problematic ways.
This is when women do a quiet calculation about larger costs and when to leave. Not because they're tired, but because they're doing risk assessment.
The community doesn't express surprise at women leaving. It doesn't acknowledge it at all. There’s no data that shows which women attend the conference until 5 pm, which make it past 9 pm, and which are still among the community at midnight. Not that I actually expect us to measure — or encourage — that.
I can count the women still out within the Drupal community at midnight on one hand. If I'm still there myself.
At a sponsor party in 2016, what had been advertised as local entertainment turned out to include two burlesque performers who stripped on stage. Some attendees left, but most stayed. I don’t believe there’s any record of that.
I have personally lost count of how many times I've been touched without consent at these conferences. In one city alone, it happened six or seven times.
I received unwanted advances on the very first night of my very first DrupalCon in 2015.
I caught up with a woman who told me with relief that a particular man had not hugged her this year. She believes he uses the social warmth of the expo floor — most of us are friends here, everyone hugs — to take it without her consent. And that he does it for self-absolution: proof that she doesn’t hold against him how he affected her career. What a checkpoint of misery.
There is another person I know, I'll call V. In 2019, he suggested I sit in his lap to share a ride. Later, he grabbed me. Hoo doggy! When our paths crossed again, he approached me and opened with the same lines. So I repeated one of his pickup lines from last time, something about himself I shouldn’t have known. Until then, he seemed to have no memory of the first time, while I certainly had not forgotten.
These are some of the greater costs of being a woman within our community.
On the larger open source community
I share Valerie Aurora’s 2010 article, “The dark side of open source conferences” with both an assault content warning and a strong recommendation.
These interviews focused on other open source communities, but are an illustrative sample of women's general experiences at open source conferences.
Aurora interviewed ten women about their experiences at open source conferences. Nine of the ten had been harassed. Three women had been physically assaulted.
Of those nine harassed women of the ten, eight had also organized events. Every one of those eight experienced harassment at a conference they ran.
She wrote: "here it is, the year 2010, and my female friends and I are still being insulted, harassed, and groped at open source conferences."
Drupal was nine years old when she wrote about them.
How Drupal handles violations
Here is the Drupal Code of Conduct mechanism as it currently exists: a QR code to an email address (conduct@association.drupal.org) or a Google form (which also links to drupal-cwg@drupal.org).
Either way, reporting is not anonymous. You must name yourself and provide your email address. Reported issues go to 2 members of the Drupal Association or 4 members of the Community Working Group.
There was a session at DrupalCon in 2018: "So You Have a Code of Conduct... Now What?" It addressed conflicts of interest in enforcement and fear of retribution. That was eight years ago.
What comes next
Drupal is now twenty-five. We don't say "boys will be boys" about adults. It’s gross for kids too, but my rant is long enough.
A few things I genuinely hope for:
- Reckon with the community culture at the level of what we actually reward and center. I am all ears for your suggestions.
- Close the privilege gap. The ticket price dropped. Some camps and sponsors offer scholarships. Continue this please.
- Decide what the community is willing to measure and examine. Our current data reflects our current choices.
- Improve the reporting experience to increase safety. Build an anonymous path.
If the community you're building only feels like home to the people who are already a part of it, you haven't built a community. You've built a club.
I think about what the data shows, and what I tally from events. I think about how those experiencing barriers to belonging the most are the people least likely to be counted.
I suggest we examine what we care most about.
I think about the young folks who could have renewed and contributed to our community efforts. I don’t think they left because they couldn't get their Drupal site hosted.
Doing my own math
Much to my colleagues' concern and misunderstanding, I was recently musing on how many DrupalCons I have left in the tank.
Not because I'm done with Drupal; I am definitely not.
The code? The platform is genuinely powerful for the content strategy, user experience, and accessibility work that I do, and it scales.
The community? I love some of you dearly and love to reconnect with you over the many events Drupal has to offer. I can still feel some of the warmth shared with me in Chicago.
It’s because of these things I've felt overdue to say out loud.
Every year I go to DrupalCon, I spend some portion of my energy navigating the room rather than being in it. I leave carrying something the men around me are not. I spend a portion of my time and budget to carefully explore my place within this community.
I can’t be the only one quietly doing this math.
I imagine the women who leave early do it too. And so do the newcomers who can’t absorb the costs, before booking a flight. And perhaps the younger developers Drupal needs who tried it out but left without telling us why. All doing invisible math about the community.
These are only assumptions. I'd love to know. But I don't.
Because there isn't data, because we didn't ask.
All individuals except the author are anonymous. All identifying details have been removed except year or city. I want people to feel safe sharing their own experiences openly.