Mountain Highs: My unforgettable experience at Mountain Camp Davos

This year, I had the fantastic opportunity to attend Mountain Camp in Davos, Switzerland. It marked several firsts for me: my first Drupal Camp outside Finland, my first visit to Switzerland, and my first work-related conference trip. I’m excited to share my experiences with you in this blog post.

The experience overall was just awesome! The Drupal community is so welcoming and supportive. Immediately I felt welcomed to the community and didn’t hesitate to be myself and ask questions. We went skiing, some of us on multiple days, had dinner together and a couple of drinks along the way. Chill atmosphere all the way for the whole week.

I met many wonderful and inspiring people around the world. I couldn’t be happier to meet all of you, a special shout-out to those who were there for the pre-event days! It was so exciting to hear all the stories about how people do their work and how they participate with both the global and local Drupal communities. Even though there are many companies doing similar things with Drupal, we should not fear collaborating with each other over the companies and sharing knowledge with each other. Something you have been struggling with recently could be a piece of cake for someone else and vice versa. This is the essence of community: helping each other succeed. What we contribute benefits not just ourselves but also others within the community.

The event was packed full of useful information and the session topics, with sessions covering a wide range of topics from Drupal security practices to card games about hardware and software. Some topics were about how we could develop a software solution with a customer and some were about developing a smart watch application. The variety of topics was astonishing as I thought that all the topics will be strictly Drupal, especially the nerdy code stuff, though there were also those kinds of topics. I wish I could participate in every session as there were so many interesting and inspiring speakers and topics.

I made numerous global contacts, and I feel these connections will extend beyond simple LinkedIn additions. They are fellow professionals I can reach out to for advice and support, which I value immensely. I look forward to meeting many of them again at future events and hope to connect with new people.

The sessions in Drupal Camp were really interesting and some of the topics were not that technical Drupal development topics (the nerdy code stuff) so in addition to developers and people working around Drupal, people who use Drupal based solutions and who are interested in maybe making a switch to using Drupal can get invaluable information. In general if you work in a team developing a software solution, even if it’s not Drupal, you might find something useful in these kinds of events.

I highly recommend participating in Drupal Camps and Cons in general. The next opportunity to join is at DrupalCamp Helsinki + Baltics on April 26th! Be sure to check the website for schedule and registration, by the way it’s FREE!

I’ll be there, too and if you have any questions, or if you just want to chat, please feel free to say hi!

Photos: Toni Nissinen and Patrick Itten.