DrupalCon Ticket Pricing

Here is what your ticket gets you:

• A first class venue with decent climate control, wifi and power
• A chance to meet all of the cool people you only meet in IRC or in issue queues
• Catered lunch (real food)
• Over 90 scheduled sessions and almost as many ad hoc birds of a feather sessions
• Pre and post-DrupalCon code sprints
• fooBar, where you can hang out and enjoy a sponsored beer

DrupalCon Europe has grown from 150 attendees at DrupalCon Brussels in 2006 to a projected number of 1,500 attendees at DrupalCon Copenhagen. This didn't happen by accident. The Drupal Association has dedicated DrupalCon as a community event as well as a developer event, which meant we needed to step up our game. We no longer fit in free venues, and running large events isn't a job for a handful of volunteers on their own. In Paris, we began working with one of Europe's top event production companies, and they handle all the non-Drupal aspects of DrupalCon from the venue and the wifi to the coffee and the trash. On the Drupal side, the volunteers from the Danish community, the European Organizing Group and the Drupal Association Board and General Assembly are assisted by a professional production manager.

In short, we are very conservative with the community's money. We strike a balance between meeting the needs of the attendees, such as wifi, lights and toilets that work, and the greater Drupal world through web and screencasts. For folks who work hard for the project and have few resources, we offer a scholarship program.

The Drupal Association would like to get some income from all DrupalCons, and we use that money to support the project and the community by doing things like buying more servers, supporting sprints, managing the website infrastructure, buying more servers (!), and generally making sure that the stuff the community counts on doesn't fall apart. While DrupalCon Europe hasn't been a money maker, and we aren't counting on income from this one, we are hopeful. The Drupal Association, by the way, is you, and if you are not a member, you should consider joining.

For many of us, DrupalCon will be a milestone in our careers, and for some of us, it will be a milestone in our lives. What is that worth? Hard to say.

It is true that DrupalCon can no longer directly cater to folks who simply want to casually check out Drupal with no commitment. In return, the community offers a wide range of events including DrupalCamps, meet-ups, and others, which are free or offered at very low cost. There is even an unconference in the works for the Monday of DrupalCon (details coming soon).