Three findings on my flight home:

• Compared with Hungarian, German with its puny three umlauts can pack up and go home.
• Compared with Ireland, Hungary has much nicer weather.
• Compared with the pubs at home, in Hungary you can treat four or five times as many people to a beer for the same amount of money.

As you can see, Hungary has the advantage in many regards and I had a great time here at the Drupal Developer Days this past week.

When I arrived in Szeged on Wednesday evening, Drupal 8 coding sprints had already been running for a few days and they’d continue all week. During this time, up to 150 Drupal developers were working to make progress on code and documentation issues. There were 115 commits to Drupal core and after removing 19 blocker issues, we’re now 40% closer to Drupal 8 Beta. Our Git repository traffic was so high that it even triggered drupal.org’s DDoS defenses!

At the event location only, we consumed 5500 sandwiches, 1000 servings of coffee, 240l of beer, 300kg of sweet snacks and 120kg of bananas. The venue was a really good choice. It had all the space we needed, good catering and the WiFi worked well throughout the event. And having the Novotel (with its amazing value for money) right next door is unbeatable convenience.

From Thursday to Saturday, there were a lot of interesting presentations as well as a reprise of the “Caching Deep Dive” multi-hour workshop that had a lot of success at DrupalCon Prague. Almost every talk referenced the upcoming Drupal version. And although many things are still in flux, it feels to me like Drupal 8 is taking shape.

What drove engagement most was the great community spirit. Everyone was welcome, from the Drupal novice to the long-time core contributor. There were smiling faces all around and you could simply walk up to anyone to have a chat or ask a question. People got together spontaneously, be it to code or to go have dinner. These personal experiences are what I love most about the Drupal community. If you haven’t been to a DrupalCamp yet, go to DrupiCal now and see what’s happening near your place! Go on, I’ll wait here.

My personal highlight was the #AberdeenFreistilCloudBox party on Friday night which I had the pleasure to co-organize. I had contacted Aaron Porter before the event, suggesting we join forces and do something about the community’s lack of awareness of our European Drupal hosting companies that we both had perceived at DrupalCamp London a few weeks earlier. When I met Aaron on Thursday morning, he invited me to join him in scouting for a party venue for Friday night. We looked at two bars in the center of Szeged and decided on hosting (that’s what we’re good at, after all!) the party at the CoolTour Cafe. We were able to make a deal that secured our guests 100 free beers as well as free admission to the concert room where one of Hungary’s best-known Jazz singers was going to be on stage. And when on Friday afternoon the number of sign-ups for the party crossed the 100 mark, Aaron and I decided to throw in another 100 beer vouchers. The party was a success and fun was had by everyone. The title of “drink distributor extraordinaire” goes to Dave Hall who’s apparently related to a huge Dutch family since he returned every few minutes to grab a voucher for another member of the Needabeer clan.

In the end, I’d like to congratulate the organization team around Kristof van Tomme to a great Drupal community event! I’m thankful for a lot of good conversations, and happy that I overcame my initial reluctance to register and got to be a part of Drupal Developer Days Szeged 2014.