Jamming with the Dutch Drupalistas

The dutch community had inveted me as one of the guest speakers at the DrupalJam 6 in Amsterdam.
I was offcourse honored that the thought that my larger than life attitude towards theming drupal, and kicking the markup into shape was something they wanted to listen to - or was it just because im hyping over the upcomming Drupal 7 heme layer? Oh well I hope its the first part, I know its the second ;)

Taken my last weeks of living hell I had my fears of going, leaving your 859 gram baby and my Girl all alone in copenhagen, was something that could strike fear into my heart. But after both the doctors & Girlfriend (and her mother!) all told me to: Get to Amsterdam, and geek out I jumped on thet plane and get down there, (the flight ticket cost me a fortune though)

250 geeks - 1 Day.

The event was at a hostel just outside of Amsterdam (1 stop with the train / 15€ cap ride) The color scheme the hostel used was offcours Orange so if I missed I was in Holland by the "chrrr" & "grrr" sounds from the locals i would get it by the orange - I must admin that orange in my world isnt the new pink ;)
Almost all the sessions was in Dutch (or Flemish) besides the 2 * Robert Douglas: the new cool looking Drupal Gardens, and his never ending sessions about Solr & Kristoffs session about Open Atrium was in english to , which I missed because I had my own session at the same time.

Reusable Session?

My session was almost a complete reuse of the session i did in Stockholm Sweden last year "Drupal 7 Theming"
I removed all the insults about the swedish national football team though, didnt thought the Dutch would get it, and the Danes are meeting em at the World Cup in South Africa this sommer - should have pulled a ref about the Legendary Danish win in the Semifinal in Sweden 1992 (can you say champions) Dev release 3 just came out, unfortunately i didnt have the time to dive into that, cause wow mofo! Drupal7's theme engine kinda fixes "everything" - yup everything - its impressive what can happen in a month with so many dedicated übercoders! Kinda too bad i didnt have those changes with me, but still the Hook Alters are still the hottest stuff EVER! (like eva!)

...oooh and next time ill loose the gum, had no idea i was chewing that stuff, so audience another time just shout at me, its not like your sitting and beeing silent anyways right ;)

The event

Its always cool to se how other communities arrange their events, specially when its just flows :) Im always curious looking to see what they do and what looks good & bad.
Im loving these Web geek Events (especially in the Drupal community where that uniqe Drupal löve still flows)
I was not surprised bout the Dutch (this was the 6 event) Everything just ran smooth, coffee, water, lunch & registration. Even a Business corner, wonder if the name was there because microsoft was a sponsor (liked their slogan though "Make Web not War", looks like m$ wants to get brush up their image?)
Even the wifi worked as were used to: it sucked ass ;)

The idea of having a local 1 day event is good, but the sad part is that people head home after a couple of cold ones at the bar. But it was good talking with people, and got some cool ideas for that event later this year in copenhagen.

All I got was this coffecup

Dutch and danish are kinda the same, besides that we only understand about 10-15% of eachothers language, and we have the same love for bicycles. Its actually nice to see that were not the only ones that have bikes all over the place.
Amsterdam is just a kick ass city - and i actually went to get a cup of coffee at a coffee shop

thanx

Big thanx to Bert & Bart for inviting, and beeing awesome hosts (Bert remebmer the beers in 6 months) I will admit I was very touched by all the questions about Freya, Shes known by name, and not "your Daughter" im kinda freaking out by that :)

Hope to be back in Amsterdam sooner than later!

Drupaljam flickr group