Welcome back to day 11 of the Drupal Advent Calendar. Behind today’s door Surabhi Gokte (surabhi-gokte) talks about her journey as volunteer coordinator.
Seven years ago, if someone said I would travel out of my country and be a super active community contributor, I’d have laughed it off. But things changed, and it wasn’t an overnight transformation. It required time, energy, money, patience, belief, and much more.
I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it to DrupalCon in Lille this year, but I was fortunate enough to get accepted as a mentor. This covered the cost of the ticket, but in return I was expected to spend the contribution day helping first time contributors.
The next bit is about travel. I’ll try to keep it brief, but feel free to skip to Tuesday.
Flew to the wrong Paris airport (Beauvais - very nice place, must come back some day, but a long way from Paris), hurried to catch local bus to train station, caught train (double-decker!) to Paris Nord, caught train to Lille (TGV! - according to my phone we hit 300kmh) (double-decker!). Got to Lille. All very efficient, but it did take all day. Budget travel can be a pain!
I got checked into my apartment, which was very pleasant, and found out there were some people meeting in a bar, back into the city centre.
I met up with various Drupallers and had some very interesting conversations, as well as some Flemish Stew.
On Tuesday I made my way to the convention centre. I was following the Google Maps directions, which involved going all the way back to the train station and around the other side to the Lille Grand Palais. The walk took nearly half an hour. I was fairly sure there was a shorter route that avoided going around the train station, but I wouldn’t find it till the next day.
I was aiming to make the volunteer briefing and tour of the venue, but just missed the start of it. I managed to catch up with them at the end of it, in the contribution area.
So, we’ve reached day 24, the last day of the calendar.
Astonishing.
Today I’m doing something a little bit different.
One of the amazing things about Drupal is the community that surrounds the project. This is supported by issue queues, forums such as Slack and various other channels. However, there is only so far text channels can go.
