Hello, Drupal world! We are thrilled to be able to give you an inside peek at what goes into planning DrupalCons. Throughout 2016, we’ll share a series of posts, and a few webcasts, to show some behind-the-scenes aspects of DrupalCon. In honor of National Volunteer Week, this month's DrupalCon post highlights how an army of amazing, dedicated volunteers is behind every DrupalCon.

If you’ve ever attended a DrupalCon, you probably remember the Drupal Association standing onstage and saying that this event ‘couldn’t happen without our amazing volunteers.’ We normally have a round of applause for the volunteers at each particular Con, but that still doesn't fully convey how much of the Con is lead by some fantastic community members. In this blog we want to help quantify how much time and energy these volunteers give to help create a memorable and enriching Con for you.

Before you even know there is a Con happening in any city, volunteers are already on board helping to make it happen. Once the city has been decided and finalized by the Drupal Association, we loop in a small group of community leaders in the secret city to come together and help us make a splash when we announce the next year’s Con location.

Besfore the Con has even been announced, these 4-6 volunteers work to put together a document that guides our designer in the logo creation and branding of the still-secret event. The community gives input during the design process of the logo, sticker and splash page that goes live after the announcement. The announcement is another way that the volunteers make an impact by dreaming up an awesome way to tell you about how awesome their city is and why you should come to DrupalCon the next year.

Once we have publically announced a location, the Drupal Association reaches out to more volunteers to build the Program Team. This team includes various groups of volunteers who make a huge impact on your DrupalCon experience. Here is a quick rundown of how committed these volunteers are and how their contribution shapes the Con.

• Track Team - with two to three volunteers per track, this is the team that sets the tone of what content you will be hearing in sessions. They begin thinking about this at least 5 months before the Con and meet weekly to move the session content forward. Between writing track descriptions, reaching out to speakers to curate sessions, reading every single session submission, helping build the schedule and later acting as coaches for their speakers, this team signs up for a long and heavy time commitment and the fruits of their labor results in amazing sessions. In New Orleans we have 130 hand-selected sessions thanks to this dedicated team. Additional Selection Committees - we also call on the help and expertise of various other community volunteers in selecting more things related to DrupalCon. For the incredible training course proposals that we get, we have a team dedicated to selecting the 15 that should be offered. We also have a team tasked with the duty of reading each grant and scholarship application and making the difficult decisions about who is given an award to come to the DrupalCon.

• Summit Leads - each Summit is led by a small team who works to develop a full day of engaging and educational content that will allow attendees to get the most out of the Con by adding this Monday ticket event to their trip. Our Summit Leads begin working 4 months before the Con to line-up panel guest speakers, organize multiple round table topic leaders, create the flow of the day as well as emcee their event. If you’ve ever attended a Summit, we hope that you appreciate the time and energy that these Leads have committed to making your day great.

• Sprint Leads - this team of leads works year-round to help create sprints that are welcoming and engaging and DrupalCons are no different. Beginning planning a few months in advance of the Con, this team takes on 9 days of sprint coordination (all those extended sprints on the weekends before and after the Con, Monday Contribution Sprints, Sprint Lounge during the week and Friday Sprint Day). They also have a booth in the Exhibit Hall where you can learn about sprinting, contributing and how you can get involved. They also work to lead an amazing group of additional volunteer Sprint Mentors who help make these sprints a learning experience for many newer contributors.

• Sprint Mentors - this group of sometimes up to 75 is mainly recognizable in their bright colored Con shirts on Fridays - helping to make sure new contributors are set-up to learn how to give back to Drupal. These mentors come from around the world and attend a training on being mentors to hundreds of DrupalCon attendees and truly dedicate their time and energy to the community with this role.

• Community Leaders - after helping plan the big reveal of their city, the community leaders stay throughout the months before the Con to make sure that the Con gets an injection of the host city into the fun-filled week. If you’ve ever found a blog about local restaurants or learned about a popular app in a new country, the local community leads are more than likely to thank as the work to provide helpful content that makes your time in their city the best ever.

• Prenote Performers - now an institution at DrupalCon, the Prenote has become a staple of Con content. The known suspects as well as local participants put in countless hours of time to craft a script, original songs and multiple antics that share the story of Drupal while making us laugh -- kicking the Con off right.

Apart from the Program Team, there are still many more volunteers who give time and knowledge to making DrupalCon special. Below are some of the many ways that volunteers are involved with shaping the Con:

• Speakers - although the speakers get a free ticket to the Con, we consider them volunteers because in choosing to speak at DrupalCon they are providing us with an incredible session that takes a lot of time and energy to create. Many hours go into a single presentation before you hear it at the Con, and with over 150 speakers at DrupalCon New Orleans, we are thankful to have so many talented volunteers sharing their experience with our Drupalistas.

• On-site Volunteers - the days before the Con involve over 50 volunteers who help us prepare for the barrage of Drupalers who arrive to enjoy a week of all things Drupal. From organizing over 3,000 t-shirts to stuffing that tote bag you get with multiple sponsor goodies, this power-team of volunteers are like a machine and deserve a huge round of applause for hard work. Once those tasks are complete, we have many volunteers who also help at the registration desk, counting session room attendance, and checking in with sponsors. There is literally of sea of volunteers at all times making sure DrupalCon is going smoothly.

• Recurring Con Volunteers - some volunteers take on an element of the Con and just own it. Group photos and photography shots come from an amazing photography team composed of new volunteer photographers and some that have been taking photos at Drupal events for years. Our social media team is on point year-round to make sure that you’re always getting the most up-to-date info about the next Con. These volunteers have become almost permanent extensions of our Drupal Association team. We're grateful to work with our recurring volunteers because not only do they rock at what they do, but gosh, they're fun!

• The Community Working Group - with the Code of Conduct in effect at every Con, this group might go unnoticed but plays a huge role in making DrupalCon welcoming and inclusive for all attendees. Available to mediate and work through incidents, this group is an important part of making a Con a Con.

As you can see, when we say this couldn’t happen without the volunteers, we MEAN IT.

I consider myself very lucky to primarily work with volunteers around the world who are so passionate and invested in creating a DrupalCon for you. I spend a lot of time on Zoom calls and in Slack channels with many of these volunteers. During working hours, on weekends, and at the event itself, these volunteers put a lot of themselves into these Cons and I sometimes step back and appreciate how incredible the Drupal community is.

I do my best to thank these volunteers often, reminding myself that each and everyone of them has a life and other priorities and that they are choosing to make DrupalCon important, but as it is National Volunteer Week, I would like to take a moment to list the DrupalCon New Orleans volunteers below and specifically say THANK YOU for all of your hard work - it is valued and appreciated not only by the team at the Drupal Association but by the community as well.

Program Volunteers

Pamela Barone, Donna Benjamin, Pedro Cambra, Michael Cannon, Ian Carrico, Karyn Cassio, Stuart Clark, Matt Davis, Jess Dearie, Shawn DeArmond, Jeff Diecks, Mauricio Dinarte, Robert Douglass, Larry Garfield, Rob Gill, Becca Goodman, Paul Grotevant, Adam Hill, Lucas Hedding, David Hwang, Paul Johnson, Sherri Johnson, Adam Juran, Alex Laughnan, Dan Linn, Greg Lund-Chaix, Alina Mackenzie, Kathryn McClintock, Jeffrey McGuire, Ashok Modi, Diana Montalion, Mike Nielson, Steve Parks, Jon Peck, Joel Pittet, Koen Platteeuw, Tim Plunkett, Ryan Price, Justin Rhodes, Jason Savino, Michael Schmid, Sabrina Schmidt, Eric Schmidt, Eric Sembrat, Seth Silesky, Lauren Smith, Nikki Stevens, Joe Stewart, Ashleigh Thevenet, Cathy Theys, Campbell Vertesi, Shannon Vettes, Jason Want, Heather White, Jason Yee

Sprint Mentors

Alina Mackenzie (alimac), Adam Smeets (asmeets), Ravindra Singh (RavindraSingh), Cathy Theys (YesCT), Gobinath Mallaiyan (gobinathm), David Valdez (gnuget), Aman Kanoria (amankanoria), Joël Pittet (joelpittet), John Cook (John Cook), Chris McCafferty (cilefen), David Hernandez (davidhernandez), manmohan bisht (manmohandream), Mike Keran (mikeker), Ashwini Kumar (ashwinikumar), Eleanor Wai (eleanor_wai), Mauricio Dinarte (dinarcon), Prabhu Narayanpethkar (prabhurajn654), Maninder Singh (Maninders), Maninder Singh (Maninders), Lucas Hedding (heddn), Hitesh Jain (hitesh-jain), Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss), Anto Jose (antojose), Piyuesh Kumar (piyuesh23), Saket Kumar (saki007ster), Manauwar Alam (manauwarsheikh), Les Lim (Les Lim), Ajit Shinde (AjitS), Marc Drummond (mdrummond), Nikki Stevens (drnikki), Neetu Morwani (neetu morwani), Prashant Goel (prashantgoel), Tim Erickson (stpaultim), Daniel Carvalhinho (dscl), Lalit Nirban (lalit3007), Joaz Rivera (m3chas), Junaid Masoodi (junaidmasoodi), Christian Manalansan (cmanalansan), Blake Hall (blakehall), Abhishek Anand (abhishek-anand), Amber Matz (Amber Himes Matz), Darryl Norris (darol100) David Needham (davidneedham), Kristin Bradham (kristink2), Diana VanRooy (thenyouDi), Marc Isaacson (vegantriathlete), Carlos Ospina (camoa), Patrick Storey (Patrick Storey), William Hetherington (willwh), Ravish Gupta (ravyg), Valery Lourie (valthebald) Seth Silesky (sethsilesky), Stuart Clark (Deciphered), Barbara Errickson (barbarae), Cristina Chumillas (ckrina)

Speakers

Hussain Abbas, Mary Albert, John Albin Wilkins, Kelly Albrecht, Greg Anderson, Geoff Appleby, Ronald Ashri, Ryan Aslett, Morten Birch, Kristina Bjoran, Abe Brewster, Jesse Browne, Amitai Burstein, Angie Byron, Ian Carrico, Leigh Carver, Karyn Cassio, Marji Cermak, Matt Cheney, Gus Childs, Chaz Chumley, Courtney Clark, Casey Cobb, Ashish Dalvi, Matt Davis, Aimee Degnan, George Demet, Alex Dergachev, Suzanne Dergacheva, Nikhil Deshpande, Frederic Dewinne, Jeff Diecks, Daniel Dreier, Marc Drummond, Jeff Eaton, Stephanie El-Hajj, Adam Englander, Brad Erickson, Lauri Eskola, Edward Faulkner, Mark Ferree, John Ferris, Jessi Fischer, Fabian Franz, Pieter Frenssen, Larry Garfield, Yuriy Gerasimov, Aditya Ghan, Mike Gifford, Matt Glaman, Micah Godbolt, Drew Gorton, Nicolas Grekas, Rudy Grigar, Jody Hamilton, Mike Herchel, David Hernandez, Michael Hess, Jason Hibbets, Amber Himes Matz, Mikkel Høgh, Gábor Hojtsy, Chris Hoult, David Hwang, Marcus Iannozzi, Allie Jones, Adam Juran, Adam Kapp, John Kary, John Kennedy, Greg Knaddison, Randall Knutson, Josh Koenig, Charles Kreitzberg, Michelle Krejci, Kat Kuhl, Ashwini Kumar, Saket Kumar, Piyuesh Kumar, Wim Leers, Brian Lewis, Les Lim, Dan Linn, Clay Marshall, Tom Martin, Sophie Matson, Jeffrey McGuire, Catharine McNally, Oscar Merida, Steven Merrill, Brett Meyer, Michael Miles, Josh Miller, Tim Millwood, Igor Minar, Gaurav Mishra, Jesus Molivas, John Money, Jess, David Needham, Narayan Newton, Dani Nordin, Darryl Norris, Ron Northcutt, Dick Olsson, John Ouellet, Jason Pamentalm, Jon Peck, Steve Persch, Piyush Poddar, Kristen Pol, Fabien Potencier, Alex Pott, Taco Potze, Ellie Power, Luke Probasco, Ilan Rabinovitch, Scott Reeves, Dave Reid, Adrian Rollett, Chris Rooney, Chris Russo, Susan Rust, Terrence Ryan, Peter Sawczynec, Dave Sawyer, Michael Schmid, Roy Scholton, Michael Sherron, Joe Shindelar, Sebastian Siemssen, Michael Silverman, Preston So, David Spira, Anne Stefanyk, Nikki Stevens, Karen Stevenson, Nick Stielau, Matt Stratton, David Strauss, Ryan Szrama, Patrick Teglia, Chris Teitzel, Dave Terry, Kyle Theobald, Ashleigh Thevenet, Bjorn Thomson, Travis Tidwell, Matthew Tift, Howard Tizzo, Vanessa Turke, Tatiana Ugrimova, Chris Urban, Kristof Van Tomme, Jeff Walpole, Ryan Weaver, Daniel Wehner, Moshe Weitzman, Lynn Winter, Peter Wolanin, Chris Wright, Bojan Živanović, Helena Zubkow

Image credit goes to the following photographers:
DrupalCon Asia Volunteer Selfie : Michael Cannon
Education Summit Meeting : Paul Johnson
Zoom Screenshot Photo : David Hwang
DrupalCon Los Angeles Sprint Mentors: Jared Smith