The upcoming DrupalCon in San Francisco from April 19-21, 2010 will be my first. I'm thrilled to return to the West Coast as a Drupal developer, having fond memories of the Human Language Technologies 2002 conference in San Diego (as a computer scientist) and the Materials Research Society's Spring meetings in San Francisco in the mid-90's (as a physicist).

Meeting many collaborators on Drupal "in real life" (IRL) for the first time will mark quite an important career milestone for me. To make the most of this opportunity I plan to participate in the code sprints the day before and the day after the main conference day. So see you in SF April 18-22!

UPDATE May 14, 2010
Participating in DrupalCon SF 2010 was amazing. I caught up with an old physicist friend of mine, jhodgdon, at the sprint on the April 18, 2010. She's a colleague, again, now that I am part of the Drupal movement. At Dries' State of Drupal keynote the next day I saw her handle projected on HUGE screens - she is the #7 top contributor to Drupal 7! The combination of Dries' talk and Tim O'Reilly's keynote the next day was very powerful for me, as I came to grips with my small place in the movement at the same time I was introduced to the notion that the movement as a whole is playing a important role in keeping part of the evolving "Internet Operating System" free. Heady stuff. Then I worked on a Drupal 7 core issue on the 22nd. Back in the trenches, so to speak, but with a new sense of the whole endeavor.