After our traditional 6-month hiatus, the MidCamp organizers met in October to discuss our plans for 2022. Here's the tl;dr:
- we're burnt-out on virtual events, AND
- we're not ready to go back to the way things were, BUT
- we still want to do... something in March 2022.
Where we are
We had a good honest conversation with 9 members of our organizing team. Here are some of the recurring themes:
- We've done one year of virtual in the traditional conference format and one year of experimentation with new formats. We feel like we've been successful with both, but despite trying to scale down our workloads last year, we've still left each year drained instead of reenergized.
- There is no lack of Drupal content in the world. Between volunteer events, DrupalCon, and professional content producers churning out tons of great content and the relatively quiet Drupal "Super Cycle" as Dries termed it.
- "Proof of vaccination or negative test" procedures are still in the process of being standardized. We deemed the risks to our volunteer-led team as high. There are companies that offer these services that could reduce some of that burden but we don't yet have information about availability or costs.
What's next?
More virtual, more work, more risk... once we determined we DID NOT want those things, we started discussing possibilities of what we DID want.
- We believe there is value in the MidCamp brand we've built over the past 7 years. We want to keep it in the conversation—continuing to foster the Midwest Drupal Community and contribute to the Drupal project.
- We crave some return to in-person events. Dedicating time to networking, recharging, learning, and contributing instead of struggling to attend a conference and work simultaneously.
- We want to have fun and see friends that we will have not seen IRL for two years or more by March.
So... what now?
The organizing team will be checking in every 4-6 weeks instead of our usual every other week schedule. We'll stay appraised on the state of the world and Chicago. We'll keep brainstorming ideas.
You can keep March 16-19, 2022 on your calendar, subscribe to our mailing list, follow @midwestcamp, and join us on Slack.
Be safe, and Happy Holidays from all of us at MidCamp.
