I haven't blogged for a long time, mainly due to workload. The past 2 years found me joining another team, changing a couple of appartments and working more on the backend than ever before.
I also took part in organizing three (3) big Drupal events in Greece: DrupaDay Athens 2016, DrupalCamp Athens 2016 and DrupalDay Patras 2017! DrupalDays are the new trend as it seems, where the local communities try to meet all together and discuss, present, have fun, but they are not Camps. They are being organised with the bare-minimum costs and held in the local language.
As if the above weren't enough, FEU 2017 will also be happening in Greece, and I'll try to help as much as I can.
That said, I will not be supporting the Drupal Association anymore. I've had my differences with them in the past (overpriced tickets: https://www.drupal.org/node/2371055) and things didn't change in Dublin. I went there for the sprints (after reading this article) but I tried to keep track of all the things going around. Once again, the event was set to be expensive from the beggining, so expensive that eastern europeans find it more and more difficult to attend (and that was the birth of IronCamp!). But the overpriced Dublin, and Vienna this year, are not the only reason I am dropping my support for Drupal Association.
The main reason is that, for years in a row, everything seems to be getting more and more corporate, and with the latest post from Dries (I am not linking to it because I personally believe it is the worst thing that could happen to Drupal) I am more convinced that everything is about the public image of a couple of companies and the people that run them.
In case you haven't heard, a valued member of the community and probably the best speaker I ever had the chance to hear was kicked out of the project, for reasons that had nothing to do with Drupal itself. Neither the community working group (CWG), nor the association did anything to prevent this, nor made things better in any direction. Things went downhill from there on, Druplicon is on strike, until further notice, valuable core contributors react, and several older things are surfacing.
I understand and know that nobody will really care if I stop supporting the DA, or even Drupal itself, but I can't support their acts, so I personally need to put an end to this. It doesn't really matter if people agree or disagree with me. I will try to promote what is good about our community, and from now on I will even alert newcomers of what has happened in the past.
After all, we came this far by being excellent to each other, not by acting like bullies.
I really feel like I want to tell more, and how oposed I am to what is happening, but already a persons life is being irreversably affected and I prefer things would have never come to that. For that reason alone, I did not and will not go into details, but I am continuing to monitor the situation, more worried about the project than ever.