Ackama have sponsored DrupalSouth 2023 for the first time!. DrupalSouth is the conference for the Australian, New Zealand (and hopefully Pacific) open source community and CMS. Community-operated tech events are definitely our favourite – Drupal South is operated by a voluntary committee with most talks run by the technical community and all sponsors being companies that contribute to open source.

Ackama see sponsorship as growing our involvement in Drupal, having developed our expertise in the platform for the last 5 years with several key clients. While we work in a range of technology platforms, and track trends and changes in web development, we have developed our own practices and specialisation in DrupalCMS for our own work and clients. So we’re proud to look at how we can support and champion it’s uptake in our regions.

What we’re doing at the conference:

• We have 5 of the team attending this year – a bonus of being hosted from an NZ office location made it a great opportunity to connect the team and meet colleagues in person
• Taking a pause from the busy-ness of client delivery and learning from other leading tech teams. Ackama is interested in reflecting on our practices and taking stock of new ideas
• Seeing a mature range of technology agencies, and observing the quality of work across our region – hosting, full service, and IT consultancies are well represented. We’re interested in the community showcase and seeing a bit behind the curtain on some awesome projects
• Increasing our ability to advise customers in DrupalCMS – understanding the capabilities more deeply
• Personally as a New Zealander it has been educational getting involved with Drupal and seeing the quality of the project within government and large online organisations. I’m hopeful the New Zealand scene develops and thrives – learning from the quality of the Australian examples

For now, we’re delighted to be a Silver sponsor. We’d encourage developers or digital managers to consider future events, like a local meetup or Drupal conference. I also want to acknowledge the warm and encouraging community – it’s easy to see the warmth and generosity of people in the scene.