UPDATE: I've added a bit more about my first proper presentation experience and photos....and thought of some other people I chatted with.
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What a ride!! Volunteering, learning, laughter, sleep deprivation... those words sum up my weekend!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="322" caption="The tshirts had to be washed before wearing, so we did, in the hotel..."][/caption]

What started out as a desire to learn more about Drupal and to help a good friend (Susan MacPhee), has become a whole new appreciation for the word 'community'. I was really blown away by how wonderful Drupal themers are. They have an amazing drive to learn, share and improve Drupal.

The Design 4 Drupal Camp (#d4d on Twitter) was really great fun, but more on that in a bit.

Susan has always been very positive about Drupal, but I ended up as a volunteer and speaker pretty much by coincidence. Her and I traveled to the May Refresh Boston gathering featuring Jared Spool, and afterward I joined her and a group local of D4D camp volunteers for a planning meeting. Before I knew it, I was a volunteer and speaker.

From the time I arrived at the Kendall Hotel on Friday afternoon, until I made it home Sunday night, I really enjoyed meeting and chatting to everyone. I really appreciate the work Susan and fellow volunteer Jeannie Finks did throughout the weekend too.

At the Camp registration desk, I met so many people! Volunteering in this capacity is a great way to meet a lot of people, but not a great way to remember names... I only attended a handful of sessions, but Ben Finklea's Building a Successful Drupal (Design) Business presentation was superb (and one I could follow, being a Drupal newbie). I plan to familiarize myself with the Drupal over the next few weeks which should coincide nicely with when the recorded sessions are available on the Design 4 Drupal site.

I did it a session on Evaluating the User Interface and User Experience. It was originally scheduled for 2 PM Sunday, at the same time as the Accelerated Grid Theming with NineSixty session, and soon became aware that everyone was really excited for the NineSixty presentation. Rather than present an empty room, Susan and I shifted my session to 4 and moved the NineSixty session to the large auditorium. The presentation itself was okay, but would have been a lot better I was able to connect my laptop to the projector, given up on the Mac remote, and had more time. I ended up skipping some sections to finish at 5 PM.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="322" caption="The t-shirts were hung by the chimney with care....when it became obvious they weren't going to dry"][/caption]

Some of the great people I the pleasure of interacting with this weekend (in no particular order) were Tim Merrill, Jay Batson, Morten DK, Jacine Rodriquez and her sister Amanda Rodriguez, Todd Nienkerk, David Moore, Ocelot Scott, Ed Carlevale, Chris Bryant, Ben Finklea, Jeff Kandt, Benjamin Melançon, Jake Strawn, Dani Nordin, Jason Savino, Elizabeth Buehring, Christopher Calicott and many, many others. Feel free to give me a prod if I've left your name out. I'm blaming the sleep deprivation.

I plan to get more involved with the Drupal community by volunteering some time to the Drupal.org redesign, possibly attacking it from the Quality Assurance angle. And of course, it would be lovely to get beyond the first stage of my own Drupal site. Also, I'll be tweeting from the @D4DBoston account and updating the Boston Design 4 Drupal Camp news stories with some interesting tidbits.

P.S. Great photos of the event by MissElizabeth and Jeff Eaton.