At a recent influential NYCCamp, Larry Garfield (@Crell) gave a keynote about the direction Drupal is headed and why the direction is a good thing. His message was one of a philosophy that has gained a lot of momentum and continues hold true for Drupal's future. It is characterized by the phrase, "Getting off the Island," meaning off the Drupal island. This can be seen in Drupal 8's adoption of current PHP advancements such as Symfony and Twig.

The way it is getting off the island is that those general PHP advancements are not Drupal specific. So for the Drupal community to be involved, it is contributing back to PHP in general and not specifically Drupal. These things are good for not just Drupal, but all projects using PHP. This rational can apply to all open source projects as well.

This Summit is an opening up and enlarging of the DrupalCamp and its intended audience a bit. DrupalCampMA is now a part of the New England Regional Digital Summit (Initial influence and N.E.R.D.S. acronym via some brainstorming with Forest Mars following the January 2013 WesternMA DrupalCamp). Session proposals are open to this region's entire open source community for all digital technology topics.