Hi Morpheus, I was not asked by anyone to make the comment! I was made aware of this discussion by another EA who sent me a link to this post. I felt prompted to share my experiences as very little was written about him, yet he was still referenced. 

I second this - I have met Drew at multiple conferences and my experiences with him have only been positive. He has always been very nice to talk to. I have also heard others in EA circles tell their anecdotes on him and nobody has anything bad to say whatsoever. 

Hi, I'm Zeynep! As someone who volunteered at Future Forum I want to give my piece as well. I completely agree with Patrick's response below, the conference was exceptionally good and the majority of attendees from my experience feel the same way. 

Although things did go wrong, as they easily can with any event, a lot of the volunteers worked very hard to fix the situation. This included staying up all night to fix the venue. I would like to highlight that when we found out we had to switch venues, we were given the option to not take part in moving equipment. Many volunteers agreed to help out regardless, and did not back out, and this in itself shows how much value even we as volunteers felt the event had to give. It may look trivial on paper, but staying up all night to move an entire venue is not for the faint of heart. 

Although stress levels were briefly high, everything was handled exceedingly well internally and I was personally told by attendees that they did not feel that the venue change was an issue. As someone who has been to many many many conferences, I would say that the event was a huge success. Everything other than the venue change - from the food to the talks, ran without any hiccups, which is ridiculously impressive when you have witnessed things go very wrong in other events. I firmly think that the entire staff + volunteers deserve a big round of applause.