DrupalCon Nashville 2018: Executive Summary

Drupalcon 2018 is officially done! Mediacurrent was well represented with 37 teammates converging to Nashville for learning, networking, camaraderie, and professional growth. 

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In the coming weeks, we will be providing a cross-section of feedback from people who perform different roles. Our goal is to give you some insight around "what you missed." 

Drupalcon Nashville 2018 (by the numbers):

• Approximately 3000 attendees from around the globe and 150 sessions.
• Hundreds of informal birds of feather (BoFs) meetings where like minded peers gathered, custom training sessions, Summits, and code sprints were held in conjunction with the conference.
• Over 20,000 Drupal 8 sites are now being launched per month.
• 81% more of Drupal 8's modules are now considered fully stable compared to this time last year.
• Some of the biggest logos in the world that have adopted Drupal were well represented in Nashville.

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The Surgence of Marketing & Strategy: 

There was a common theme throughout the conference around how Drupal can provide a more holistic digital experience. Lauren Vaccarello, VP of Marketing at Box captured many of these points.  While there are a myriad of marketing tools and campaign options available, executives must not lose sight of the obvious - your company's web presence is the singular most important digital asset in your organization. Marketers and editors are demanding more though. They want a content management platform and a best of class partner to:

1.  Really lean in and understand their role and where Drupal solves problems for them.
2.  Take the time to learn about goals, success factors, KPIs and the vision of not just the project or department, but company as a whole.
3.  Show a simpler and easier editorial experience workflow.
4.  Leverage data analytics to make more informed decisions.
5.  Execute at a consistent, predicable level, but also provide insight and exposure to how other organizations are utilizing Drupal in creative ways.

These items are resonating. Megan Saniki, Executive Director of the Drupal Association (DA), talked about how the DA will be working hard to serve the needs of everyone involved in a company's digital experience, especially those who would consider themselves "non-technical."  For example, there will now be a new content and editorial track at Drupalcon, more case studies, and a newly redesigned home page was announced for drupal.org.

Vision of Drupal:

Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, gave a powerful keynote presentation. He mentioned what an exciting time and huge opportunity there is "to grab" for everyone who has been involved with Drupal the past 17 years. After listening to a cross-section of stakeholders, Dries articulated what Drupal's 4 most critical priorities will be to drive the community forward. They include:

1. Improving the evaluation process to help increase adoption - this includes the number of clicks and steps to download Drupal.
2. Improving the content creator experience (people want Drupal to act more like social media tools they already use on a daily basis).
3. Improving the site builder experience - this could include making the version update path easier (note: 8.5 is the newest release of Drupal).
4. Promote Drupal to non-technical decision makers.  In general, this should entail more collaboration for those who have a vested interest in marketing Drupal. This includes a "Promote Drupal Fund" drive that was announced to collect $100,000 to among other things hire an extra, full-time employee for the Drupal Association. 

Recommended Sessions:

Top Drupal 8 Modules: A tour through the best of Drupal in 2018
Advanced topics in Decoupled Drupal
Think Your Website GDPR Compliant? Think Again!

Next Steps:

If you have any questions about Drupalcon Nashville or your next digital project please do not hesitate to reach out to chat.  What did you think of Drupalcon 2018? Send your feedback here.