Come see us at DrupalCon 2017!

We honed in on Drupal nearly a decade ago. It is built into everything we do from design, to project management, to development (obviously). Which means that every year a group of us pack up and head to DrupalCon. This year, we are sending more E3ers to Baltimore than we’ve sent to any other DrupalCon for two awesome reasons:

1. Backed by Drupal, we are growing quickly but carefully. More employees mean more tickets to DrupalCon 2017.

2. We’ve had FOUR sessions accepted to the DrupalCon 2017 lineup.

We are thrilled! As a Drupal champion, Acquia Preferred Partner, and top Denver agency, we’ve felt huge momentum in the Drupal community this year. We are excited to share a few of our secrets with the DrupalCon 2017 attendees. Come see us!

Data Driven Design for Better Business

Melissa Dufresne, UX/Designer

April 26th at 2:15 pm

We do not create a design based on a client’s favorite color – and it is rare that we’d ever be persuaded to do so. At Elevated Third, all our design decisions are based on data. We run tests, do research, and generate numbers to support almost every decision our design team makes.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for clients to argue with cold, hard facts. So, we put in the leg work upfront instead of spending time making rounds of revisions for indecisive clients. We show, in quantifiable terms, what their customers respond to and build the design around those results. For this reason, our clients are happier, our relationships are smoother, and our business is more efficient.

Client decisions happen faster when we can offer them the best option possible, backed up by numbers. The largest Drupal 8 site we’ve built to date launched on time and under budget based on this theory. Our UX Designers and Content Strategists can set up quick tests to prove why one icon or label should be selected over another so that our clients are not burdened based on preference, but instead, numbers. This tactic has made Elevated Third more profitable and efficient to help our small agency grow.

New Business is Everyone's Responsibility

Jeff Calderone, CEO/Founder

Nick Switzer, Development Director

Nelson Harris, Business Development Strategist

April 26th at 2:45 pm

Creating a sense of shared responsibility for new business and developing an environment where it is a whole agency discipline is critical. We will talk about our approach over the recent years and how we have shifted our process to reflect this idea. Our agency, Elevated Third, has learned a great deal about how to improve this aspect of our business through various experiences that we will highlight to illustrate this point.

We will explain how both design and creative teams, as well as the technical team, are involved in evaluating opportunities, estimating, creating a proposal and presenting a final pitch. The group presenting includes our CEO, development director, and a member of our business development team. We want to provide useful information and highlight real examples that can help other organizations using Drupal in making sure that the sales team does not live in a silo and that everyone has a role in winning new clients.

Our goal is to show the details of our process to provide as much actionable information as possible. Our team will present the deliverables that we use to explain exactly how we connect the different groups within our agency to create a fluid and inclusive procedure. We want to show the “how” and provide attendees with the tools to execute within their own organizations.

Agile with a Lowercase 'a': The Art of Collaborative Project Management

Nick Switzer, Development Director

Kylie Forcinito, Account Manager  

April 26th at 5:00 pm

As a small agency, we are always striving to be more efficient and maximize the tools we have. How can we work smarter not harder, and spend more time focused on our client’s business problem? We chose to develop and follow a process rooted in agile, but with a nimble approach that requires dev, design, UX, strategy, and account to individually contribute to the success of the project.

Join Kylie Forcinito, an accomplished account manager and veteran of the agency world, and Nick Switzer, development team lead with 7 years of Drupal and agency experience, to learn how they came together to produce a version of agile tailored to the world of budget constraints, short timelines, limited resources, and required deliverables. Come see how to collaboratively plan and execute a large development project with a small team - all disciplines are welcome!

Questions we’ll address in this talk include:

• How can I involve my whole team in project planning and scoping without blowing my budget?

• How do you successfully manage a project without a PMP certified scrum master?

• What is the best way to keep the team focused on the bigger picture without losing track of project details?

• How much documentation do we need to successfully provide working software?

• How do I satisfy my client’s contract and budget needs, while keeping collaboration a priority?

Atomic Design in Drupal 8: Isolating frontend workflow with Pattern Lab!

Anthony Simone, Drupal Developer

April 26th at 10:45 am

Drupal 8 has allowed for the integration of modern workflows into the Drupal community. The transition to Twig as the templating engine specifically provides the space to integrate new patterns and tools into your frontend workflow. Pattern Lab is a static site generator that provides a structure for developing a templating and theming framework based on atomic design. The Twig version of Pattern Lab, along with the Data Transform plugin written by Aleksi Peebles, creates the possibility to integrate Pattern Lab directly into your Drupal project.

This session will review the basic principles of Pattern Lab and atomic design but will focus on the practical implementation of Pattern Lab in YOUR next Drupal project. We will work toward the following goals:

• Review the basic principles of Pattern Lab and how it can integrate directly with a Drupal 8 project, including specific issues that make Pattern Lab in Drupal different from a standalone Pattern Lab project

• Discuss some challenges that you might encounter if you want to add Pattern Lab to your project and an example of one specific implementation

• Consider a functioning example of a Drupal 8 site that has a well developed Pattern Lab backbone and discuss some potential benefits of this type of workflow