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One of the best moments when you consider attending an event is when you dissect the program. You are looking for THE session that will match your current explorations, projects’ questions or the topic you always wanted to dive in but never took the time to get embedded. Please let us try to guide you through the sessions that might get your attention.
I’m a doer
For this edition, you are super lucky, our speakers proposed a large panel of workshops so if you are more a hands on person than a listener, you need to explore the list of workshops. Room 6 is exclusively dedicated to them.
I’m a beginner, where should I start?
If you only had to attend one session for this whole event, please consider Getting started with Drupal workshop. It’s aimed to get you in the Drupal world and will help you enjoy the rest of the conference. Once you’re hooked into Drupal, you will want to learn how to Build amazing searches with Search API and how to build interactive forms for your audience in Webforms: Choose your own adventure.
I’m more into front-end, anything interesting for me?
Of course! Did you notice Lifting the Veil on AAA Compliant Builds: The Realities of Conformance and How to Navigate Them about accessibility? There is also this session about Theming for Distributions: Sub-theming Like a Pro. And if you got design components on your radar, then Advanced techniques for components integration with Drupal will suit you.
Could you point me to new topics/food for thoughts sessions?
DrupalCons are a great occasion to learn about new topics or ear about projects feedbacks. Machine Learning in Drupal with Tensorflow.js is a hot topic at the moment. PHP 8.1 - What's New and Changed is a good occasion to get up to date. You can discover and play with personalization in this workshop : Open Personalization with Apache Unomi & Mautic. Explore Don't waste your life supporting your team's dev environments! to identify new ideas to increase your productivity.
I love decoupled and scalability, where should I go?
As one of the many Drupal abilities, you can integrate Drupal with Nuxt.js or Gatsby (among others), if you need to build such a use case, DruxtJS 101: Fully Decoupled Drupal with JSON:API and Nuxt.js and Building multilingual websites with Gatsby and Drupal will probably be a fit.
If you build a lot of sites and need to find tools to automate this, Drupal and Ansible: a way of managing a 2000+ environment infrastructure and Building a cloud-native SaaS for CERN's 1k Drupal sites are the two sessions that you will want to follow.
What is this contributing thing that everyone talks about?
If you ask attendees what they liked the most after a DrupalCon, “the community” will be one of the top answers. We are very proud of this. How does it happen? Through strong principles described in our event Code of Conduct and amazing people willing to help you to enjoy Drupal and leverage it’s potential. You can meet them in several occasions. BoFs are informal conversation over a proposed topic. You can bring yours or explore the one already suggested. There are a very limited number of attendees during this type of sessions and it’s easier to connect.
Sprint rooms are also an excellent occasion to meet the community and get on board on contribution. The list of topics to contribute to is wilde and every type of profile can find a topic to work on. Mentors are available to point you to the right direction and get you started if you’ve never done it before!
The community is also doing a great work to triage issues and it can be another way to contribute, there will be a dedicated session about this that you can attend to find out how to help: Introduction to Bugsmash Community Initiative Keynote.
This is just an excerpt of the available sessions for Makers & Builders, please check the full program to find the session you want to attend! There are 5 tracks to explore.
Have a great DrupalCon!
Having a digital platform that can accentuate your institutions’ strategic initiatives is pivotal to remain competitive, relevant, and connected with multiple audiences. Drupal’s exceptional CMS framework and ease of use lets users curate and manage content in one place. It also ensures advanced compatibility and accessibility to all platforms from mobile devices to information kiosks.
At DrupalCon Europe, the Client & Industry track focuses on digital transformation in companies, and what role Drupal plays in this. We are excited to present different itineraries for the upcoming conference the week of October 4. Whether you are a business leader, agency owner, project manager, or product owner, join some of these sessions to gain some useful insights on our key themes.
Itinerary: Drupal Distributions
Using and managing Drupal distributions, whether they are open source or customized for your company, is a highlighted track theme this year. We kick off the topic on Monday morning with a panel discussion on Drupal Distributions - common challenges and solutions. Several distribution maintainers who have been meeting up since DrupalCon Europe 2020 will share some of the key learnings from the year and look ahead to how Drupal core can better support Drupal distributions in the future.
On Monday afternoon, join in on a deep dive into specific Drupal distributions for media and publishing in the session Exploring Top Media & Publishing Drupal Distributions.
On Tuesday, check out how one team creates and manages a customized distribution for a large scientific organization in the session Survival kit for CERN's organic webscape: Kubernetes and a community of Makers.
Finally, on Thursday we end this itinerary with a case study on managing a custom Drupal distribution for a large global organization in the lightning talk The LightNest Starter Kit: Managing a Drupal Distribution for a Global Organization.
Itinerary: Government & Education
Today, Drupal is the most pervasive content management system in the government and education industries. Given the prominence Drupal has gained in these sectors especially, here are some sessions that we have lined up in this track to help your enterprise enhance its usefulness and modernize your web.
On Tuesday, the session An ambitious digital experience platform for the future of Australia's government will showcase the use of Drupal in building a forward-thinking digital experience project for a leading Australian government agency. It will also demonstrate how this leading-edge platform aims to impact the government’s digital future.
At last year’s DrupalCon, the new LocalGov Drupal, a distribution used by 12 councils in the United Kingdom, was showcased. The team is back on Wednesday’s talk Why UK councils chose LocalGov Drupal (and didn't) to discuss their activities in proactively gathering user feedback to make iterations and enhance the distribution’s effectiveness. They will also share the challenges they are facing in having more councils adopt their solution.
On Thursday, the spotlight is on Drupal as a preferred choice to build modern university websites across the globe. However, there are still some higher education sites that are poorly designed and not fully exploiting the potential of Drupal. In the session Drupal for Universities: current state and perspectives, the presenters will first give a comprehensive survey of how Drupal is used in universities across Europe and then move on to see what could be done by simply using Drupal the right way.
Itinerary: Ecommerce
Drupal can play a significant role in eCommerce, whether it is coupled with another solution or using Drupal’s own open-source eCommerce software Drupal Commerce. The sessions in this track provide case studies on both approaches.
In Tuesday’s talk The unique challenges of launching B2B stores on Drupal Commerce, the presenters will explore three distinct areas when planning and launching a Drupal Commerce Business-to-Business store: 1) B2B stores living alongside a current B2C E-commerce website, 2) content, marketing and strategy for B2B stores, and 3) unique technical challenges compared to a regular B2C website. Decision makers in the e-commerce industry and agencies implementing e-commerce solutions will learn about processes surrounding B2B projects and where to find modules, content and resources about B2B solutions on Drupal Commerce.
On Thursday, we present a case study on the decoupled approach in the session Building a large scale decoupled E-commerce application using Drupal, SAP Commerce Cloud and React. One of the largest food retailers online in Europe built a decoupled shop connecting e-commerce APIs for product information to headless Drupal for loading marketing content. The team will give an overview of the architecture of the website and shop integration, and will highlight the most important features of large-scale shops such as very large shopping carts, customer individual pricing, heterogeneous API infrastructure, native App with full offline support and more.
Itinerary: Governance
Web governance is the process of maintaining and managing an online presence in an organized way. It includes processes, policies, and procedures that help the digital team stay focused on the business goals.
In Monday’s session Focus on projects that matter; Use governance to free your team from endless site maintenance, find out how implementing smart leadership, best practices, and community-focused decisions allowed Washington University to put in place a system of governance, enabling them to deliver a solution for thousands of websites.
Competing priorities is a key challenge that is addressed by a solid governance plan. In the lightning talk The hierarchy of needs of high performing teams held on Wednesday, see how using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a metaphor can help teams organize these competing priorities by building on one another.
Itinerary: UX and Editor Experience Strategy
Deciding on the most appropriate and scalable editorial framework for a company’s CMS and supporting a seamless user experience are critical elements of a website business strategy. In this itinerary, the sessions touch on several important topics including Drupal editorial frameworks, content architecture, accessibility, and scalability.
For companies deciding on which editorial framework to use, check out the talk on Monday on Paragraphs, Gutenberg, CKEditor, WYSIWYG or Layout Builder, or all of them? which will explore how content editing evolved in the past in Drupal and then takes a look into the future with the role of the layout builder and more.
To create a successful digital product, a planning of the information architecture and the user experience both for frontend and backend should create a full picture. In Thursday’s session The Business Value of Design - Tale of Two Projects, the presenters will explore why having a well planned content architecture is necessary, and how a company can save money on excellent and seamless UX in the end.
Also on Thursday, the talk Making Accessibility More Approachable: Comprehension Over Checkboxes, Accessibility is an important part of meaningful user experience, but is usually treated as an extra step to just check off. the presenters will focus on why accessibility needs to be truly baked into your internal project processes and how you bring your program to full maturity.
Want to accelerate site creation? Then later on Thursday take a peek at the session SiteBuilder: A Brand Website in Less Than 2 Hours. See a case study will on how one company is scaling up their Drupal distribution through the creation of a wizard that spins off Drupal 9 instances based on selected brand style guides, modules, profiles, themes and content, and then generates them on a hosting platform as an MVP or final site.
Itinerary: Digital Experiences for Enterprises
The increasingly competitive market landscape has put businesses under tremendous pressure to deliver modern and engaging customer experiences across different touchpoints and channels. However, enterprises need to understand that hardly maintaining a website won’t do any good. They need an entire digital ecosystem to engage their users, shape their buying decisions, and instill brand loyalty in them.
Drupal offers the right tools to build enterprise-grade digital experiences. The release of version 9 especially has given organizations more freedom and flexibility to use any custom front-end technology or use it as a full-fledged digital experience platform optimized for security and accessibility. Learn more about how to deliver seamless digital experiences through the sessions lined up in this track.
A multisite solution is a perfect solution for enterprises looking to resolve issues like brand inconsistencies while managing multiple websites across different geographies, lack of security and compliance, poor user experience and ineffective editorial workflows. Wednesday’s session How to successfully launch a multi-website platform for a leading pharmaceutical company in only 3 months will give you a sneak peek into some of the specific challenges that compelled the Schwabe team to move to a multisite solution, how they implemented the solution in such a short period, what benefits they observed post the solution implementation, and some more useful insights.
Then check out the following session on the same day, How to future proof customer experiences powered by Drupal. With customers becoming more digital savvy, they expect brands to become consistent in the way they deliver them experiences across multiple platforms. The presenters aim to demonstrate how these needs are met by the Digital Experience Platform (DXP) which has transformed businesses by enhancing their customer experience. Real-world examples of tangible business outcomes will be showcased and discussed in this session.
The final session in this itinerary, Learn how we increase website engagement by 304% for a leading American utility, will showcase how SoCalGas leveraged Drupal and Acquia solutions and witnessed an 18% increase in new users, a 70% drop in bounce rate, a 304% increase in average session durations, and a lot more in their quest of building a scalable, future-ready solution that can deliver seamless customer experiences.
Create your own itinerary now to ensure you get the maximum benefit from the knowledge and insight of the many experts who are presenting sessions at this year's DrupalCon Europe.
See you at DrupalCon!
Drupal is about delivering unique digital experiences and high-quality, accessible content to audiences. So it’s natural that content strategists, digital marketers, UX specialists, and designers take a prominent position in DrupalCon Europe 2021. Let’s take a look at what the Users & Editors Track has to offer to these professionals over the event’s four-day schedule.
Content Editors
As editors and strategists, you’ll want to cover as many aspects of content management as possible, and the Users & Editors Track have plenty of options. On Monday, there will be three great sessions in a row to attend. Start with Nikita Aswani speaking about creating accessible digital content, then wait for Inez Declercq and her session about using layout builder to improve content quality. Finally, Suzanne Dergacheva will compare the content editor experiences in Drupal, WordPress, and Contentful. On Tuesday, you don’t want to miss Kerstin Polte’s first-person testimony of her experiences and difficulties with Drupal pages as a content editor.
Designers
Design and UX professionals can start their itinerary on Day One, with Carie Fisher discussing ways and actions to empower users to choose their experiences versus assuming what they want. The day after, Eriol Fox will host a panel ideal for those interested in integrating design and OSS—two worlds that shouldn’t be as far apart as they seem. At the same time, Samvada Jain and Gopinath Manimayam will present a more practical session, about adding flexibility in Drupal core’s block system to allow discrete pieces of content. Designers will need to choose between one of these two sessions, but both are undoubtedly promising.
Site Builders
Drupal developers will also be perfectly served by the Users & Editors Track. On Tuesday, Vladimir Roudakov demonstrates how to create a website on Drupal with a similar experience as in Wix or Squarespace. Then, on Wednesday, three sessions are sure to appeal to site builders. First, there’s Sascha Eggenberger’s take on the future of the popular Gin Admin Theme. Later, Hristo Chonov will show how Autosave Form and Conflict can enhance the editorial experience in Drupal 8 and 9. Finally, Ruchika Mohite and Abhai Sasidharan explain how a DIY Layout Builder can make Drupal more friendly for content editors and marketers.
Most of these sessions are at the beginner level, so non-technical, less seasoned ticket holders should not be intimidated by its topics. And although we suggested the itineraries above, participants can surely create their own programs, according to their interests and needs.
If you thought DrupalCon was just for developers, you couldn’t be more wrong! The Agency and Business track is now a mainstay of the DrupalCon schedule and this year it is packed with great content for agency leaders, project managers and business owners. We have assembled some itineraries to get you started on your DrupalCon experience.
Agency Owners
Start your DrupalCon on Monday afternoon with the Drupal Steward Q&A and find out how to update sites on your own terms for greater peace of mind. Next up on Tuesday morning is a session about starting small as a way of developing new service offerings for your agency. Then on Wednesday afternoon, you can learn about recruiting Drupal talent in a highly competitive jobs market. Round off your DrupalCon on Thursday morning hearing about strategies for you to improve the performance of your agency and enhance your sales efforts.
Project Managers
Like all great project managers, you want to plan your time to get the most out of your DrupalCon experience. How about starting off on Monday with a session advocating the case for ‘no estimation’. Then take a 15 minute break before learning about how support and kanban can work together to deliver both maintenance and continuous improvement. Another 15 minute break and then hear how to use discovery as the basis for successful projects. Finally, on Tuesday, the session about exploratory testing and the impact it can have on quality will provide a different perspective on delivering great digital products.
Business Leaders
Regardless of whether you are a leader within a client side organization or a digital agency, there is plenty to challenge and inform at DrupalCon. On Tuesday morning, learn about how to onboard new colleagues to create a happy, stable and high performance team. Then, on Wednesday morning, hear about using internships to help your organization whilst also contributing to the Drupal project. After a short break, head over to find out about LocalGov Drupal and how it is using a distributed governance model to transform digital delivery in local government organizations. On Thursday, take a deeper dive behind the DXP buzzwords to explore why open DXP is the future.
Create your own itinerary now to ensure you get the maximum benefit from the knowledge and insight of the many experts who are presenting sessions at this year's DrupalCon Europe.
Our community is full of many compelling experiences, skills, and expertise to share, especially when it comes to Drupal. We’d love for you to share your knowledge at DrupalCon Portland 2022!
Whether you’re a first-time speaker or a bit more seasoned, we invite you to submit a session for our first in-person DrupalCon in 3 years!
Our call for speakers is officially open now through 29 October.
As a speaker at DrupalCon, you will be part of an exciting network of individuals with diverse perspectives. All speakers will receive 50% off event registration, and a pool of scholarship funds is available for new and diverse speakers.
If you’re interested but unsure of where to start, check out our website’s proposal and presentation support.
(Photo by Paul Johnson)
The Drupal community is one of the largest open web communities in the world. Moreover, the Drupal community has a diverse and inclusive culture across every department. Drupal is an Open source platform, and we welcome other open web technologies to collaborate. For example, inclusion of the JSON API into Drupal core and new Decoupled menu initiatives which use a JavaScript framework, we invited developers who would like to use Drupal as a back end while also providing user-editable menus.
Photo source Twitter
In other words, the Drupal community is fantastic because of the significant contributions made from gem volunteers from around the globe. It includes everyone, irrespective of their ethnicity, gender, language, religion or any other background. They are willing to contribute back to the Drupal community with Code and other community contributions alike. And also the impact of Drupal on an individual's Life and changing stories.
View Angie Byron's intervention
Angie Byron - Tales of Drupal Past: Origin Stories of Drupal Contributor
So, the Open Web and Community track, we encourage everyone from any open-source/open web technology to submit technical or non-technical sessions.
Contact: RakeshJames, rakesh.gectcr, Track Chair Lead Open Web & Community
The digital agency sector is wide and diverse, spanning many different disciplines and services, but all share a common goal - to deliver transformational digital projects through innovation and best practice. The Agency & Business track is a staple of the DrupalCon program where agency owners and teams can share ideas, learn new skills and collaborate to advance standards in leadership, project management, quality assurance, sales and marketing and digital services.
Photo by Michael Cannon
Shared learning and actionable insight
Digital agencies are, with few exceptions, businesses that operate in a competitive market and compete for clients and projects. Coming together at DrupalCon is a unique opportunity for agencies to put community before competition in order to advance standards, develop skills and drive innovation.
The DrupalCon Agency & Business track has become famous for:
- Agency owners sharing the latest thinking on leadership and building a winning culture within the agency business model.
- Project management professionals illustrating critical skills and lessons in agile delivery through real world examples, not just when things have gone well, but when things go wrong too!
- Agency teams demonstrating how to advance quality assurance and open standards
- Sales & marketing experts showcasing how to create a point of difference in digital services and craft marketing messages that resonate.
Inspiring Stories
One of the most notable aspects of the Agency & Business track is insight from the teams behind some of the most successful digital agencies. Bringing together experts and senior executives from the agency world, DrupalCon is as famous for inspirational stories and ‘non technical’ insights as it is for code and programming skills.
Examples of previous Agency & Business Track sessions include:
- Agency Leadership
- Successfully Managing Distributed Teams
- The Ten Ways of Trust
- Drupal Agency Partnerships: Stronger, Together
- Project Management
- My first Drupal Project as Junior PM
- "Flattening the Curve" with Lean Software Delivery
- Happier teams & clients with better PM – how we improved our PM process to make our lives easier
- Quality Assurance
- Automated advanced visual regression testing
- Understanding Automated Tests in Drupal
- Utilizing the QA Engineers Throughout the Whole Project Lifecycle
- Sales & Marketing
- What is between agencies and freelancing?
- Value Mapping: Communicating the Benefits of What You Do.
- Creating more value with Drupal by offering it as a DXP
The Agency & Business track covers a wide spectrum of topics and issues so we are keen to hear from anyone working for or with a digital agency.
Lead by Example
If you want to share your insight and showcase your leadership within the agency world, we want to hear from you. We are calling on digital agency teams to submit their session proposals by the 28th June 2021. Are you a:
- Digital agency owner or leader
- Project management professional and team
- Quality assurance expert
- Sales & marketing specialist
If so, help us to make the Drupal community the most innovative and dynamic environment for digital agencies and submit your session today.
Submit your sessions now and help make DrupalCon Europe 2021 the best yet!
Contact: Will Huggins, zoocha-will, Track Chair Lead Agency & Business
Share your case studies at the DrupalCon Europe 2021 Client & Industry track
Day 2, Keynote - Monique J. Morrow - DrupalCon Vienna 2017. Photo by Dominik Kiss
Using open source software in a large company requires a cultural shift. An organization needs to encourage knowledge sharing and contributions within the different teams in an organization and also with the greater open source community. New ways of working and collaboration need to be established to take full advantage of adopting open source for an enterprise. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought bizarre challenges and opportunities for enterprises to embrace digital transformation at a much faster pace. It has compelled enterprises to create new possibilities for their businesses through innovative services and products, improved ways of working, and agile business models.
However, there are only a few platforms that support faster digital transformation. Due to this, there are enterprises & SMBs that struggle to leverage the full potential of digital and hence, fail to reach their target audiences at the right time.
And that’s where Drupal, the power of open-source, comes into the picture!
Drupal has become a top enterprise-class CMS for its reliability, interoperability, scalability, security and ease of customizations and integrations. Organizations globally are incorporating open source methodologies into the way they develop their own software. Companies such as Pfizer, Nestlé, Nokia, NASA, Habitat for Humanity, and DHL are already using Drupal to deliver content across all their channels.
Another advantage of open source is the people behind the software, in the case of Drupal a community of more than 1.3 million members. Within this community we can connect and share best practices and lessons learned for managing large complex projects and pushing innovative boundaries using Drupal. With a whole community innovating, we often get new features before we know we need them.
No matter which path is taken, everyone can learn from each other. And that's what DrupalCon Europe 2021 is all about. In the Client & Industry track we want to discuss how digital transformation can be a success for your company – and what role Drupal plays in this. We are looking forward to your questions and your ideas in order to become better together.
DrupalCon Europe 2021 on 4 October through 7 October will cover a broad range of case studies and experiences by representatives of the organisations specialized in choosing for the open web. And it’s not only techs speaking, but also people using Drupal strategically like CMO’s, CTO’s, digital managers, agencies, and business/site owners. The key goal is to show how Drupal can adapt to fit projects of all shapes and sizes, across all industries.
The sessions are targeted to digital managers and executive decision makers using Drupal or considering the solution as their next content and digital experience management platform. Agency leaders, product owners, and tech leads can also benefit from the showcases in this track.
The showcases will add more business value if told by project owners from the companies themselves, or with the agencies alongside their clients. By sharing your journey using Drupal in your digital transformation, you will help existing and potential Drupal users (clients) learn innovative ways to improve Drupal, from Drupal users themselves.
Community Summit at DrupalCon Vienna 2016. Photo by pdjohnson
The Client & Industry track typically covers the following topics:
- General Open Web: Explore how we can continue to advocate for our ability to access and publish on the open web and allow engaging and meaningful digital experiences.
- Drupal Digital Experiences: Share innovative customizations or how you use Drupal in conjunction with other solutions.
- Digital Transformation: Show us how you achieved agility, standardization, masterization, or implementation of new governance processes for Drupal projects that promote digital transformation and innovation within an organization.
- Media & Publishing: Drupal is built with out-of-the-box tools & features essential for creating & publishing SEO-friendly content in multiple languages across devices for delivering incredible user experiences. Showcase how the unique capabilities/features of Drupal make it a one-stop solution for all Media & Publishing enterprises.
- Ecommerce: Tell us how Drupal serves as the foundation and stepping stone for building an integrated Commerce, Marketing, CRM, and ERP platform and delivering integrability, flexibility, and scalability at a reasonable cost.
- Government: Showcase reuse, cost savings, productivity efficiencies, and innovative customizations in governmental structures.
- Education & Non-Profit Organizations: Show how Drupal has been extended to support multifaceted institutions and empower disparate editorial teams.
- Community Platforms: Share with us how Drupal is used to build engaging and intuitive community platforms.
We have listed some presentation topics above, but are open to new themes. What has been your experience with implementing Drupal in your organization in the last few years? What types of governance processes have been put in place? What have been your successes and challenges?
We’d love to hear about it! Send us your case study for the Client & Industry track and share it with the Drupal community.
Not sure if your topic is right here? Don’t be afraid to choose the wrong track as all track chairs are in close contact and will consider moving your session to the best place.
Target Audience
The sessions target digital managers and executive decision-makers who use Drupal or are considering using it as their next digital experience management platform. Agency leaders, product owners, and tech leads can also take advantage of the sessions & workshops on this track.
Why Participate?
Because you will be able to:
- Tell Your Story
DrupalCon offers everyone a platform to showcase the best of their work. If you have worked with the team that developed the web application or an accelerator program to facilitate enterprises in delivering engaging experiences, you ought to share that with us!
We will be ecstatic to know how you fostered innovation using Drupal for building community platforms, improving editorial experiences, creating eCommerce platforms, and ultimately, delivering meaningful customer experiences.
We want to hear all of this from you at DrupalCon. Tell your story by submitting a session to the Clients & Industry Track.
- Give Back to the Community
DrupalCon is an event for anyone & everyone who wants to learn Drupal to make a difference in others’ lives. It doesn’t matter whether you are a developer, designer, editor, or an end-user even, you can get started right away. Simply put your ideas to work at contribution events & enjoy learning & being a part of one of the largest open-source communities in the world.
Submit your sessions now and help create the best program for DrupalCon Europe 2021!
We are looking forward to your submissions! Please don’t hesitate in submitting your sessions. Be an inspiration for all Drupal enthusiasts out there
Contact: Antonella Severo, Antonellasevero, Track Chair Lead, Clients & Industry
What does Makers & Builders mean?
The “Makers & Builders” track is the combination of DevOps, backend development, site building, frontend development, and accessibility competencies. All the right ingredients for a perfect Drupal recipe.
This is an expert only thing, isn’t it?
No! When we build the program, we take into account each type of individual. Whether you are a first-timer (welcome!) discovering Drupal, someone building or maintaining small/medium sites or an “hardcore” developer with dozens of sitesbuilt on your resume or high traffic websites, we have a session for you!
There is obviously content for backend developers, frontend developers, sysadmins or accessibility experts, but also for what we call site builders (They are people carefully picking and assembling modules that fulfill your sites features).
What will I learn in this track?
Spoiler alert, something new! Here is a broad list of topics covered in the track description:
- Accessibility,
- APIs & Third party systems,
- Back End Development (Symfony, GraphQL…),
- Contribution best practices,
- Development (PHP, Javascript…) state of the art,
- DevOps (DDEV, Docker, Kubernetes...),
- Front End Development (React, Vues.js, Angular…),
- Performance,
- Q&A and Automated Testing,
- Scalability,
- Security,
- Modules feedbacks (content layout, multilingual, media management…),
- And the list could go on!
That’s a lot to explore, right? It’s the beauty of it. Our sessions are recorded so don’t worry, if you face a session dilemma, you will have a way to catch up the ones you won’t be able to attend.
Enjoy the great DrupalCon experience!
Contact: Julien Dubois, artusamak, Track Chair Lead Makers & Builders
The year 2021 is special for Drupal because it is Drupal’s 20th Anniversary. In our second year of virtual events, DrupalCon North America and DrupalFest 2021 expanded on the theme #CelebrateDrupal for the entire month of April.
DrupalCon North America 2021 was a major celebration of the community. We’re so grateful for each person and organization that contributed their time, talent, and treasure. DrupalCon North America hosted 2,330 registered participants. This would not have been possible without our generous sponsors and the 85 dedicated contributors who made up the committees and initiative teams. Over 50% of the contributors were new to contributing to DrupalCon. #DrupalThanks
Participants came from 80 countries across 6 continents, which made DrupalCon North America among the most geographically diverse DrupalCons on record. Most attendees came from the US, followed by Canada, UK, India, Germany, and Brazil.
In addition to global diversity, approximately 40% of all registrants self-identified with an underrepresented community.
The virtual conference allowed us to continue an expanded scholarship program. We awarded more than 150 scholarships with the support of 29 local Drupal associations around the world, Drupal Diversity & Inclusion, SheCodeAfrica, WomenTech Network, and Kennesaw State University. The scholarship mentorship program which paired recipients with seasoned Drupal community members received positive feedback. There is tremendous value in mentorship for new attendees and this is something we will continue to build on for future events.
DrupalCon North America was designed with flexibility in mind. Each day was structured with four hours of live content including sessions, round-table discussions, social, and networking events, followed by four hours of mentored contribution. On Tuesday, 13 April - Friday, 16 April, each day focused on a specific Drupal initiative. To accelerate rapid Drupal development, mentored contribution opportunities were extended to each day of the conference.
DrupalCon North America’s Contribution Opportunities yielded fantastic results for the Drupal project. There were seven contribution groups including groups for first-time contributors and mentors and groups that focused on contributing to the same Drupal initiatives that were the focus of DrupalCon North America.
Each day of initiative-related content began with an Initiative Keynote. Key members of the Initiative took us all on a journey through the goals of that initiative, and how it will help create a better product for us all to build future digital experiences. After those sessions, all the keynote speakers were available for discussion with participants.
Watch these brief video recaps of the DrupalCon North America Initiatives.
Additionally, the DrupalCon North America program contained content that helped participants of all backgrounds and skillsets to learn in detail how the initiative works, how it will enable them to build more exciting experiences, how to sell those experiences more effectively, and how they can participate in contributing to the initiative’s success.
- 143 informative sessions
- 206 speakers, 40% of whom identified with one or more historically underrepresented groups
- 150 scholarships awarded
In addition to Drupal initiative-related content and contribution, DrupalCon also hosted an impressive slate of Main Stage speakers.
DrupalCon North America was proudly supported by 51 sponsoring organizations and 17 individual sponsors. Most sponsors received virtual “booths” in the Expo Hall where attendees viewed lightning talks, demos and had group or individual interactions. Module sponsors were able to gain an audience by sponsoring popular DrupalCon elements such as the Hallway Track, Women in Drupal Workshop, and Drupal Trivia.
DrupalCon North America was a wonderful celebration of 20 years of Drupal and the Drupal Community. If you did not have the opportunity to participate in DrupalCon North America, session videos will be available to the public at the end of May on the Drupal Association YouTube channel. Join the Drupal Community again for DrupalCon Europe. The virtual DrupalCon Europe conference will take place online, from 4-7 October 2021, in a CET Timezone.
Open Collaborative Connections - Join us to experience the open web with a collaborative culture and a connection to DrupalCamps across Europe
There is no DrupalCon without an awesome program, and our program team is working on various activities to make this happen.
First of all - what are we going to learn about this year?
Last year, we had five areas in which our program was centered around, and we decided that we would like to continue with them again this year.
That said, the main topics for this years’ edition of DrupalCon Europe will be:
- Agency & Business
Attendees looking for actionable advice, ideas and challenges from business owners, operators, executives and project managers on how to manage their business and projects successfully. - Clients & Industry Experiences
Digital managers and executive decision-makers using Drupal or considering Drupal as their next digital experience management platform. Agency leaders, product owners and tech leads would also find the showcases insightful. - Makers & Builders
This track is for everyone interested in Drupal development, including all disciplines and all levels of experience. This track is for both technical profiles, and also anyone interested in how Drupal works from the inside. - Open Web & Community
This track is for everyone in the Drupal and Open Web community interested in the web being an inclusive, diverse, open and healthy place. - Users & Editors
If you are using Drupal extensively to reach your organizations' digital goals or to create content regularly, or if you are creating the editorial experience for a project, this track is for you.
We are aiming to give you high-quality sessions from seasoned speakers, where you can learn and discover new things. We are also adjusting the schedule, so as an attendee, you can make the most out of your DrupalCon experience, without the feeling of being overloaded.
Then - who is going to select the sessions?
The program team leads (Rouven Volk, Dan Lemon and Zsófi Major) have already started weekly meetings to figure out the details, and they are working on putting together a great program team for each track. Once complete, the team will start building the program and we will publish our call for papers.
And finally - how can you get involved?
There are many ways to help out around DrupalCon. Since we are currently forming our program team, we are looking for motivated volunteers who would be interested in joining a track and helping us find the best sessions of the season.
Do you have good contacts in one of the audience groups we have mentioned above? Are you interested in helping promote the program or selecting the right sessions for one of these tracks? The track team is committed to providing a diverse and inclusive program, which is why we welcome help, especially from underrepresented groups.
Your help as a track chair can be a very rewarding experience and will shape the program for the next DrupalCon.
Please complete our track chair form if you are interested in helping with the DrupalCon Europe 2021 program team!
Furthermore, please reach out to the organizer team, if you would like to participate in DrupalCon Europe 2021 in any other way, we have all kinds of opportunities for you!
Please take a look at our volunteer survey and submit your name - link: https://kuonicongress.eventsair.com/drupal21/volunteering-opportunities/Site/Register
And if you are the type of person who likes to share their knowledge with the world - polish your best DrupalCon talk material, and submit your session proposal today!
In the upcoming days, we will post further updates about our program.
The DrupalCon Europe 2021 Program Team
This year, the experience at DrupalCon Europe will be the most comprehensive ever. What does that mean?
- One major Drupal community event for all - DrupalCon Europe 2021 will be one big event that brings together the European Community (and beyond) by hosting regional camps as part of the main event. A single DrupalCon ticket will give you access to all DrupalCamps.
- Camp experiences customized - Different camps at DrupalCon Europe will craft their own experiences, host their own sessions, interviews or case studies.
We all want to make the most out of Drupal’s anniversary at DrupalCon, in spite of global lockdown. In fact, there are numerous opportunities and benefits of doing a DrupalCon in such a format:
- 1 ticket, multiple experiences
- Experience your local event and DrupalCon
- Meet more new people going to camps
- Catch up with people that go to DrupalCon
- Less screen time: 1 event, shorter days, different format, more fun
We've been in discussion with various DrupalCamps to make sure the camp experience will be top notch. The following camps and/or local associations are already involved and are currently discussing their participation at DrupalCon Europe:
In order for this ambitious joint project to succeed, and for DrupalCon to unite experts from around the world on ever-exciting digital experiences, we need all of your help!
Whether you are a member of a local association or an event organizer, a member of a partner company, or a contributor, you can help in many ways:
We hope to see you virtually soon!
DrupalCon Europe 2021 Advisory Committee with Kuoni Congress
Last week, Drupalists around the world gathered virtually for DrupalCon North America 2021.
In good tradition, I delivered my State of Drupal keynote. You can watch the video of my keynote, download my slides (244 MB), or read the brief summary below.
I gave a Drupal 9 and Drupal 10 update, talked about going back to our site builder roots, and discussed the need to improve Drupal's contributor experience.
Drupal 9 update
People are adopting Drupal 9 at a record pace. We've gone from 0 to 60,000 websites in only one month. In contrast, it took us seven months to reach the same milestone with Drupal 7, and three months for Drupal 8.
With Drupal 8, after about 1.5 years, only a third of the top 50 Drupal modules were ready for Drupal 8. Now, only 10 months after the release of Drupal 9, a whopping 90% of top 50 modules are Drupal 9 ready.
Drupal 10 update
Next, I spoke about the five big initiatives for Drupal 10, which are making progress:
- Decoupled menus
- Easy out of the box
- Automated updates
- Drupal 10 readiness
- New front-end theme initiative
I then covered some key dates for Drupal 9 and 10:
Improving the site builder experience with a project browser
When I ask people why they fell in love with Drupal, most often they talk about feeling empowered to build ambitious websites with little or no code. In fact, the journey of many Drupalists started with Drupal's low-code approach to site building. It's how they got involved with Drupal.
This leads me to believe that we need to focus more on the site builder persona. With that in mind, I proposed a new Project Browser initiative. One of the first things site builders do when they start with Drupal is install a module. A Project Browser makes it easier to find and install modules.
If you're interested in helping, check out the Project Browser initiative and join the Project Browser Slack channel.
Modernizing Drupal.org's collaboration tools with GitLab
Drupal has one of the largest and most robust development communities. And Drupal.org's collaboration tools have been key to that success.
What you might not know is that we've built these tools ourselves over the past 15+ years. While that made sense 10 years ago, it no longer does today.
Today, most Open Source communities have standardized on tools like GitHub and GitLab. In fact, contributors expect to use GitHub or GitLab when contributing to Open Source. Everything else requires too much learning.
For example, here is a quick video that shows of how easy it is to contribute to Symfony using GitHub:
Next, I showed how people contribute to Drupal. As you can see in the video below, the process takes much longer and the steps are not as clear cut.
(This is an abridged version of the full experience; you can also watch the full video.)
To improve Drupal's contributor experience, the Drupal Association is modernizing our collaboration tools with GitLab. So far, this has resulted in some great new features. However, more work is required to give new Drupalists an easier path to start contributing.
Please reach out to Heather Rocker, the Executive Director at Drupal Association, if you want to help support our GitLab work. We are looking for ways to expand the Drupal Association's engineering team so we can accelerate this work.
Thank you
I'd like to wrap up with a thank you to the people and organizations who have contributed since we released Drupal 9 last June. It's been pretty amazing to see the momentum!
The Decoupled Menus Initiative is hosting a contribution hackathon where you can help us test both the response format of the proposed menu API, and the new General project type on Drupal.org for facilitating development of JavaScript libraries within the Drupal ecosystem.
What:
Join a team and contribute to one of the existing projects, or start your own and show off your ideas.
The goal of the hackathon is to create (or improve existing) projects on Drupal.org that leverage the proposed menu API in order to test the API itself and the new infrastructure for developing JavaScript libraries on Drupal.org.
There are a couple of existing projects, with well-defined issues, that would be a great place to jump in and help out.
Or you can start your own. This is your chance to share your experience from past projects, or get creative and dream up new ways of navigating a menu.
We’ve set up a demo API endpoint that you can use to test a menu provided by Drupal. Check it out here, and here.
Some inspiration to get the creative ideas flowing:
-
Have a favorite JavaScript library that's not already represented (Vue, Angular, Ember, Svelte, etc.)? Create a project that demonstrates how to consume a Drupal menu using that library.
-
What is the digital signage representation of a menu?
-
Help add tests to one of the existing components.
-
What would it look like to navigate a Drupal menu via voice commands like Alexa?
-
Can you play Doom via a Drupal menu?
If you want to start a team, or have ideas but aren't sure where to go next come find one of us and we'll help get you pointed in the right direction.
Who:
Anyone and everyone is welcome. Whether this is your first time, or you're an experienced contributor, we'll have mentors who can help answer your questions and guide you along the way. And whether you want to write code, create docs, design interactive UIs, or anything else, we'll do our best to put your unique skills to work.
Have an idea for a project and want to find others to collaborate with? Let us know and we can help create the space, and link you up with potential collaborators.
When:
Tuesday, 13 April is Decoupled Menus Day at DrupalCon. The morning will consist of a keynote and related sessions. And in the afternoon we’ll kick off the contribution hackathon. This is when we'll form teams, group newcomers with mentors, and generally provide the most hands-on guidance.
On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we'll schedule a time to hang out, answer questions, and help in any way we can. Expect this to be maybe about an hour each day. Though, many of us are in Slack (#decoupled-menus-initiative) and can be reached there asynchronously.
Throughout the rest of the week, you and your team are free to self-organize and work on your projects whenever it works for you.
Where:
The primary gathering space for the hackathon will be Open Social and Zoom.
We'll have a main Zoom call set-up where you can go for questions and guidance at any time. As well as individual Zoom calls for focused collaboration on specific topics. Think of these like how groups are often organized by table in a traditional code sprint.
The Open Social site contains a list of scheduled events and links to relevant Zoom rooms.
You find us in the #decoupled-menus-initiative on Slack.
All the links:
This year’s DrupalCon North America 2021 keynotes highlight the power of the global Drupal community to make a difference in some of the most crucial issues of our time and the future of digital experiences. Register today.
The Drupal Association is planning a blockbuster event for DrupalCon North America, the most widely attended Drupal event, 12-16 April from 11:00 - 15:00 EDT daily. This year’s all-virtual event brings together Drupal experts, enthusiasts, end users, and the broader open source software community to connect, collaborate, and contribute to advancing Drupal - the world’s leading open source digital experience platform (DXP).
Heather Rocker, executive director of the Drupal Association states, “Our global community of developers, marketers, and business leaders come to DrupalCon to connect, learn about the experiences of their peers, and share their own expertise. DrupalCon participants also benefit from the opportunity to learn from our keynote and featured speakers. This year, those topics include the role of open source in schools to close the digital divide, the importance of allyship in developing diversity and inclusion, building successful mentorship for people of color in tech, and understanding digital rights as human rights.”
Featured keynotes will highlight inclusion, closing the digital divide, and the Drupal platform’s future.
Sheree Atcheson, Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Leader
Allyship—the key to unlocking the power of diversity
Monday, 12 April 12:10-12:40 EDT
Atcheson, an industry-leading voice on diversity and inclusion in tech, will talk about the importance of intersectional allyship in creating inclusive environments and technology. She’ll offer tips on how everyone in any role can actively consider, champion, and advocate for others in their work and be more inclusive in their day-to-day lives.
Atcheson has been named one of the UK’s Most Influential Women in Tech and has received multiple international awards for her work to advance diversity and inclusion in the tech industry.
Dries Buytaert, Founder, Drupal
Driesnote
Wednesday, 14 April 12:30-13:50 EDT
A much-anticipated highlight of DrupalCon, Buytaert, Drupal’s founder, will deliver his annual talk celebrating Drupal successes over the past year, outlining the state of the Drupal project now, and offering his thoughts on what’s next.
Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for Drupal, an open source platform used around the world to build websites and digital experiences, as well as co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, a venture-backed technology company.
Stuart Keroff, Social Studies and Technology Teacher, Aspen Academy
School needs open source, now more than ever
Friday, 16 April 14:20-14:50 EDT
Technology educator Stuart Keroff, founder of the first two middle school Linux clubs in Minnesota, has spent the last 10 years guiding middle school students to use open source as a tool to close the digital divide in education. He and his students will share how they used open source software to recycle computers for their fellow students during COVID-19 school closures.
To date, he and his students have provided over 600 Linux computers, helping students learn while also saving money for their schools.
New this year - participants can attend keynote sessions dedicated to strategic Drupal Initiatives:
Decoupled Menus
Tuesday, 13 April
This initiative is focused on developing an easy-to-integrate solution for JavaScript front ends to consume configurable menus managed in Drupal—a key enhancement for developers. This is the first step in standardizing best practices for Decoupled Drupal.
Easy Out of the Box
Wednesday, 14 April
This initiative is designed to refine improvements introduced in the Drupal 9 release and enable new features that can make Drupal even easier to use.
Automated Updates
Thursday 15 April
This initiative is all about implementing a secure system for automatically deploying safe, secure updates for Drupal sites—a crucial enhancement for Drupal service providers and end users.
Drupal 10 Readiness
Friday, 16 April
This initiative is our effort to update and enhance the platform to enable a smooth, secure transition to Drupal 10, which launches in 2022.
Invest in your career, register today
The global pandemic has increased pressures around work-life integration, so DrupalCon 2021 is built with flexibility in mind. Each day is streamlined with 4 hours of live content, and the virtual setting allows easy participation in the featured keynotes, small group discussions, and interactive skill-building sessions most relevant to you.
Tickets are $245 per attendee and include access to all DrupalCon events, premiere access to the session recordings, as well as admission into the industry summits of your choice (higher education, healthcare, nonprofit, and government) held throughout April. Registration details, as well as additional speaker and session information, are available at https://events.drupal.org/northamerica2021
DrupalCon is brought to you by the Drupal Association in collaboration with a team of dedicated contributors and sponsors, including Diamond Sponsors Acquia, Pantheon, and Platform.sh.
Wednesday at DrupalCon will feature content focussed on the Easy Out of the Box strategic initiative, as well as all the usual great things we have lined up for DrupalCon.
Rachel Lawson caught up with some of the Initiative Team to find out what they had to tell us.
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Cristina Chumillas, Emilie Nouveau, AmyJune Hineline, Sascha Eggenberger, and Tim Plunkett will guide us on a journey about Easy Out of the Box, starting with a Keynote introducing the initiative, suggested sessions to attend to increase your knowledge related to the initiative, as well support to contribute to the initiative following the live sessions at DrupalCon.
We cannot think of a better way of wrapping up a whole week at DrupalCon than a focused look at the next major release of Drupal, version 10, and how we will get there.
Rachel Lawson caught up with some of the Initiative Team to find out what they had to tell us.
[embedded content]
Gábor Hojtsy, Chris Darke (ChrisDarke), Ofer Shaal (shaal), and Lauri Eskola (lauriii) will guide us on a journey about Drupal 10 Readiness, starting with a Keynote introducing the initiative, suggested sessions to attend to increase your knowledge related to the initiative, as well support to contribute to the initiative following the live sessions at DrupalCon.
Update: The Automated Updates Initiative day has moved to Thursday, April 15th
Following our previous post about new contribution structures at DrupalCon and the video about Decoupled Menus for Tuesday, we can now announce that on Thursday, April 15, we will focus on the Automated Updates initiative.
Rachel Lawson caught up with the Initiative Team to find out what they had to tell us.
[embedded content]
David Strauss (David Strauss), Ted Bowman (tedbow), Matthew Radcliffe (mradcliffe), and Tim Hestenes Lehnen (hestenet) will guide us on an Automated Updates adventure, starting with a Keynote introducing the initiative, suggested sessions to attend to increase your knowledge related to the initiative, as well support to contribute to the initiative following the live sessions at DrupalCon.
Eager to learn more? Join us on Drupal Slack in the #autoupdates channel.
DrupalCon North America 2021 has a new format, as described in our previous post, that enables you to learn about a specific strategic initiative or participate in more general conference programming. On Tuesday, April 13, we will focus on Decoupled Menus. Rachel Lawson caught up with the Initiative Team to find out more…
[embedded content]
Théodore Biadala (nod_), Gabe Sullice (gabesullice), Baddý Breidert (baddysonja), and Tara King (sparklingrobots) will be leading us in a Decoupled Menus contribution adventure, including:
- a Keynote introducing the initiative,
- suggested sessions to attend to increase your knowledge related to the initiative,
- support to contribute to the initiative following the live sessions at DrupalCon.
The Decoupled Menus team has some great videos and we have worked with the team running drupal.tv to create a special playlist with content curated to help prepare you to get the most out of your access to the initiative leads at DrupalCon. You are highly encouraged to watch the videos prior to the Decoupled Menu Keynote on April 13.
Keep checking the Decoupled Menus playlist on drupal.tv for more content over the next few weeks.
Learn about DrupalCon focus areas and ways you can contribute at the all-virtual event.
Advance the Drupal project and make Drupal 10 a success
DrupalCon North America will incorporate Drupal's strategic goals and contribution opportunities into the main event programming. As part of your DrupalCon experience, you will have the ability to deep dive into a specific initiative or participate in more general conference programming.
As we look forward to the launch of Drupal 10 in 2022, we’re supporting opportunities for all DrupalCon participants—of all levels of experience—to contribute to this next phase of the platform.
Here’s what to expect:
Each day of DrupalCon will begin with a keynote presentation focused on a strategic initiative related to Drupal 10. You’ll learn about each initiative’s goals and see how it will help all of us create even better, more engaging digital experiences.Throughout each day, you’ll then have the chance to join sessions that will help participants of all professional backgrounds and skill sets learn:
- How the initiative works
- How it will enable more exciting digital experiences
- How to sell those experiences to clients
- How Drupal community members can contribute to the initiative’s success
If you’re already working on a contribution team, you’ll have the chance to continue your work at DrupalCon and share your experiences and lessons learned with the wider Drupal community via the hashtag #DrupalContribution.</span>
On January 15, 2021, Drupal celebrated its 20th birthday - a major accomplishment for an open source project! As we look to the future, how can we propel Drupal forward to be the top digital experience platform?
Vision. Contribution. Innovation.
With Drupal 10 on the horizon for summer of 2022, the Drupal Association is helping to rally the community around Drupal’s key strategic initiatives, critical to meeting this milestone. We are collaborating with the Core Mentoring Coordinators, the Core Initiative Coordinators, and the DrupalCon Program Committee to evolve the contribution experience at DrupalCon to support key initiatives, illustrate how to get involved, and, ultimately, accelerate project innovation.
DrupalCon North America will incorporate Drupal's strategic goals and contribution opportunities into the main event programming. As part of your DrupalCon experience, you will have the ability to deep dive into a specific initiative or participate in more general conference programming.
Each day, we focus
Each day, in addition to the traditional DrupalCon content, we will have a focus on one of the Drupal Project’s Strategic Initiatives and will begin with an Initiative Keynote. Key members of the Initiative will take us all on a journey through the goals of that initiative, and how it will help create a better product for us all to build future digital experiences. Co-speakers will join the keynote to place the initiative in the wider context of the value this feature brings to Drupal. This content will not just be for developers, but for everyone who has a stake in the strategic future of Drupal.
At the conclusion of the session, all the keynote speakers will be available for discussion with attendees.
Throughout the day, the program will contain select, highlighted content that helps participants of all backgrounds and skill sets to learn in detail how the initiative works, how it will enable them to build more exciting experiences, how to sell those experiences more effectively, and how they can participate in contributing to the initiative’s success.
Each day, we contribute
In the latter part of the day, participants will have the option to engage in interactive and supported contribution activities. Contribution opportunities will be available for both technical and non-technical audiences at all experience levels.
The day’s initiative keynote team will be available to coordinate contributions, alongside our mentoring team. On other days, we will all give the initiative team the space to build upon the successes coming out of their day in the spotlight.
Contribution is not limited to the focused initiatives. There will be space and opportunity for individuals who already have their own contribution teams and goals. You’re encouraged to work on them at DrupalCon and share your stories via #DrupalContributions for us to share with the wider community.
The transformation of contribution opportunities at DrupalCon will only make an impact with your support. Accelerate the project by contributing at DrupalCon and elevate the future of Drupal.
We hope you'll join us! Register for DrupalCon today.
More information about the specific schedule, content, and areas of focus for contribution will be coming soon.
Editor's note: DrupalCon contribution activities will be available for free for non-ticket-holders as always.
About DrupalCon North America 2021
At DrupalCon North America 2021, the people who create the digital experiences the world relies on every day—developers, marketers, agency leaders, and business decision makers—come together to learn about the latest Drupal developments and contribute to the future of the platform.
This year’s all-virtual event, April 12-16, is designed to fit into your schedule, so you can still participate in the conference while balancing work and life at home. Live sessions will be held across five days, Monday - Friday from 11:00AM - 3:00PM Eastern, with these contribution activities in the latter part of the day
In events ranging from keynote presentations to hands-on skill-building workshops, you’ll:
- Learn Drupal best practices, new skills, and innovative strategies you can use in your own projects.
- Connect with others in the Drupal community, growing your network and collaborating on ways to make the platform even better.
- Build your career or business, with opportunities to showcase your own work and meet potential employers, clients, talent, and partners.
Whether you attend DrupalCon to hear the vision from founder Dries Buytaert, to learn from mainstage speakers about open source and beyond, to develop your own talent or recruit talent of others, or to build relationships with new contributors, collaborators, and friends - there is a place for you at DrupalCon.
Don’t miss your last chance to register for DrupalCon at the early bird rate
Tomorrow, February 3, is the final opportunity to register for DrupalCon North America 2021 at the discounted rate.
Whether you’re new to Drupal or have been attending DrupalCon for years, you won’t want to miss this year’s all-virtual event. In keynote presentations, hands-on workshops, breakout discussion groups, and interactive sessions, you’ll connect with a global community of developers, marketers, and leaders — people who want to learn about what you’re doing with Drupal and have their own expertise to share.
Dive deeper into issues related to your industry and share insights with peers in your field at a DrupalCon summit. Participation in industry summits are included this year with your DrupalCon ticket. Dates are spread throughout the month of April so you don't have to miss a thing.
Learn more about the call for content and submit today! The session submission deadline is Sunday, February 14 at 11:59 pm EST (UTC -5). Send questions about DrupalCon (session submission process, logistics, etc.) to the DrupalCon team. Get tips and request proposal feedback anytime in the #session-help Slack channel.
A note from our fabulous 2020 program committee:
“Imposter syndrome” — something we seem to be hearing about more often. Not familiar with the term? Gill Corkindale defines imposter syndrome beautifully in Harvard Business Review:
Imposter syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. ‘Imposters’ suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence. High achieving, highly successful people often suffer, so imposter syndrome doesn’t equate with low self-esteem or a lack of self-confidence. In fact, some researchers have linked it with perfectionism, especially in women and among academics.
In 1978 clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes came up with the term “imposter phenomenon” after recognizing a pattern of feelings in graduate students. Through this research they created the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (CIPS), which helps individuals evaluate their level of imposterness.
Many times, when a person considers presenting in front of an audience, imposter syndrome comes, too. We’ve chatted as a committee and have come up with a few thoughts to share.
Why is this relevant to you?
Do any of the following sound like something you might say?
- Everyone else around me knows so much more than I do
- I’m not sure why [potential employer] would hire me when [someone else] is available
- If I ask or talk about this, everyone will realize that I don’t know as much as they think I do
- [Another Drupaler] is far more qualified than me to teach this subject
- I should offer a discount for this job because I’m not as good at this as [insert someone else’s name here]
Chances are pretty high that, if you are reading this post at all, you are party to this pattern. Why do we feel confident making this assumption? Because you are curious enough to submit that you are paying attention to the resources, but you feel that you need to prepare yourself with more information before doing so. The very fact that you are interested in submitting content means that you have something valuable to share. And we want you to submit, as we want and need your voice.
The worst that can happen: your proposal is not accepted. Even then, however, you and your unique ideas are now top of mind for a collection of Drupalers, and our own journeys are anecdotal evidence of this directly translating into impact, personal growth and future opportunities.
And consider this: you probably think of the session selection team as experts in the field because someone thought we should be part of this team and invited us to join, right? Well, how is it that we are capable of writing this post if we are such hotshots? Frankly, because we have these thoughts every day. We are not hotshots, but simply people who took the scary step to put ourselves out there even though we doubted ourselves.
How does imposter syndrome come into play at DrupalCon?
It is common for Drupalers to think that whatever they may have to share is status quo and everyone knows it, but if you start asking around, everyone is always looking for better solutions. It is highly unlikely that two people will approach similar challenges exactly the same way, and your “basic” talk idea might be exactly what dozens or hundreds of people need in order to level-up their Drupal skills.
True story from one of our session team members: in 2010 Rain, then fairly new to Drupal, submitted “Views Demystified” because the very basic chapter on Views from Angie Byron (webchick) and Addison Berry (add1sun)’s book, Using Drupal, saved her hundreds of hours building Drupal sites. Rain figured it wouldn’t be accepted or attended because of course everyone else knew Views, but she submitted anyway.
This very simple beginner talk not only landed hundreds of attendees at the Con and was directly requested for many camps and meetups for years following, but it also had a lasting impact on many. To date, after nearly a decade, Rain continues to encounter people who tell her this talk changed their Drupal-lives.
When preparing your submission, think about what would be useful if you were in the audience of a potential session. If it’s useful to you, then someone else wants to learn about it too. Not every session has to be something new or cutting-edge; sometimes the most obvious topics are the ones people need most!
Your idea, no matter how basic it seems, might be that key talk for future generations of Drupalers.
Overcoming imposter syndrome in the moment
Imposter syndrome can also make presenting feel scary, especially when things don’t quite go as planned.
Shaky Wi-Fi connection from an unanticipated windstorm? Dog decides to create a symphony with a siren? Mishaps happen. It’s helpful to acknowledge that things go wrong—it’s normal! You are supportive and have patience when mishaps happen to others, so show yourself patience. At DrupalCon in particular, remember that much of the audience have been speakers themselves. They understand and are rooting for you!
Don’t let it bother you if an audience member leaves or sign-off, there could be any reason for this. Perhaps they have an emergency to tend to, someone scheduled a meeting that overlaps with part of your presentation, or they realized the content wasn’t quite what they were looking for and they’d like to make another session instead. This is not a reflection of you, or your speaking. Focus on the people who are there and engaged.
If it all goes awry, be honest! If you’re nervous, say so. If you need help, ask for it. A session host will be there to support you and can help stimulate conversation with the participants while you adjust your slides or microphone. Team up with a friend and co-present. This tends to take some pressure off each person, and provides at least one guaranteed familiar face.
You’ve got this
If you’re feeling a dose of imposter syndrome, perhaps that means you’re surrounding yourself with people who motivate and challenge you. That’s admirable!
Some powerful advice from Megan Dalla-Camina’s article in Psychology Today:
At the end of the day, remember this: You are here for a reason. In this job, your business, your life, you are worthy. You are better than you think you are. You are smarter than you think you are. You know more than you give yourself credit for. Remember that. And remind yourself as often as you need to.
Remember, you’ve got this!
Contributed by Esther Lee and Rain Breaw Michaels.
Register now to save $50USD
DrupalCon is the flagship Drupal event of the year designed to bring people together to share thought leadership around open source and ambitious digital experiences, provide professional development opportunities, and invigorate Drupal project momentum through education and contribution.
Attend DrupalCon to:
- Learn the latest technology
- Grow your Drupal skills
- Deliver more value to your organization and clients
- Build a stronger network
- Share your knowledge with others
- Contribute to the Drupal project
Early registration ends February 3 at 11:59 PM ET.
Want to give back to the Drupal Community? Here’s your chance. Drupal Global Contribution Weekend, January 29-31, is a virtual worldwide event everyone can participate in from anywhere in the world.
DrupalCon North America 2021 is officially pivoting to a virtual event for the safety of our community. We will gather together online April 12 - 16, 2021. Join us to build Drupal, make connections, and foster friendships through DrupalCon!
We are delighted to have you join us for the first ever Virtual edition of DrupalCon Europe 2020.
Let's kick off!
Today, Tuesday, 8 December 2020, the first parallel sessions, tracks, BoFs and workshops will launch DrupalCon Europe 2020 Virtual Meeting at 9:15 CET.
Drupal initiative leads keynote from 16:30 to 18:00 CET
Drupal’s initiatives form powerful teams that make great things happen. Core initiatives self-organize to get new improvements to the base system while community initiatives coordinate event organization, spread diversity best practices, collaborate on promotional materials, and so on.
Speakers: Putra Bonaccorsi, Ted Bowman, Len Swaneveld, Neil Drumm, Ryan Aslett, Baddy Sonja Breidert, Gábor Hojtsy.
We cheerfully invite you all at 18:15 CET to join the Official Opening Ceremony Don't miss this convivial moment: The Flamenco Session, known by most of you as a Spanish typical dance. You will be able to see a demonstration from the professional dancer Marta G. Blanco and as well learn some of its basic moves.
Visit our Sponsors in the Virtual exhibition and request live meetings to video-chat with them and learn about what they offer. We hope you enjoy your first day with us!
With kind regards,
DrupalCon Europe 2020 Congress Secretariat
Kuoni Congress
If Drupal in Europe is important to you, we need your help! Read on to see how.
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About Drupal Sun
Drupal Sun is an Evolving Web project. It allows you to:
- Do full-text search on all the articles in Drupal Planet (thanks to Apache Solr)
- Facet based on tags, author, or feed
- Flip through articles quickly (with j/k or arrow keys) to find what you're interested in
- View the entire article text inline, or in the context of the site where it was created
See the blog post at Evolving Web
