A Guide to Drupal 8 at DrupalCon Austin

DrupalCon Austin is rapidly approaching and the big question on my mind is: What Drupal 8 sessions do I need to put on my radar? To figure that out, I've mined the schedule for Drupal 8 related talks and events and organized them a bit to help me – and hopefully you – find the Drupal 8 sessions not to be missed.

Information Overload

The bottom line? There is a LOT of Drupal 8 content at DrupalCon Austin, as one would expect. So, what is my strategy for gleaning as much Drupal 8 information as possible for use in my work as a trainer? There are two facts that generally guide my strategy at DrupalCon:

1. Sessions are recorded and archived on the Drupal Association's YouTube channel.
2. BoFs are usually not recorded.

So how does this help me decide what to do with my time? I check the BoF whiteboard early and often and if there's a BoF and a session at the same time that are equally interesting to me, I chose the BoF and make a note to watch the session recording later.

Birds of a Feather...Flock Together

There are a lot of people who know something about Drupal 8 who want to share and discuss what they know. Birds of a Feather sessions or "BoFs" could be the place to find others who want to talk about and learn about specific topics in Drupal 8 that don't have a session. Many times, subject-matter experts whose session didn't get accepted into the session schedule at DrupalCon will organize a BoF so that they have the opportunity to share what they know and others have the opportunity to learn and discuss the topic. BoFs are usually small groups more prone to discussion than formal sessions. They are a great way to meet new people and learn exciting new things in the Drupal and web development world.

Learn What You Don't Know Through Sessions

At the same time, sessions can be a great way to learn about essential topics and subject matter that you might not otherwise hear about until you are well into banging your head up against a wall trying to solve a problem. With so many changes in Drupal 8, a big worry plaguing many is "I don't know what I don't know." DrupalCon is a great place to learn what you don't know and get a grip on exactly what knowledge you need to obtain to really kick ass with Drupal 8.

Drupal 8 for Practically Everyone At DrupalCon Austin

Regardless of your role or expertise, I think attending these two sessions presented by Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, should give us a clearer idea of the state of Drupal 8 and help answer any persistent questions floating around the community.

• Keynote: Dries Buytaert
• Core Conversation: Q&A with Dries

Find Role-Based Drupal 8 Content at DrupalCon Austin

Ready to dive into specific topics in Drupal 8? I've gleaned the schedule for sessions related to Drupal 8 and organized them by role and experience level. Attending sessions that are a little bit above your current experience level will help you better answer that question, "How do I find out what I don't know I don't know?" If you already know that you need to know about Dependency Injection and you already know even just enough to effectively search for information about how it applies in Drupal 8, then you might choose another session to attend but maybe watch the recording later as a refresher. But if you see a session title in a track that describes your role and you have no idea what it's about, then maybe that's the session you should attend, because maybe this is something that you didn't know you needed to know! Make sense?

So with that said, don't miss these learning opportunities available in DrupalCon Austin sessions!

Site Building in Drupal 8

These sessions target the site builders of Drupal 8 and covers topics such as multilingual, authoring experience, and the configuration system.

• Site Builders: Beginner
  • Future-Proof Your Drupal 7 Site
  • Creating a Blog in Drupal 8 & Configuration API
  • Spark: Authoring Experience++ In Drupal 7, 8, and Beyond
• Site Builders: Intermediate
  • Drupal 8 Core is More Multilingual Than Drupal 7 with All of Contrib
  • Introducing the Drupal 8 Configuration System
• Site Builders: Advanced
  • Content Staging in Drupal 8

Theming and Frontend Development

These sessions aim to get you well on your way to understanding the new templating system, Twig, to learning about fancy-pants decoupling capabilities of Drupal 8 using RESTful Web Services and Javascript.

• Themers: Intermediate
  • Drupal 8 Theme System: hook_theme() to Twig Template
  • Twig: Friendly Curl Braces Invade Your Templates!
  • Twig Playground
• Frontend Developers: Intermediate
  • Build a Drupal-Free Theme with 8's REST API and Javascript
  • Modernizr in Core. This is the Start of Something Beautiful
• General Audience (novice themers and front end developers, project managers)

  Disclaimer: This is our Drupalize.Me workshop! I'm personally excited about our Drupalize.Me workshop on component based web design which will include some hands-on activities on implementing components in Drupal 8 Twig templates.

  • Breaking Down Component Based Web Design

Coders and Module Developers

Comfortable with PHP? Maybe have a thing or two (or ten) to learn about object-oriented PHP? Symfony2 Components? Then, fear not! These sessions are here to help you get up to speed.

• Module Developers: Beginner
  • Master the New Core of Drupal 8 Now: With Symfony and Silex
• Module Developers: Getting Started with Drupal 8
  • Drupal 8 in a Nutshell
• Module Developers: Drupal 8 API Topics
  • Drupal 8 Entity API (Intermediate)
  • Fun with Forms in Drupal 8 (Intermediate)
  • 30 Drupal API Functions You Should Already Know (Advanced)
  • Understanding the Drupal 8 Plugin System (Advanced)
• Module Developers: Symfony by Sensiolabs
  • Dependency Injection
  • Validation with Symfony2 from a Drupal Perspective
  • Drupal, Meet Assetic
  • Routing: From Symfony via CMF to Drupal
  • Symfony Components in the Wild Drupal Jungle
• Helpful Tools & Techniques for D8 Module Developers
  • Functional PHP
  • Config Commands, A Boris Shell, Views Support, and Other New Features in Drush

Community Leaders

• Core Conversations

  Core Conversations provide a venue to learn and discuss big picture topics in Drupal core and community development. I tried to pick the ones that really focused on Drupal 8 and getting involved with core contribution for this post. They combine presentation with discussion and even though they are recorded, if you want to participate in the discussion, plan to priortize the core conversations that interest you. If you are or want to be involved in Drupal development, then these sessions are for you, the present and future community leaders!

  • Drupal's Destiny?
  • Double Header: File Entity and Media Modules & Let's Fix File and Media Handling Once and For All
  • Status of Migrate in 8
  • People Want to Help. They Dont Know What to Do! Let's Make D.O Issue Picking Easier
  • The Road to 8.1
  • Markup Ain't Easy Or: How I Learned to Love an Object-Oriented RenderAPI
  • Drupal By Design
  • Building a Full Site in Drupal 8 Alpha
  • The Future of Drupal.org Community Tools
• Free Community Workshops and Sprints

  What happens after the conference ends? Learn how to connect, get involved, learn, and give back with these free and open-to-everyone workshops and sprints:

  • Core Mentoring aka Community Tools Workshop
  • Get Involved with Core
  • Contribution Sprints
• Extended Sprints (May 31-June 1 and June 7-8)

  This critical time of sprinting with fellow core contributors will happen on the weekends before and after DrupalCon Austin. For information about dates, times, locations, and more, see node/412138 on g.d.o. Thank you, Gábor, for the info! (Post updated 28-May-2014)

I'm looking forward to gleaning all I can about Drupal 8 at DrupalCon Austin and I hope you are, too! Please do feel free to drop by the Drupalize.Me booth (Booth #402) and say hello. We'd love to talk to you about your plans for learning Drupal 8 and how Drupalize.Me help you with that goal. See you in Austin!