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.

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.

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.

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.

Community Leaders

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!

Comments

Thank you, Gábor for that reminder! I've added this info to the post. Cheers! ~Amber

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