Wish We Were There: Our DrupalCon Amsterdam Picks

Image

We're sad to miss DrupalCon Europe in Amsterdam next week (October 28-31, 2019). But which talks would we attend if we were going? Amber and I combed through the Interactive Program and created a list of what looks intriguing at the next DrupalCon. Will you be there? You might want to check out our picks.

Joe's picks

I’m not going to be at DrupalCon Amsterdam. First time I’ve missed a DrupalCon since 2011! And I’m bummed about missing the chance to catch up with friends, meet new people, and keep up with everything the Drupal community is doing. If, however, I was in Amsterdam, these are some of the sessions that would be on my calendar.

• Panel: Tips for a successful and amazing conference, camp or meetup

  As a frequent volunteer in my local community I’m always curious to hear more about how others are organizing their meetups, and other events. Sessions like this are a great opportunity to get a bunch of new ideas to try at home.

• Communication strategy to build digital experiences that connect

  I recently got to work on a project with Tracey and Jam and learned a ton about how to develop a communications strategy. While I understand the gist of it, I think this session would help me have an even better vocabulary to explain the why.

• Forget YouTube! We take Drupal to the next level with a state-of-the-art enterprise video on demand platform!

  Drupalize.Me’s video delivery is based on a lot of custom code, duct tape, bubble gum, and a little bit of wizardry. I’m always curious to hear about how others are solving some of the same problems and hopefully coming away with some new ideas to implement on our infrastructure.

• BoF 04: But, hey, where do I start in Drupal Community?

  This one is a BoF, and while I’m not new to the Drupal community I do have a lot of thoughts about how, where, and especially why, getting involved is a good idea. I even did a Keynote on this at DrupalCon Vienna. Attending this BoF would be an opportunity to hopefully help others find a path into the community that works for them.

• Security, Drupal 9, and Navigating the Changing Web Landscape

  I love learning about how Drupal is made, and the challenging problems that people much smarter than I are working on solving in order to make it better for all of us.

• What's Next for the Layout Initiative

  The Layouts module and API are a killer new feature of Drupal 8. I’m both personally curious, and somewhat professionally obligated, to understand how they work and how people are using them (so that I can help create training materials).

• Next steps on modernizing the Drupal theme system (Drupal 9 and beyond)

  After helping writing the 50+ theme development tutorials on this site, and having taught an in-person Drupal 8 Theming workshop close to a dozen times I’m very familiar with the pain points of Drupal 8 theming. I'm curious to hear about how we can solve some of them.

• Adoptable Goats Near Me: What I Googled the Year I Became a Developer

  I love hearing people’s, “And then I become a Drupal developer!” stories. They provide good perspective for me as a teacher, and as someone who believes that one of the most important things we can do as a community is find more ways to make sure others can get involved.

• Combining DevOps and Emotional Intelligence

  I’ve known Kevin for a long time, and have watched him help to develop this company and product. Sometimes I choose sessions to go and support my friends, and hear their stories.

• Composer and Drupal: Past, Present and Future

  This is another one where I mostly want to hear about how people are solving problems we all know exist. Partially because I like hearing about complex problems. Partially keeping an eye on where things are going because I know I’ll end up helping update all our Composer content. (Amber's note: I attended this session at BADCamp a couple weeks ago and it was hugely informative! Definitely recommended.)

• Designing the future of the Drupal Admin UI

  I’m mostly curious to see the progress that’s being made on this initiative. I go to this session every time, love what I’m seeing, get inspired to contribute, do so for a couple of weeks, and then fizzle out until next time.

• Judging a book by its cover - how inclusive is your community?, and How to be a good boss, tech lead, or project maintainer: Inclusive Leadership Edition

  As a local community organizer I want to make sure I’m doing what I can to build an inclusive and diverse environment.

Amber's picks

Amber: A big plus one from me on Joe's picks, and here are a few more I would check out if I was there.

• Autosave and Concurrent editing (conflict resolution) in Drupal 8

  Training around content editing can be tricky because each site has a different configuration and internal process for creating, editing, publishing, and archiving content. But there are definitely some universal known problems in editing content in Drupal and “losing changes before saving content” and “concurrent editing conflicts” are two of them. If you are in the frustration stage of this problem and are looking for potential solutions, check out this session which introduces two modules that address these problems.

• Configuration Management Initiative 2.0 updates

  Now that Configuration Management in Drupal 8 has been used in sites for a while now, some limitations and challenges have emerged. In this session, you’ll get an overview of these issues and how the Configuration Management Initiative 2.0 will seek to address them and how you can structure your sites today for minimal disruption in the future. I'll definitely be checking out the recording on this one to make sure we're making the best recommendations possible in our tutorials on Configuration Management.

• Initiative Leads Keynote

  Attend this keynote to get updates from initiative leads and learn how you can get involved with core contribution for these coordinated efforts. I'll be cheering from the internet sidelines for my fellow core contributors!

• (Paid) Training: Drupal + Gatsby

  Our training friend Suzanne Dergacheva is offering a training on Drupal + Gatsby. If I could, I would totally register for this training workshop. Suzanne is a great instructor and the topic is very hot right now, and I think will continue to be into the future.