Drupal 8, Driesnote And A Lot More From Our Recent Visit To DrupalCon, Nashville 2018
“When the bond is strong, relationships lasts long!” said no one in specific because some facts are too true to be cited in words. But why are we talking about this in here and not Drupal? Well, because it is about Drupal; to be precise, our relationship with Drupal!
We realised this quite recently while on the way to our 10th Drupal event, ever since our inception in the year 2012. In these 5 years, we’ve attended 9 Drupal events, sponsored 5 of them and volunteered in 8 of them. Then how could we miss this one in Nashville?! And here we’re, back from the DrupalCon, Nashville 2018, with a bagful of memories and experiences to share. So, if you weren’t there, read on to discover all that was there!
Quick Overview of the Event Timeline
The five-day event, that DrupalCon was, had been traditionally divided into three major sections — Summits, Sessions and Contribution. Business Summit, Sessions & Contribution Day.
- The opening day had summits and training sessions, along with the opening reception.
- Day two had programming summits and sessions planned, along with the much-anticipated session of Dries’ Keynote.
- The third and fourth day was when multiple sessions were held followed by special events in the evening and trivia nights.
- The closing day of the event was all about Drupal contributions, just as it is at any other Drupal event.
But what made this particular event stand out for me, from the previous ones, were the booths of both — Joomla and WordPress. Now that’s how we see the competitors coming together for the sake of saving open source community from their counterparts.
Major Takeaway from the Event
1) Business Summit:
As a regular attendee of Drupal events, we knew the significance of the paid business summits held on the first day of the event. So, we had priorly registered for the same. After attending them, we realised that the core of these summits lied in two major things. One, that Drupal alone was not enough and second, the need to promote that Drupal is not merely a CMS platform for building websites but a wide and highly ‘Ambitious Digital Experience’ in itself.
2) Dries Keynote:
Amidst the commencement of several sessions, the second day at DrupalCon, Nashville 2018most of us waited for that one crucial session; #Driesnote — the keynote by Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal. It revolved around three prime agendas — Drupal 8 update, Growing adoption of Drupal and Fostering the Drupal Community. He confirmed the fact that how Drupal is capable of doing everything digital and called it to be the most ‘Ambitious Digital Experience’ of our time. Plus, the decoupled Drupal had opened up the opportunity to get the best of Drupal and collate it with any other user-friendly front-end framework.
He also declared to take Drupal 8 in the right directions it has become necessary to take up marketing techniques for promotion. And hence, the Drupal Association has launched the ‘Promote Drupal Initiative’ for raising $ 100,000 of which they’ve already bagged $ 54,000 so far.
Many such significant stuff was shared in the Dries Keynote and to watch its entire recording click here.
3) Sessions:
The third and fourth day consisted of multiple sessions running parallelly. We attended quite a lot of sessions and re-bonded with old Drupal friends over a cup of coffee. ‘Delegating Work: A Zippy Guide to Releasing Your Death Grip on Control’ by Hannah Del Porto from Brick Factory, ‘Debugging Effectively’ by Colin O’Dell from Unleashed Technology and ‘Beyond Websites: Drupal as Data Pipeline for Digital Signage’ by Mike Madison from Acquia — are few of the sessions that we thoroughly enjoyed.
And of course, on both the nights had bumper social events to end the day, along with our fun fellow-Drupalers. Since we met many old friends from Drupal community, we made quite some memories with those fellas!
DrupalCon, Nashville 2018 had one more day to go to conclude, which was the Contribution Day. But unfortunately, our already planned schedule did not permit us to stay back and be a part of the concluding day. One does feel this loss, especially when they’ve been a contributor in past and know the importance of being a part of such a day. But anyways, the experience that we earned in the previous 4 days was quite enriching. It has opened up a lot of hope and opportunities for people like us, who are hardcore Drupal enthusiasts!
Originally posted at: https://www.addwebsolution.com/blog/drupal-8-driesnote-and-lot-more-our-recent-visit-drupalcon-nashville-2018
