The Drupal Association is here to update you on all of the exciting things you may have missed that happened at the conference! From a focus on marketing to updates on innovation, there was much to see and do at DrupalCon. Lille, France, was the perfect city for the Drupal community to unite. Easily accessible from major cities such as London and Paris, it was a bustling city of fantastic cuisine (did you try Le Welsh?!), shopping, museums, and culture. Continue reading to learn more about the latest updates from Europe’s largest Drupal gathering.
Day One
On Day One of DrupalCon Lille, things kicked off with the Driesnote, a colorful presentation that took us through a fairytale story fitting for such a historic city. This fairytale took attendees through the Drupal village, learning about the main character Drupal, and other unique villages that Drupal visits along the way: Reactopia, Contentville, Squarix, and Edoby Heights. Drupal stopped along the way to meet with the Drupal Marketing Wizards. A key initiative for the Drupal Association Board’s Strategic Plan is to amp up the marketing of Drupal as a product, and the Driesnote introduced us to Suzanne Dergacheva, Lynne Capozzi, and Nikhil Deshpande. As leaders of the new Drupal Association Marketing Committee, these three marketing wizards are working with a core group of community members to create a product marketing plan to boost Drupal marketing.
Other critical topics from the Driesnote included Drupal’s impact on creating a safe and secure web for everyone and the Open Web Manifesto, as well as Drupal’s latest updates and innovations. You can read more about the DrupalCon Lille Driesnote in Dries’ blog post.
During the opening ceremony, three well-deserving nominees received the Women in Drupal Award! The Define award went to Tiffany Farriss, the Build award went to Marine Gandy, and the Scale award went to Lenny Moskalyk. Congratulations to all three recipients, and thank you for all your work for Drupal and the community!
Continuing with Day One, we saw an update on the Project Browser Initiative with Leslie Glynn and Chris Wells. They discussed the current state of the initiative, including the usability testing they have been conducting, the plan for the UI and Markup, as well as their roadmap for the initiative, and various opportunities to contribute. Learn more about how you can help with the Project Browser Initiative.
Day One also included many other insightful sessions, Birds of a Feather discussions, and the First-Time Contributor Workshop. Alan Burke’s session, Having your cake and eating it too: Using Varnish to serve content from your new Drupal site alongside your Legacy platform - keeping 2 platforms live at the same time, walked audience members through running your own Varnish instance vs using a third party provider such as Fastly, what is achievable 'out of the box' using Fastly, and tricks to make sure Drupal works well in such a configuration.
Bringing Mautic and Drupal closer together in an open DXP with Dropsolid CEO Dominique de Cooman highlighted how Drupal and Mautic can form the backbone of an open DXP, specifically how a DXP can create value for the end user over using Drupal alone or Mautic alone.
Day Two
Day Two of the conference held two impressive keynotes, starting with KitKat and Jägermeister. These two powerhouse brands shared how they use Drupal to market their products, notably sharing that web traffic increased after KitKat implemented Drupal. Jägermeister showcased their solution for customized, collaborative, and transparent communication across borders with Drupal.
The second Keynote of the day, Fly Higher - How to Lead Fearlessly, brought Sarah Furness, a former combat helicopter pilot and Squadron leader, to the stage to give thoughtful and relatable tips on being the best leader you can be.
In Decoupling your search solution with Drupal Search API with speakers Jose Nieves and Christoph Breidert, we learned about how to use Drupal Search API with decoupled Javascript applications. We also saw an overview of the advantages and considerations when building a decoupled search application.
Other highlights from Day Two included Design in Figma, marketing automation, and a Drupal Association Public Board Meeting where new board members Piyush Poddar, Fei Lauren, Imre Gmelig Meijling, and Lenny Moskalyk were announced. Fei Lauren won the community-elected seat by securing the most votes during the At-Large Board Election!
Day Three
Finally, Day Three of DrupalCon Lille held the last keynote of the conference, where Drupal core initiative leads updated the audience on new improvements to the base system, event organization, diversity practices, and an update from Promote Drupal. This was the fifth installment of this keynote, and it allowed the audience to learn from key leaders in the community about what they are working on, their challenges, and how folks can get involved.
Innovation and the Future of Drupal was another topic on Day Three, hosted by the Drupal Association’s own Alex Moreno. Innovation in Drupal is a critical component of the Drupal Association and the Drupal Association Board regarding the vision for the future of Drupal. In this session, Alex led the conversation about the past, present, and most importantly, the future of Drupal. He was joined by a group of experienced tech leads in different areas in the Drupal industry: Scott Massey (Morpht), Cristina Chumillas (Lullabot), AmyJune Hineline (The Linux Foundation), and Nick Veenhof (Gitlab). During the discussion, Alex Moreno shared some numbers and graphs, the result of the work that he is doing on innovation. He shared that Drupal has still been growing strong in some areas of the industry, in particular in the top most popular 10k and 100k sites. We may simply need a little push to replicate the same for the rest:
At the end of the conversation, there was a positive message about the future of Drupal. In Alex's words, “We have the means, the experience, the opportunity, but most importantly, the community, to continue making Drupal a huge success for another 20 years. Let’s do it. There is nothing we cannot achieve together”.
ICT Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Exploding – How Drupal Community Should Engage and Contribute Their Part with Janne Kalliola took us through why green coding is important, energy consumption in modern software, and how to reduce waste. Janne explained how information and communication technology accounts for 4-10% of the world’s energy consumption and 2.1-3.9% of greenhouse gas emissions. In this session, we learned that a sustainability team is being formed to help remedy this issue. Learn more here.
Finally, to wrap up three days of insightful sessions, the Closing Ceremony had everyone awaiting the much-anticipated announcement of the DrupalCon Europe location for 2024 … it will be held in Barcelona, Spain! We can’t wait to see everyone there.
Thank you for a successful DrupalCon Lille 2023!
Overall, DrupalCon Lille was a massive success with many informative and innovative sessions – too many to name in just one blog post! From the Birds of a Feather roundtables to Trivia Night, the community was able to learn and grow not only through all of the presentations and sessions but also through social events that helped connect our community. Thank you to everyone who made DrupalCon Lille a huge success, especially the Kuoni Kumlare team for organizing the event, and to our many sponsors and volunteers for making it possible!
See you all at the next DrupalCon in May 2024 in Portland, Oregon.