For the majority of my career as a developer, I focused purely on WordPress. That’s just how my jobs lined up. I evolved from a rather junior-ish front end developer, to a seasoned full-stack developer technical lead. Unfortunately, due to life in agencies, I really did not get a chance to cross-train – so my Drupal knowledge ended around Drupal 5 or Drupal 6.
Fast forward to 2024. I have left the agency world, and life as a developer. I’m now a Solutions Architect. While my specialization will remain WordPress, I will need to support customers that run Drupal. Luckily, DrupalCamp Ottawa happened on August 2nd, and I was easily able to get the time off, and support, from my manager to attend.
DrupalCamp happened at the former Shopify offices in downtown Ottawa, with approximately 100 attendees. Much smaller than the WordCamps I am used to! I was very glad I attended, as there was a LOT to learn.
Connection Building
Before any of the sessions began, I was building connections. After picking up my name badge from registration, I was reunited with Jose, whom I mentored alongside with Canada Learning Code in the pre-Covid days. It seems like I have a reputation however, as he called me “Ms. WordPress”.
After a brief chat with him, I checked out the sponsors tables – where one of my brother’s friends put two and two together, and recognized me. Later on, I had a great conversation with one of his colleagues regarding git hooks and different packages.
Finally that morning, I met more of the Evolving Web team. I had made a good impression on them during my interview process, so it was very nice to connect in person. Thanks again, Alex, for the charger loan before the afterparty! It was nice to not have my phone die on me on my bus ride home.
After all the sessions, it was nice to unwind a bit at Manor Lounge for the afterparty, where I enjoyed nachos, and new friendships.
The Sessions
As it was a one day event, and much smaller in nature, there were only 6 session times (5 minus the keynote). Being a tech conference, there were always a bit of technical issues, which caused some sessions to be shorter. That’s ok!
I’ve summarized at a high level the sessions I attended. All session recordings will be posted to the DrupalYOW YouTube channel, and I’ve included some reference links that go into more detail.
Keynote
Martin Anderson-Clutz gave the keynote. As someone who has not worked with modern Drupal, it was really interesting to hear from a seasoned expert. Drupal 11 had just launched that day, so a great overview of what new features were shipped was given. What interested me the most was the highlight of the performance improvements, especially those going from PHP 8.2 to 8.3. Kinsta did some performance benchmark testing, and while they focused on Drupal 10, it showcased the decision to make PHP 8.3 the minimum version for D11.
What got my attention however was the Starshot initiative. While I won’t go into full details here, I think the introduction of recipes, project browser, and the experience builder, will help those wanting to enter the Drupal world specifically, do so. Especially without a deep understanding of code.
Discover Dropfort Build
Next up was learning about Dropfort Build Tools, with Steven Stapleton. This was particularly interesting to me, as in my role as a Solutions Architect, I need to learn how to enable customer developers with best practices. My experience is mainly in Docksal and Lando these days (with past experience with WordPress specific tools such as Local by Flywheel), but having an understanding of what else is on the market is important.
What intrigues me the most about these build tools is the scaffolding, and the inclusion of Selenium for VRT. The automated testing portions look interesting as well.
Using CiviCRM to simplify your nonprofit toolset
Kathryn Carruthers presented a very knowledgeable session on CiviCRM. For me, this session was more of an “knowing what’s out there” than anything else. I did learn about Drupal modules that can allow for seamless integration with CiviCRM – so knowing they are out there is beneficial. It was also interesting to hear about the architecture (at a high level) of CiviCRM – components and extensions. Especially how themes are considered extensions in the CiviCRM world, that is a definite mind shift for my CMS brain.
AI: Revolutionizing Content Generation and Workflow Efficiency
With the rise of AI in all industries, I felt this was an important session to attend. Robin Galipeau showcased how the OpenAI module, with Augmentors, can help content editors with their workflows. Especially interesting to me was how there was sentiment analysis of comments (seeing if it agreed/disagreed/was neutral to the article itself), and how interpolators can chain different types of AI generators. I’d be curious to know if there was a WordPress plugin equivalent to this.
Drupal Starshot Panel
Dan Friedman, Martin Anderson-Cluz, Brian Sharpe, and Dharizza Barahona joined forces for a fantastic panel discussion on the future of Starshot. The panelists shared their thoughts on what features they like, what excites them about Starshot, and what the future challenges could potentially be. There was an interesting question regarding the difference between recipes vs. design systems, and I suggest watching back that portion of the panel.
OpenAI/ChatCPT Integration into Drupal
The final session for me of the day was presented by Salman Jaffrey. It was another AI talk, but this one included a brief history of AI itself. Did you know that AI was first seriously considered for computerization in 1956? I sure didn’t. Salman talked about the different modules available, and the new DrupalAI Initative, which brought together 3 modules into one. There were many highlights, such as logging, automators, translate, and the AI Explorer. What was particularly interesting to hear was that it isn’t limited to just one AI provider, but seven.
Takeaways
I really enjoyed dipping my toes into the Drupal community. Folks are just as welcoming and knowledgeable as the WordPress community is. While WordPress will continue to be my expertise and strong point, I look forward to expanding my Drupal knowledge. After all, both are intrinsically open source, and it makes the open source community that much stronger with collaboration and knowledge sharing.