DrupalCon North America

Matthew Tift captured the quieter side of #DrupalCon Chicago - the Quiet Room, the ten-second pause Dries borrowed from Fred Rogers, and why slowing down mid-conference might be the most useful thing you do. A lovely read. https://lnkd.in/evnDq8d9

DrupalCon North America Chicago was exciting. I wrote a long retrospective about it, but here are the threads that mattered most to me. The Driesnote energy was real. Dries Buytaert was honest about all three legs of Drupal's foundation being under pressure from AI. The demos were impressive, Jürgen Haas building 90,000 lines of code in six weeks with AI as a tool, not a replacement. And Dries said on stage what I've been arguing: "Don't submit code you don't understand." But when I watched the demos carefully, the framing was still enterprise. A marketing director, brand guidelines from a team, legal involved. If you're a small company that just needs a website, that doesn't speak to you. Microsoft didn't become the default by being the best. They became the default by being everywhere. The same applies to WordPress. We need to talk about the little guy too. The International Federation came up all week. Local associations collecting memberships and certified partner fees locally, with local payment methods, tax benefits, and pricing that makes sense. That's new revenue and local promotion at the same time. We made some progress, but there's still a lot of work ahead. I also brought up DrupalCon Latin America at the board meeting. Dries told us to find dates and consult with him. Not a confirmation, but a door that wasn't open before. The full post covers all of this plus the IXP Initiative, the AI community debate, the 25th anniversary gala, and what comes next. https://lnkd.in/gRrcScEF #Drupal #DrupalCon #DrupalCommunity #OpenSource #DrupalAssociation #AI

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It only took me six years to get to DrupalCon North America! Yes, I spoke at DrupalCon a few times during the Covid era, on behalf at Google, about Core Web Vitals and image optimization. I even made some small PRs to the CMS and to PHP itself to enable AVIF images and to use WebP for lossless images instead of PNGs. And I thought the community was fantastic! But all these interactions were virtual, and I never got to see anyone, to meet Drupal luminaries like Timothy Lehnen or Michael Herchel's disembodied head in person. Thus it was a thrill to get to attend DrupalCon this week on behalf of DeepL! People were so friendly, so approachable, with little attitude. So many are doing important work running websites for nonprofits, religious groups, colleges, or governments. Many either run multi-language sites (especially in Canada) or are working to figure out how (I’m looking at you, now-we-need-to-support-14-languages-in-Washington-State). It was also fun to get back into Drupal a bit, spin up a local site, install a bunch of translation modules, and then, as a proof-of-concept, to build a little MCP server that finds out which articles on your Drupal site lack translation, translates them (in my case, of course, using our DeepL MCP), and sticks those translations on your site. After all, your translator may not balk at using the Drupal interface. Code here: https://lnkd.in/eR_PTVQP

I’m not one to take pictures during a keynote but this was the exception: This week at DrupalCon North America was a great opportunity to sync up with friends new and old in the community and hear about what the latest everyone is working on. But it also opened my eyes to a real tension around the role of AI with agencies, contributors, and the project itself. Drupal has always had a robust and diverse community and very focused on building the best in class tooling. But overarching the code is the care for the people behind the project. This was apparent in Dries’ keynote where the majority was spent not on new features or goals, but instead laying out the real concerns in the community around AI and how we as a community can succeed alongside AI, rather than against it. The tension in previous Drupalcon was always around if AI is going to replace agencies and devs. It won’t, but it will (and already is) fundamentally changing the future. So when the leader of a community and project advocates that AI didn’t replace people, and instead makes them even more valuable, it pulled a pressure relief valve for many. Understanding that the value of contribution, developers, and agencies isn’t about how much clean code they can create, it’s the expertise they gain along the way. Experience that then drives them to be the irreplaceable in an era of vibe coded AI slop. It’s a message I’ve been trying to amplify as well. Drupal is facing headwinds, no doubt. All CMSs are. But the difference for Drupal internal superiority, it’s the foundational community and process that lets voices from all sides speak and discuss what’s best to move forward. So not only do I leave Drupalcon amped on the reunion with old friends and talking about new ideas, I’m also very hopeful in a community that shows thoughtful leadership and drive to make everyone as successful as they can be. That’s what makes Drupal stronger than ever.

Arriving home after spending the week with the Drupal community at DrupalCon North America in our beautiful city of #Chicago is bittersweet. I definitely earned my Tired Feet ribbon for this one! 10K+ steps/day on multiple days, many of which were spent in the Venue going from Williford session rooms on the third floor, General contribution and Keynotes, on the tucked away speakeasy first floor on via the escalators, to the Summit rooms on the Lobby level and around and down to the basement for Expo Hall, more sessions and Drupal in a Day. phew! By far, the best part of this week was hearing my name being called out in multiple directions, my head was on a proverbial swivel the entire event. Thank you to Avi Schwab, Jasmyne Epps, Bree Benesh, Fredric Mitchell, Michael Anello, Nikki Flores, Rosie Gladden, Stephen Mustgrave of the steering committee and the Drupal Association staff for helping to make our city shine! I was especially moved by the DriesNote this year, strong emotions underlined the drive towards product excellence. I felt overwhelmed and privileged to be surrounded by the most passionate innovators in the Open Source world. Our collective mission-driven focus will continue to lead and shape the industry! It was great to see so many new faces at my Digital Career Sandbox Monday Mess Standup, workshop Drupal Federation with Tim Doyle and Baddy Sonja Breidert, and help improve Events and Groups with Sean T. Walsh and Heather Wozniak, and Chris Weber, plus so many more! I am thankful to Salim Lakhani for pushing me to finally visit the Chicago Bean and for spending quality time with Thomas P. Scola Jr. and the Bluefly.io Collective members: Marc DeLay Alozie Nwosu Carlos O. Natalie Cainaru 💧 Moshe Weitzman Aaron Ellison Luke McCormick Mark Felton Karl Shea Dalton T. Geoff Maxey J Matthew Saunders (CSPO, CSM, SLPM) Nikolas Wilets! I am grateful to Wendy Flores and the Drupal Association for continuing the Local Ambassador program this year. It was hard not to tear up each time someone expressed that our efforts there were impactful! 🥂 to a great event run by a great community! I'm booking my room in Orlando as I write this post. I hope you see some of your faces again at MidCamp, Stanford WebCamp, New England Drupal Camp, among others!