A look back at DrupalCon Vienna

Introduction

I recently had the opportunity to attend my second DrupalCon, which took place September 26-29, 2017 in Vienna, Europe. Thousand of people from the Drupal Community came together for a full week (with three days of sessions) of learning, discussions, networking and fun.

From coding skills to managing skills, DrupalCon offered talks that were diverse in terms of themes and capable to satisfy the needs and tastes of everyone.
I did manage to attend a lot of sessions, but given the gigantic offer they were just a tip of the iceberg. In this post I want to collect and share a few of my personal highlights of the conference.

Admin Theming & design for a modern Drupal 8

Morten started the presentation with a brief overview of the admin experience through the years: despite the (sometimes small) improvements, Drupal’s admin experience still feels old and obsolete.
He presented his work on Eleven theme, a basic admin theme designed not for developers but for the content editors and the final users, in order to create a better and enjoyable admin experience.

Introducing the UI Patterns module: use atomic UI components everywhere in Drupal 8

Antonio talked us through integrating patterns libraries - like PatternLab and Fractal - in Drupal using UI Patterns module, with a demo which featured the basic functionalities of the module and a preview of the advanced (or work in progress) ones.
UI Patterns aims to address the issues of the previous approaches, getting rid of the template folder and complementing existing Drupal 8 solutions.

Breaking the Myths of the Rockstar Developer

Juan and Salvador explored the myth of the rockstar developer, trying to underline multiple ways to become a better professional and grow as people. They tried to redefine the concept of “rockstar developer” with more realistic scenarios, explaining that it’s necessary to accept and embrace who we are, setting our career path in the direction that satisfy us and allowing us to be vulnerable and getting comfortable admitting what we don’t know.

Being a better mentor

Mentoring is an opportunity to positively impact others and make them grow, while also learning and growing a lot yourself.
Analyzing three case scenario, Erik and Mark shared their experiences on the topic, guiding us through the process of identify the better learning plan (based on the mentee learning style) and different ways of giving feedback and helping the other person grow.

JavaScript and Accessibility: Don’t Blame the Language

Everett started by highlighting some of the most common misconception and truth on the topic of accessibility, pinpointing that less than 75% of developers know more than the basics about Javascript accessibility.
With a lot of examples and suggestions, he talked us through different way to make our applications accessible, offering to all users the experience that they need without losing our minds.

Accessibility doesn’t interfere with great design (good accessibility is good design).

Building Efficiencies into Your Drupal Practice

Even if project management track is a little beyond my scope, I attended this talk and found it very interesting.
Scott presented his thought and approaches on how to make Drupal practices and teams more efficient.
His session focused the attention in the importance of identify what types of skills make up an efficient Drupal team, find out some pratical ways to improve and increase efficiency and engagement while keeping the team motivated.

Conclusion

To sum up, DrupalCon Vienna was amazing experience.
Thanks to the Drupal Association, the speakers, the volunteers and everyone involved in the organisation and realisation of this event.
Looking forward to seeing what 2018 brings us!

Bonus chapter

This year event was unique and special for my team and me.

• We were design partner for the event
  It was a blast (and made us even more proud of the job made) seeing our graphics all over the congress centre
• We had a booth in the exhibit hall
  We had an awesome opportunity to show who we are and what we love to do, meeting a lot of people in the process (and also making a lot of temporary nerd tattoos!)

So - much - fun!