DrupalCon Barcelona: What Happened and What to Watch
Last week’s DrupalCon was an outstanding event that saw over 2,000 people from the community come together in Barcelona to attend sessions, sprints, and socialise.
We sent 74 of our own team members to the conference (over a third of our group) and we asked them about their experiences to offer a vision of DrupalCon from Wunderkraut’s perspective. Here you will find out what happened, what you should catch up on, and what we recommend to prepare you for next year’s conference in Dublin.
Pre-Conference Opening - Sunday 20th September
Before the conference officially opened for registration, members of our team met with other community developers to get sprinting at Makers of Barcelona - a beautiful and quirky co-working space 25 minutes from the conference centre.
With D8 close and everyone keen to hear what the first days of the conference had to offer in the way of Drupal 8 news, everyone was in high spirits to collaborate and code face-to-face at the extended sprints.
Registration Day - Monday 21st September
Barcelona International Convention Centre opened its doors for attendees to register. Whilst contributors and coders headed to the Contribution Lounge, leaders of Drupal businesses came together at the Business Summit to share experiences, learn new things, and make acquaintances.
Exhibitors and organisers were also buzzing around the exhibitor hall to prepare their stands and catering areas for the evening’s opening reception, giving all attendees a great opportunity to network and discuss the days ahead.
Watch our roundup of Monday at DrupalCon:
DrupalCon Barcelona Monday from WunderTV on Vimeo.
Day 1 - Tuesday 22nd September
The day opened with Dries’ keynote which gave people a status update on Drupal 8’s release, an overview of the state of the CMS market, and an introduction to new techniques for contributing to Drupal. Overall this was well received and the first deadline of October 7th 2015 was set for D8’s Release Candidate.
Our team then went on to enjoy a variety of tracks and sessions throughout the day. Here’s what Wunderkraut recommends watching from the first day:
Highly recommended by our team
Recommended by our consultants
Caching at the Edge: CDNs for everyone
Design to support strategic objectives (hosted by our own Roy Scholten)
Recommended by our back-end developers
Self-Managing Organizations: Teal is the new Orange
Following a day full of fantastic sessions, the Wunderkraut team headed over to Barcelona’s beaches to have a WunderParty. This gave our international group a great opportunity to socialise and network with one another over good food and a few drinks, which our friends from the conference also attended.
Watch our roundup of Tuesday at DrupalCon
DrupalCon Barcelona Tuesday from WunderTV on Vimeo.
Day 2 - Wednesday 23rd September
The second day of the conference kicked off with an inspirational keynote by Nathalie Nahai on web psychology. This lead nicely into the second day of sessions, sprints and BoFs. Here is what our attendees recommend:
Recommended by our back-end developers
Defense in Depth: Lessons learned securing 100,000 Drupal Sites
Recommended by our consultants
Making Drupal fly - The fastest Drupal ever is here!
No therapist needed: clients, teams and no tears (hosted by our own Alice Richmond)
Recommended by our care team
Recommended by our operations team
Creating a collaborative agency culture that scales
Recommended by our front-end team
In the evening a number of our team members headed into the “old town” area of Barcelona to enjoy the local tapas, sangria, and local culture. All of the local people were out and celebrating La Mercè Festival which involved fireworks, parties, and fun.
Watch our roundup of Wednesday at DrupalCon
Drupalcon Barcelona Wednesday from WunderTV on Vimeo.
Day 3 - Thursday 24th September
Thursday was the final day of sessions and by this point a lot of new information, local culture, and sangria had been consumed by conference attendees who stayed since the start. It was hard to find one of our bean bags free at the conference that didn’t have an attendee catching a nap on it!
The final day of sessions, however, was great and they were started by two excellent community keynotes by David Rozas and Mike Bell on mental health in the open source world and the phenomenon of contributing to a community. Both talks were received very well by our team and the community.
Here’s what else Wunderkraut recommends from the day:
Recommended by our back-end developers
Testing with Monkeys: Using Chaos for Better Code
Building the Front End with Angular.js
Recommended by our consultants
Making Drupal a better out-of-the-box product: Report on usability testing results and how we can make 8.1.x+ shine (joint hosted by our own Lewis Nyman)
All of the conference’s sessions ended with Holly Ross’ Closing Session that provided some cool community and conference stats, in addition to the location of next year’s Drupalcon - Ireland!
To celebrate a successful DrupalCon, most of the attendees headed down to the Trivia Night where they had an opportunity to win some fun prizes, including these sought after goodies:
Some @Wunderkraut beanbags are up 4 grabs. A lot of folk have their eye on this prize, even sans-beans. #DrupalCon pic.twitter.com/B5Bti8iyJi
— Andrew Macpherson (@MartianWebDev) September 24, 2015
Sprinting for Beginners and All - Friday 25th September
Friday was a day for first-time sprinters to meet the mentors and get started with contributing to Drupal. It began with a workshop on downloading the tools required to contribute and lead to people being assigned to different contribution tasks and issues, depending on their different skills.
Later on in the afternoon Angie Byron (webchick) committed a selection of contributions that newcomers made to Drupal 8 whilst they were at the conference and everyone celebrated the new additions together.
Extended Sprints - Saturday 26th - Sunday 27th September
The rest of the weekend was spent sprinting by contributors back at the creative co-working space, Makers of Barcelona. Overall, a nice way to finish of the week in beautiful Barcelona.
Tips for future DrupalCon Goers
With over 70 odd of our team attending this year’s DrupalCon we’d like to leave a few bits of advice for future participants who may be completely new to the conference to make their experiences as enjoyable as ours.
Marc Galang, Software Developer
“Attend the prenote! Also if you're joining the sprints make sure you have a running environment before you leave your country/office because sometimes the internet could be really slow that it takes A LOT of time to download stuff that is needed for the sprints.
Bert Boerland, Sales Manager
Sleep as much as you can upfront. You should also add the checkmark of being at the con in your Drupal.org profile.
Mikael Kundert, Software Developer
After you start to find sessions that aren’t that useful for you, move on to participate in BoFs and sprints!
Bernt Andreas Drange, Software Developer
Remember your business cards and cash for coffee!
Jenny Kannelsuo, Service Manager
Plan ahead and check the sessions beforehand.
Randal Whitmore, Marketing Assistant
Embrace as much as you can, especially if this is your first experience with the community. Communicating with people in person and getting to understand those behind Drupal is invaluable.