Drupal 9 was just released last month, and in less than two weeks we get together to celebrate it (again), learn, grow and plan together for the future at DrupalCon Global.

I presented my "State of Drupal 9" talk at various events for over a year now, and while the original direction of questions were about how the transition would work, lately it is more about what else can we expect from Drupal 9 and then Drupal 10. This is a testament and proof to the continuous upgrade path we introduced all the way back in 2017. Now that Drupal 9.0 is out, we can continue to fill the gaps and add new exciting capabilities to Drupal core.

DrupalCon Global will have various exciting events and opportunities to learn about and help shape the future of Drupal 9 and even Drupal 10. Tickets are $249 and get you access to all session content, summits and BoF discussions. As usual, contributions do not require a ticket and will happen all week as well, including a dedicated contribution day on Friday. Here is a sampling of all content elements discussing, planning on and even building the future of Drupal.

Sessions about the future of Drupal
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First there is the Driesnote of course. Dries will share the result of the Drupal 2020 Product Survey and discuss plans for Drupal 10. There is a followup Q&A session to discuss the keynote and other topics with Dries live.

The Drupal Initiatives Plenary coordinated by yours truly is going to feature various important leaders in our community working on diversity and inclusion, accessibility, events, mentoring, promotion as well as core components like the Claro admin theme and the Olivero frontend theme. This is the best way to get an overview of how Drupal's teams work, what are their plans and challenges. Even better, the plenary session is followed by a BoF where we can continue the discussion in a more interactive form.

In Drupal Core markup in continuous upgrade path Lauri Eskola will dive into why the deprecation process used for PHP and JavaScript code is not workable for HTML and CSS. This informs the direction of where markup is going in Drupal 9 and 10 onwards.

In the Drupal.org Panel the Drupal Association team discusses how key initiatives are supported on Drupal.org including Composer, Automatic Updates and even Merge Requests for Drupal contribution and plans for the future.

Mike Baynton and David Strauss will discuss Automatic updates in action and in depth showing what is possible now and what are the future plans.

There is not one but two sessions about the new proposed frontend theme. In The Olivero theme: Turning a wild idea into a core initiative Mike Herchel and Putra Bonaccorsi discusses the whole history and future plans while in Designing for chaos: The design process behind Olivero will cover the design specifically.

Moshe Weitzman leads a core conversation to take stock of the current command line tools for Drupal and discuss what a more complete core solution would look like in A robust command line tool for all Drupal sites.

In Let’s Make Drupal Core Less Complicated Ted Bowman will propose ways to simplify Drupal core for existing uses and to achieve an easier learning curve.

Finally Drupal 9: New Initiatives for Drupal offers a chance to discuss new initiatives proposed by Dries in the Driesnote. If you are interested to join in either or discuss the plans, this is your opportunity!

Birds of a Feather discussions about the future of Drupal

Attendees with tickets for DrupalCon Global will be able to participate in live discussions about key topics. BoF submission is open, so this list will possibly grow as time goes.

Ofer Shaal leads a discussion titled Standardize Rector rules as part of Drupal core deprecations to make sure the transition from Drupal 9 to 10 will be even easier than Drupal 8 to 9 is.

Submit your Birds of a Feather discussion now.

Contribute to the future of Drupal
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Just like in-person DrupalCons, DrupalCon Global contribution will be free to attend and does not require a ticket. The contribution spaces are especially good to go to if you are interested in the future of Drupal and making a difference.

If you've been to a DrupalCon or a DrupalCamp before, a contribution event usually involves one or more rooms with tables that have signage on them for what they are working on. This is not exactly possible online, however, we devised a system to replicate tables as groups at https://contrib2020.getopensocial.net/all-groups which allows you to see what topics will be covered and who the leads are. (Huge props to Rachel Lawson at the Drupal Association for building this out!)

If your topic is not yet there, you should create a group now. Groups indicate what they are working on and what skills they need from contributors. You should join groups you are interested to help and read their information for guidance. Teams will post group events to let you know when certain activities (introduction, review sessions, co-working on specific problems or meetings to discuss issues) will happen. Events will also be used to signify when you are most likely to find people working on the topics. The OpenSocial site is a directory of topics and events, contribution itself will happen on drupal.org with discussion on Drupal Slack for most groups.

There are already groups for Configuration Management 2.0, the Olivero theme, the Bug Smash initiative and Media. Stay tuned for more appearing as the event comes closer.