8 DrupalCon Europe 2021 sessions you won't want to miss

The 2021 edition of DrupalCon Europe is just around the corner and, despite still not being able to meet face-to-face, the community is abuzz with excitement. Like every year, there are numerous great sessions to check out, alongside the must-see and highly anticipated Driesnote.

We’ve compiled a list of 8 sessions you definitely won’t want to miss if you’re attending this year’s DrupalCon Europe. It wasn’t an easy selection, as the competition is fierce, but these are the ones we ultimately decided on. We did our best to cover all the diverse tracks while also staying true to our preferences.

 

Monday, October 04 2021

PHP 8.1 - What's New and Changed

Makers & builders track, 13:00 to 13:45 UTC, Hopin - Room 3

Ayesh Karunaratne, open-source software architect

This session will present the new features of the upcoming PHP 8.1 release. It will especially focus on those changes that are likely to have the biggest impact on Drupal, such as autovivification and PHP built-in class return types. Another appealing feature of this session is that it will also show how to test PHP/Drupal code on PHP 8.1 before its official release.

 

Discovery as a door opener for successful projects

Agency & business track, 14:00 to 14:20 UTC, Hopin - Room 1

Simone Oppermann, Scrum Master and Account Manager at Undpaul

Discovery is an integral element of a successful agency partnership. In this session, Simone Oppermann of Undpaul will further explore the importance of discovery, focusing on the recommended methods and tools to yield the best results from a discovery workshop with your new digital agency partner.

 

Tuesday, October 05 2021

An ambitious digital experience platform for the future of Australia's government

Clients & industry experiences track, 7:00 to 7:45 UTC, Hopin - Room 2

Kristen Pol, technical consultant for Salsa Digital
Stuart Rowlands, CTO at Salsa Digital

Drupal is the most popular choice for government agencies from all over the world, with Australia’s government being one of the strongest supporters and users of Drupal. This session will feature a recent project by Salsa Digital for an Australian government agency which aims to have a crucial impact on the future of their digital presence.

 

Open Source Design: Why open source needs designers for the future

Users & editors track, 8:00 to 8:45 UTC, Hopin - Room 6

Eriol Fox, human-centered open-source designer
Abigail Makolo, UX designer and open-source design advocate
Jan Dittrich, UX research expert
Nathalie Rosenberg, UX designer (more info needed)
Bernard Tyers, User Researcher & Interaction Designer at Simply Secure

This is another session that will definitely be invaluable to the Drupal community. It will explore the general lack of designers in open-source contribution and what implications this has for open-source projects. Experts from different open-source communities will be discussing strategies to address the challenges in this and offer solutions for more future alignment.

 

Drupal.org Update: Contribution Recognition, GitLab, and more!

Open web & community track, 9:00 to 9:45 UTC, Hopin - Room 6

Tim Lehnen, CTO at the Drupal Association
Rachel Lawson, Community Liaison at the Drupal Association

In this session, Tim Lehnen and Rachel Lawson of the Drupal Association will present upcoming drupal.org updates that the community is working on. Tim will focus on the improvements to the contribution recognition system and to collaboration tools, while Rachel will take a more community-oriented perspective and talk about how requests coming from community members are realized in various DA initiatives.

 

Wednesday, October 06 2021

The accessibility mistake our entire industry is making

Agency & business track, 14:30 to 14:50 UTC, Hopin - Room 1

John Albin Wilkins, long-standing Drupal developer and contributor

Accessibility is an integral component of good digital experiences, yet the people responsible for creating these experiences still often fail to ensure they’re accessible to everyone. This session by long-time Drupal contributor John Albin Wilkins will build upon this topic, pinpointing the common rationalizations of building websites and how to break free of them to make website experiences more accessible.

 

Thursday, October 07 2021

Why a people focused culture yields digital transformation

Agency & business track, 7:00 to 7:45 UTC, Hopin - Room 1

Danny Bluestone, CEO and founder of Cyber-Duck

A greater focus on the humans in both internal and customer-facing experiences was becoming a trend even pre-2020 and was then accelerated and taken to the next level with the Covid pandemic. In this session, Danny Bluestone will share the tactics used by Cyber-Duck during this period to achieve growth in all key areas and accelerate their digital transformation.

 

5 reasons to believe in an Open DXP

Agency & business track, 8:00 to 8:45 UTC, Hopin - Room 1

Nick Veenhof, CTO at Dropsolid
Leen Penders, CMO at Dropsolid

In the past years, we’ve seen a rise of the term DXP (Digital Experience Platform) to complement the evolving needs of traditional content management systems. Dropsolid have been one of the biggest proponents of an open DXP, and their session will delve into the main reasons for an open digital experience architecture, both from the technical and the marketing perspective.

 

There were a lot of sessions that also stood out to us but didn’t make the cut, as we wanted to focus on those that would be relevant and interesting to the biggest number of community members.

We hope we’ve given you some inspiration on what to check out this time around. Here's the full schedule if you'd like to do some exploring of your own. See you soon at the ‘Con!