LimoenGroen's contributions to DrupalCon Amsterdam
Five signficant contributions to DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019
Next week DrupalCon will take place in Amsterdam. At DrupalCon over 1500 professionals and enthusiasts meet to exchange ideas and work together on the popular open source content management system Drupal. Tens of thousands of passionate people work together on this common platform that serves digital platforms of organisations like Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Fox. LimoenGroen has been actively involved with Drupal for as long as it exists, with many of its team members involved in code contributions and organising events for 10 years. Here are our five significant contributions to this year’s DrupalCon.
Whether DrupalCon is 20 minutes from our office or a day’s journey away, we have been present at DrupalCons with most of our team for eight years now. Traditionally DrupalCon has been travelling across Europe, with Dublin, Vienna and Barcelona a few of the recent stops. While LimoenGroen is a one of the top tier Drupal agencies in the Dutch market, we are actively involved in international Drupal events. From keynote presentations to mentoring code or contributing to Drupal’s next release, we take up our part in contributing to Drupal (read our post on quantifying our contributions to open source). For almost a year now, our team has been actively involved with DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019. We are honored and grateful for the opportunity to do our part for this hallmark event for Drupal. Here is what we have been doing this year.
1. Advisory committee
DrupalCon Europe was paused and re-evaluated after 2017, where it needed to assess its business model in order to maintain a sustainable event. Last year, a team from the Drupal Community stepped in to fill the void of the yearly European conference and organized Drupal Europe. After assessing the operational challenges the Drupal Association decided to pursue a licensing model that would address the operational challenges while maintaining the culture and value of the event. Last year it was announced Kuoni Congress was contracted by the Drupal Association to produce a new DrupalCon in 2019 in a economically sustainable way. It was also around Drupal Europe, the call for an advisory committee was made in order to advise Kuoni on delivering the traditional European DrupalCon. Imre Gmelig Meijling stepped into this advisory committee, which kicked off at Kuoni in Vienna and has been involved with the organisation on a weekly basis.
2. Contribution mentoring
Both Erik Stielstra and Marc van Gend have been active community members, contributing much of their (personal) time and code since earlier versions of Drupal. Marc has been a public speaker at numerous Drupal events, including DrupalCon and so has Erik. They both actively maintain Drupal modules and they can be found around contribution area’s often during DrupalCon. It’s right there where magic happens, for many professionals come together there to work on Drupal patches and it’s next release. Well organized teams pick up various parts of work. They are not limited to coding new features, but also involve translations, documentation and usability and design features. Drupal is well known for its inclusive policies. In fact, according to Drupal founder and project lead Dries Buytaert, diversity and inclusion is one of Drupal’s key priorities. Potential newcomers and people stepping into Drupal are welcomed warmly with mentors helping people along. Erik and Marc both fulfill a mentor role at DrupalCon Amsterdam.
3. Social events
DrupalCon is well known for its broad program of sessions and presentations over the course of several days. With many DrupalCon attendees coming from abroad and staying in Amsterdam for several days, the evenings offer time for relaxing, sight seeing and catching up with peers from the Drupal community. These social events are organized mainly by community members (often in their spare time). They complement the daytime program in a unique way and therefore play an important role in any DrupalCon. Women in Drupal and the Trivia Night are two of the cornerstone events. Erik Stielstra, Dirk Bazuin and Baris Wanschers are involved in Dinner with a stranger & karaoke night (you can sign up there), offering attendees a different way to blow off steam and to share different sides of themselves. Starting off with a meal in downtown Amsterdam, the organizing team have contracted four different restaurants to accommodate everyone’s preferences.
4. Track team
Up to ten concurring sessions every hour during the day, cover a wide range of topics such as frontend and backend development, but also business and marketing and industry specific case studies are included in the program. Over 500 sessions where submitted by presenters around the world, offering their contribution to the program. 127 are accommodated in the program. A team of community members in conjunction with the Drupal Association and Kuoni took up the responsibility to review and select, each and everyone of the session proposals, in order to compile a balanced and compelling program for DrupalCon. With so many people involved in DrupalCon, it’s imperative to maintain a level of quality where everyone’s needs can be satisfied. As such, more than one sets of eyes are involved in the reviewing process. Imre has been taking part in the Track Team for the Business & Marketing track, contributing to the DrupalCon program.
5. Sharing experience
DrupalCon is about sharing code and experience. Marloes Bosch will share some valuable accessibility quick wins. LimoenGroen is a fierce advocate for implementing accessibility principles in any website and so is Marloes. She is a certified accessibility developer and has been sharing her insights on various events, such as Drupalcamp Ghent and Drupaljam. With the EU promoting accessibility guidelines to obligated rules for (public) websites of EU state members, accessibility should be a necessary ingredient for any web project. You will be more inclusive, have better SEO and ensuring economic sustainability within your website.
Parallel to helping with DrupalCon, Imre has been involved with the Splash Awards for the past year. The Splash Awards celebrate the best Drupal projects, highlighting agencies and organisations that have adopted Drupal. Along with international team members, Imre has been working on establishing the official brand for the Splash Awards, which is now being organized in 10 different countries. Concurrent to that, Imre has helped organize the International Splash Awards 2019, which takes place on the first DrupalCon night, monday 28 october. LimoenGroen is nominated for one of the awards. Imre will share the latest on the Splash Awards initiative in his presentation.
Open source philosophy
All of these contributions and initiatives were undertaken out of personal interest and passion. A lot of spare time of everyone involved went into DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019. LimoenGroen supports its people fulfilling their passion, offering time to contribute during the day as well. LimoenGroen is dedicated to contributing to Drupal, whether it’s code, experience or helping out organizing events and bringing people together. We are proud to have a team of dedicated and passionate people with personal values that are consistent with our open source philosophy.
Do you want to hear about our very own Google Friday and other cool projects we do? Meet us at DrupalCon Amsterdam! We are all in green, can’t miss us! See you there!
