DrupalCon Seattle 2019 was my second Drupal Conference. Everybody enjoys travel, and everybody should enjoy learning while at it! This year I had the opportunity to do both, taking benefit of the Professional Development Program that weKnow offers as well as taking my family on vacation.
In my first hours in Seattle, I joined my teammates, got my credentials and the full information about the event… I was surprised by the variety of sessions available! One difference compared to Nashville 2018, this year there were only 2 days for room conferences, but the quantity looks similar. In fact, I did attend more sessions this year than in 2018.
Tuesday, Dries opened officially the event with an interesting Keynote about the current state of Drupal, the importance to update the current D7 sites to D8, and the upcoming improvements in the Drupal UI. Also, he focused on the importance of the accessibility and inclusion in the Drupal Community.
On Wednesday the sessions begun in full…The selection of tracks was not an easy job, most of them were really interesting, so I focused on those that I believe can add more value to my current role (working in growth & support). So I focused on sessions related to Custom Development and Testing. But there were sessions for all topics, from how to improve estimations to tips for remote work. There were also exotics topics such as “Installing Drupal in a homemade raspberry Pi cloud”, and Alexa & Drupal integration.
My picks for Wednesday were:
- Database Query Optimization, by @kristen_pol: Learned some tips to improve the query response time.
- Front End Architecture for scalable design systems, by @salem_ghoweri : A very complete session about components, PatternLab with Drupal and Twig Integration.
- Drupal 8 Migrations 101, by @bodhicitta: A great review for Migrate API.
- Introduction to Decoupled Drupal with Gatsby and React, by @imariohernandez, @jmolivas, and @teampoop: Great session about creating a static site using Gatsby and Drupal JSON API.
- Testing a Drupal distribution, by @bramtenhove and Ronald te Brake: Shared a testing experience for OpenSocial Distro.
- Optimize your Javascript, by @sasanikolic90: A refreshing session about javascript performance and measuring.
- Accelerate with Service Autowiring! Bring Symfony’s New Innovation into your Drupal App, by @weaverryan: Gorgeous session about Improvements to working with services.
On Thursday I attended:
- Advanced Webforms, by @jrockowitz: A full review of the webforms module potential, handlers and Webform APIS
- Building a Slack ChatBot, by @jmolivas: Jesus gives us an awesome example for creating chatbots , integrating them with external API’s, and several tips to make interactions between computers and humans.
- Custom Compound Fields in Drupal 8, by @thagler: an excellent review for multiple elements fields in D8 and focus on how to create, theme and test our custom compound fields.
- Advanced Automated Visual Testing, by @shwetasharma84: Interesting demo for VRT and how to including it in our automated deployment process.
- Design a decoupled application, by @justafish, @alwaysworking and @da_wehner: an architecture guide based upon the Drupal admin UI.
The overall balance was an awesome experience for reviewing ideas, learning new things and making new friends. I’m leaving Seattle with a sweet taste, renewed energies and the desire to put into practice the new concepts I learned.