DrupalCon 2024 in Barcelona: Reflections on Community Evolution and Business Insights
Having DrupalCon 2024 in Barcelona holds a special significance for me. It was the first DrupalCon I ever attended, right after I joined Druid in 2015.
The almost ten-year gap between these two events is apparent in many ways. The community—and especially Drupal itself—has come a long way over the years. But there are also similarities. Back in 2015, the community was eagerly waiting for Drupal 8 to be released. The new version would bring significant improvements to Drupal, mainly the move to object oriented coding and the adoption of the Symfony framework. These changes also meant that from Drupal 8 onwards there was an upgrade path that allowed sites to be upgraded between major Drupal versions with relatively little effort. It was a massive change that benefited both the developers and the customers.
In 2024, the community is once again on the cusp of major, positive change. The ongoing Drupal Starshot project will release a new distribution of Drupal around the end of the year. This distribution will be somewhat unimaginably called Drupal CMS. While the name might spark some debate, the features it will bring will undoubtedly make Drupal the best and most marketing-friendly content management system to date. The “old” Drupal Core isn’t going anywhere, and it will remain a top choice for more custom, less marketing-driven web services.
During his annual “Driesnote” presentation at DrupalCon Europe, project lead Dries Buytaert showcased the outcomes of the community’s work on the Starshot project—and it was truly impressive. The customer centric presentation focused on showing everyone what can already be done with Drupal CMS. My personal favorites were the AI assistant for generating new content types, fields and importing data from existing web sites, the new recipes that allow grouping and installing site functionality with almost a single click and the ease of creating impressive looking web pages with the CMS’ Experience Builder.
Many have said that this year’s Driesnote was the best one yet, and I have to agree.
Another highlight of my DrupalCon experience was the Drupal Business Dinner. Formerly known as the CEO Dinner, this event brings agency leaders together to network and discuss the business side of the Drupal ecosystem. It’s an annual event, preceded by a survey on the state of the Drupal business, with the results presented and discussed during the dinner. This year, the presentation at the dinner was a shorter summary, while the full version was presented the next day during a BOF session at the venue.
The dinner is always an excellent opportunity to meet people working with similar challenges but in a different environment. This year, I found myself seated with people from the US, Canada, and Slovenia. We enjoyed a thorough discussion about the global state of affairs, accompanied by a hearty three-course dinner.
Read also:
DrupalCon Barcelona: Community, Tech, and Inspiration
DrupalCon Barcelona: Not the City, But the People
Photos:
Heading and middle Bram Driesen, licenced as deed Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0. The original images were edited by narrowing it.
Lower Jean-Paul Vosmeer, licensed as Attribution-ShareAlike. The original image was edited by narrowing it.
