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Showing 31 items.

October 26

9:00 AM-9:45 AM

10:15 AM-11:00 AM

Accessibility 201: Tales from the Front End

front end development / ux / beyond drupal
Intermediate

Ready to take the next step on accessibility? Come hear cautionary tales of well-intentioned yet inaccessible products! Learn from the struggles of those who’ve gone before, change your mindset, and improve your code.

Case Study: Massive performance wins at Mass.gov

performance / front end development / automation
Intermediate

Watch the session video here.

Over the past year, Last Call Media has been working with the development team at Massachusetts Digital Services on improving the stability and performance of the mass.gov platform.  One phase of this journey was to realize some massive performance gains on both the front and the back end of the site.  In the first part of this session, we’ll talk about the backend performance, discussing:

  • How we used Blackfire and New Relic to identify issues

Gatsby and the JAMstack: An introduction for the Drupal/LAMP minded

performance / decoupled / javascript
Intermediate

Watch the session video here.

The "JAMstack" is some great branding that describes websites that are built entirely by javascript, API calls, and served as completely static pages.
Compared to LAMP platforms like Drupal and Wordpress, JAMstack has four huge things going for it:

1. High traffic sites that cost thousands of dollars a month could transition to a single server + CDN on low tier hosting (under 100 dollars a month)

11:15 AM-12:00 AM

Design for Non-designers

design / ux / being human
Beginner

Watch the session video here.

Great design helps you reach your audience, increase credibility and achieve organizational goals. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s impractical to hire a designer for every visual task—whether it’s editing an image for social media, creating a flyer or an entire website. You may be left to your own devices when it comes to visual decisions.

How to keep Drupal relevant in the Git-based and API-driven CMS era

apis / beyond drupal / decoupled
Intermediate

Watch the session video here.

How many times have you ever heard? "Choose the right tool for the job" or "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

The Drupal community is embracing the "Get off the island" mantra. Modernizing Drupal was the goal of the latest Drupal 8 release, but technology moves faster than the awesome community could improve our beloved platform.

1:30 PM-2:15 PM

Building websites with React & Gatsby

site building / decoupled
Intermediate

Watch the session video here.

React started as a way to build apps. People soon discovered that React's ability to render to string meant that React could be used for building websites where shipping a fast HTML version of the site was necessary.

Gatsby is a very popular way to build websites with React and recently became a company with VC backing to take React deep into the world of CMSs.

Site Building 2.0: How Layout Builder will change everything

drupal core / editor experience / site building
Beginner

Watch the session video here.

Come get an all access preview of how your next generation Drupal sites are going to work with Layout Builder.

Description

Layout Builder is a new experimental module for Drupal 8 and its implications are vast. In this session we're going to dig into the site builder implications of this new tool and how it's going to change your builds for the better.

 

2:30 PM-3:15 PM

Component Based Theming With UI Patterns and Pattern Lab

front end development / site building
Intermediate

Since the release of Drupal 8, great strides have been made to develop a component based theming workflow that takes advantage of the best that Twig has to offer and also plays nice with living style guides and pattern libraries. Gone are the days of redundant styles and markup, making way for the efficiencies found when Drupal and tools like Pattern Lab can share the exact same code. That said, handling the mapping of data between Drupal and your component library can still be quite complicated and difficult to coordinate on larger cross-functional teams.  

3:45 PM-4:30 PM

Module & Architecture Development + Drupal Composer, Custom Entities, and Plugins

architecture / backend development
Intermediate

Watch the session video here.

We'll review some of my findings while learning and building web applications in Drupal 8.

We'll go over architecture options for web applications built in Drupal 8. Modern PHP dependency management with Composer, Content Entities vs Nodes and when each is appropriate. We'll look at some excellent combinations of contrib modules and glue code to create flexible architectures.

Who is this for?

4:45 PM-5:30 PM

Configuration Workflow Automation

site building / process / devops
Intermediate

Watch the session video here.

Configuration management has only gotten more complex as Drupal 8 has matured. With Config 2.0 going full speed ahead, some improvements are coming. Unfortunately, our dream of being able to save configuration directly to files won't happen, and the community has created complex workflows to work around the problem of storing configuration in the database.

But, the workflow has been automated for you in Contrib.

October 27

10:15 AM-11:00 AM

11:15 AM-12:00 PM

Beyond Herding Cats: Lessons for Project Management in a Small Agency

being human / people management / project management
Beginner

I have found that most project management resources and education are geared towards large companies. Small agencies have their own specific challenges, and this is especially true for project managers.

As the lead PM for two small agencies (< 3 developers per team), I've learned a lot about how to scale down processes and streamline meetings for smaller teams. In this session, I'd like to share what I've learned.

Drupal 8 Custom Module Architecture: What’s Going On?

backend development / architecture / php
Beginner

Watch the session video here.

It is all fun and games modifying existing code, but what about when you have to venture out to unknown waters and create your own custom module? Don’t worry! We can get through this together!

This talk is a deep dive into creating custom modules from scratch, and the role of each component in the final product.

Feeds UI + Migrate Engine = Dream Migrations and Imports

backend development / process / community
Intermediate

Feeds and Migrate were two primary contrib modules used for data import since early versions of Drupal.  Quick comparison of two modules: Feeds module has great friendly UI that allows site builders configure and import data, Migrate is built for developers with power to perform complex backend data processing but UI for this module was less than ideal.

In D8 migrate module is in core to support one-click upgrades from earlier Drupal versions – great news. In the hallway of Baltimore DrupalCon maintainers of Feeds and Migrate started conversation about using migrate engine to power Feeds UI – seems to be a win-win solution for everyone – developers, site builders, content managers, end users. 

Which Accessibility Tools are Right for You?

front end development / process
Beginner

Watch the session video here.

As an organization who needs to step up their accessibility compliance, accessibility testing and remediation is a big deal.

Accessibility testing has a lot of moving parts! There are so many tools. So many! Plugins, suites, crawlers, dashboards, CI tests, and more.

1:30 PM-2:15 PM

Four Brain Hacks to Manage Clients and Win

leadership / people management / being human
Intermediate

Watch the session video here.

(ALL skill levels – *Not* a technical talk.)

That heart-attack-moment. Your client is freaking-out, right now; right in your face with a full-blown meltdown! At the end of it all they always ask that same question, "So what are you going to do about this!?..."

Friendly Stalking: Learning from your users (without being creepy)

ux / content strategy / site building
Beginner

Watch the session video here.

As site owners, it’s impossible for us to serve our users better without knowing a little bit about them -- what’s working for them, and what isn’t. There are a number of high-impact but unobtrusive ways to learn more about how users interact with your site and your brand. In fact, you might be surprised at the information you can learn about your users with nothing more than Google Analytics.

2:30 PM-3:15 PM

Do you rebuild in Drupal 8, or Wait? Going from Drupal 7 to 8 or 9

ux / architecture / drupal core
Beginner

Watch the session video here.

The average lifespan of a website is 3 years.  Drupal 7 will be end-of-life in 3 years. 

If your site is in Drupal 7 you are likely asking yourself what to do. Is it time to start from scratch and rebuild, or can you maximize what you have?

There are lots of options and in this session, we will cover how to: 

3:45 PM-4:30 PM

Demystifying Pattern Libraries and Drupal 8

front end development / design / beyond drupal
Intermediate

Watch the session video here.

Pattern libraries (living style guides) have existed for years as a way to formalize design systems across applications. In the past year or so a number of compelling modules and themes have emerged to integrate pattern libraries with Drupal 8.

Maximum PhpStorm

php / backend development / front end development
Beginner

Watch the session video here.

As developers we struggle everyday to solve problems and we rely on development tools to help us puzzle through those problems. Years ago, I adopted PhpStorm to augment my skills and in doing so I've learned a lot of ways how to gain the most out of the tool.

Come as we break through the levels of complexity and level up your skills as we talk about: