DrupalCon Amsterdam 2014

Doei Doei, DrupalCon Amsterdam

leighc — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:04:51 +0000

This post was originally shared on the Drupal Association blog.

DrupalCon Amsterdam has wrapped up, and now that we're over the jet lag, it's time to look back on one of the most successful DrupalCons to date. DrupalCon Amsterdam was the largest European DrupalCon yet, by far. Just to knock your socks off, here are some numbers:

More than 2,300 attendees showed up to 120 sessions and nearly 100 BoFs
115 attendees showed up to the community summit and the business summit
146 training attendees, 400 trivia night attendees, and 400 Friday sprinters made the week a success
…and through it all, we ate 1,200 stroopwafels.

The fun extended to more than just the conference -- with 211 transit passes and 56 bike rentals, attendees from over 64 countries were able to enjoy all the city of Amsterdam had to offer. What a success!
As with any DrupalCon, DrupalCon Amsterdam wouldn't have been a success without lots and lots of help from our passionate volunteers. We'd like to take a moment to send out a big THANK YOU to all of our track chairs and summit organizers:

Pedro Cambra - Coding and Development
Théodore Biadala - Core Conversations
Steve Parks - Drupal Business
Lewis Nyman and Ruben Teijeiro - Frontend
Michael Schmid - Site Building
Bastian Widmer - DevOps
Cathy Theys, Ruben Teijeiro, Gábor Hojtsy and the Core Mentors - Sprints
Adam Hill and Ieva Uzule - Onsite Volunteer Coordinators
Baris Wanschers - Social Media
Emma Jane Westby - Business Summit
Morten Birch and Addison Berry - Community Summit

We also appreciate everything our core mentors did to make DrupalCon Amsterdam a hit — and it’s thanks to lots of hard work from our passionate community members that Drupal 8 is in Beta!
We hope you had as fun and exiting a time in Amsterdam as we did. For those of us who weren’t able to make it, and even for those who were, you can relive the fun on the flickr stream, or catch any number of great sessions on the Drupal Association YouTube channel. And remember to mark your calendar for DrupalCon Barcelona in September 2015. See you there! Below is Holly Ross' set of slides from the Amsterdam closing session.

DrupalCon Amsterdam Closing Session from DrupalAssociation
Image credit to Pedro Lozano on Flickr.

DrupalCon Amsterdam Kicks Off!

leighc — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:21:16 +0000

It's time for DrupalCon Amsterdam! We're excited to welcome more than 2,000 developers, designers, IT professionals and business executives from all over the world to Drupal’s largest-ever event in Europe.

We're especially excited to celebrate the progress made toward a Drupal 8 release. All critical “beta blocker” issues have been fixed and a beta version of Drupal 8 is the next step. Drupal 8 is full of promising improvements for developers, site builders, themers, IT professionals and marketers, and we can't wait to get it ready for the world.

Watch DrupalCon Live

DrupalCon Amsterdam will open this morning with a keynote from Dries Buytaert at 9:00 CEST -- but if you aren't in Amsterdam, don't worry! You can catch a live stream of the keynote (and Prenote!) here, courtesy of Brightcove.

The keynote promises to be fantastic -- Dries will discuss Drupal 8, as well as new ideas for how project contributors can be recognized. The Wednesday keynote will be excellent, as author and activist Cory Doctorow will take the stage to talk about net neutrality, privacy, and security. Doctorow’s keynote will be followed by a book signing.

View the full live stream schedule.

Looking Back on Monday in Amsterdam

leighc — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:06:47 +0000

We’re kicking off DrupalCon Amsterdam this evening, and our day of training and summits has been a huge success. At registration, over 900 badges were picked up, and this evening, the exhibit hall's opening reception promises to be a great bash.

We had more than 150 attendees show up for training, while the community summit and business summit both drew over 115 attendees apiece. The rockstars in our community also built some fantastic DrupalCon apps:

One Shoe built an app for Android and iPhone
Lemberg also built an app for Android and iPhone.

Remember that the fun starts tomorrow bright and early! The Prenote will kick off the day of sessions & more at 8:00 - we recommend showing up to the Prenote to get a great seat for Dries’ keynote. (Plus, it’s fun!)

We hope you have a great time here in Amsterdam, and we’re looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

DrupalCon Amsterdam is almost here

stephelhajj — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 10:09:41 +0000

It’s the Friday before DrupalCon Amsterdam, and we couldn’t be more excited for what’s in store. As we prepare to dive headlong into a week filled with fun, friends, and Drupal, there are a few things that all DrupalCon attendees (and would-be attendees) need to be aware of.

Late pricing ends today

At 23:59 tonight, ticket pricing will move to onsite prices. You’ll still be able to register for tickets online, but in order to get the late pricing you must register to attend DrupalCon Amsterdam before midnight tonight Amsterdam time.

DrupalCon Amsterdam is our biggest European DrupalCon yet

We’re thrilled to announce that over 2,000 people have registered to attend DrupalCon Amsterdam, which makes it our biggest European DrupalCon to date. With so many people signed up to attend, there will be tons of opportunities to network, learn, and make new friends.

The fun starts before Tuesday

Excited to get the DrupalCon party started? Many of our amazing community members are starting the celebration early: the Tour de Drupal is cruising across Europe, and a student training with over 200 attendees is happening right now, thanks to the local Dutch community.

We wish you safe travels on your way to Amsterdam. Whether you’re taking a plane, a train, a bike, a boat, or some other method of transportation, we hope that you have a fun and safe trip, and we can’t wait to celebrate the best community in Open Sourced with you.

See you in Amsterdam!

Win €100 to the Drupal Store

leighc — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 21:32:24 +0000

We're excited about the great swag we've got at the Drupal store-- so excited that we're going to award a €100 gift card to a lucky winner at DrupalCon Amsterdam!

Here's how it works.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we are going to hide puzzle pieces around the RAI Convention center. (You can find pictures of each piece's hiding place below!) If you find one of the puzzle pieces, bring it by the Drupal Association Booth in the exhibit hall.

We'll write your name and contact information on the back, and once the puzzle is complete-- or, at lunch on Thursday, whichever happens first-- we will select a lucky winner and award him or her with a €100 gift card!

Pro tip: during the hours the exhibit floor is open, we'll use the @DrupalAssoc Twitter handle to send out pictures of where the puzzle pieces are hidden. Keep your eye on that handle so you can have a shot at finding one of the pieces and winning the prize!

Note: there are only 15 puzzle pieces, so the odds of winning are great. Limit one puzzle piece per person.

Questions?

Come by the Drupal Association booth next to the bookstore or email Leigh Carver with any questions you may have.

Good luck!

Here's where the next puzzle pieces are hidden:

Call for Drupal Lightning Talks: Now is your chance to showcase the power of Drupal!

stephelhajj — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 10:03:27 +0000

Lightning talks are already a crowd favorite at other conferences and camps (think O'Reilly's Ignite!), so your DrupalCon track chairs have decided to bring them to DrupalCon Amsterdam!

Drupal powers the best in the web, and what better way to showcase how far we've come with Drupal than during DrupalCon, bright and early on Thursday morning? That's right, this special event will be taking the place of our Thursday Keynote.

What are lightning talks?

Lightning talks are 5 minute presentations about anything you think would be of interest to the DrupalCon audience and can be Drupal-specific OR web-based. Here are just some ideas:

Why I really love X module
Cool web tools I use every day
I really need X, and I've build a module for it
Did you know that you can do X with Y (Module, Theme, PHP, ...)?
The biggest fails of my projects in the last year
This technique I use is the best, and here's why
Don't use this technique, and here's why

These talks are short and not meant to be micro-sessions with a lot of slides and details. These talks should be stripped down to the basic points, the really spectacular bits, as you've only got 5 minutes to present. Keep it interesting and keep it short - the clock will be ticking!

I want to give a lightning talk

Interested in giving a lightning talk? Awesome. We suggest reading the following articles which outline what a great talk encompasses:

Currently 8 speaking slots (5 min each) are available. The DrupalCon Amsterdam track chairs select the talks and will be announcing selected speakers Wednesday morning before the keynote (if not sooner).

I want to attend

Great, this event will be something really new for a DrupalCon and we hope you'll support it! Join us in the Auditorium at the RAI at 09:00 on Thursday and listen to some inspirational talks! If you can't participate in person, you can still join in the action. We will be streaming this event, and our other keynote presentations, in real time. View the live stream schedule for the week.

Help spread the word

If you have a friend or colleague who will be attending DrupalCon Amsterdam and would be great on stage, be sure to let them know about this event and where to sign up.

Send a tweet

Join In On the Bicycling Fun in Amsterdam

leighc — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 18:26:13 +0000

In the immortal words of Queen: “all I wanna do is bicycle!” If you’re heck on two wheels and love nothing more than the feeling of the wind on your face and ground whizzing underneath your wheels, you may want to consider joining in the Tour de Drupal leading up to DrupalCon Amsterdam.

Drupalers from countries all across Europe are teaming up for the Tour de Drupal, an epic bike ride from the UK and Switzerland to Amsterdam. Taking place the weekend before DrupalCon Amsterdam, the triumphant arrival of the Drupalcyclistas is expected on Sunday, September 28th between 4 and 5 PM at Eta Vondelpark in Amsterdam.

It’s not too late to join in on the bike ride, where you can find information here. Of course, if cross-country bicycling doesn’t do it for you but you still want to cruise around with a crew of awesome folks, consider renting a Yellow Bike during DrupalCon Amsterdam. For €50, you can rent a bike, a bike helmet, two bike locks, a bike map of greater Amsterdam, and insurance. The rental is from Monday-Friday. You can find more information here or order a bike directly.

There are a lot of passionate bikers in the Drupal community— and we all care about our causes, too. Irish Tour de Drupaler Alan Burke is combining his love of biking and charity by participating in a two-day, 360 kilometer cycle around Galway for charity. For more information about Alan’s ride, click here.

Regardless of whether you fly, bike, or take a train— we’re looking forward to seeing you in Amsterdam.

Image by Sonny Abesamis on Flickr.

DrupalCon for Designers

stephelhajj — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 09:54:13 +0000

Unlike DrupalCon Austin, there is no separate UX track at DrupalCon Amsterdam. Ruben and I had to balance both design and development into one track. It was challenging, but it forced us to be really careful about every decision remade.

We really wanted there to be an overlap between sessions, frontend development and design are closer than ever in the workplace, so we wanted to reflect that in our session line up.

Here are a few sessions we think complement each other really well.

The State of the Frontend

Not sure what to learn or where to start in frontend development? Let David and Brian guide you through the landscape, introducing new tools and techniques.

We've also planned this session as an introduction to the entire track, pointing signposts towards other sessions in that track that can fill in more in-depth knowledge about particular subjects. I would encourage everyone with an interest in frontend development to attend the session if only to better understand which sessions in the frontend track are right for them.

We also have a few session that compliment and feed in to each other. Here are a few sessions we think work really well together.

Because it's about the interactions. (Better UX through prototyping) & Axure Prototyping for Drupal

How do we shift from an old design process to a new one while keeping our clients and team members happy? Roy Scholten, UX co-maintainer for Drupal Core, walks us through why prototyping is a better way to design and how to introduce this into your work life.

Then, in Axure Prototyping for Drupal, Dani Nordin takes us on a deep dive of Axure, a prototyping tool you can use without coding. I've been using it recently on a client project and I've been impressed with the way it introduces some concepts of frontend development without asking you to write code.

The Future of HTML and CSS

As a designer, knowing the limits and capabilities of your medium is important, also it means you can call your developers out when they hit you with “That's not possible” which is fun. If you're interested in seeing where web browsers are heading and finding new tricks to add to your repertoire, Preston's talk on The Future of HTML and CSS should be a treat.

Getting a CLUE at the Command Line

As a designer/front-end dev, I've never had a formal education on the command line, it's always been something I've picked up as I've needed it. It used to scare me. This is me using the command line a few years ago:

I'm so happy Emma Jane is talking on the command line in Getting a CLUE at the Command Line in the same vein as her introduction to Git at DrupalCon Prague last year. The command line is an immensely powerful and productive tool and I'm looking forward to picking up a few tips.

Open Source Design

Something I've struggled with, both in my day job and as the maintainer of Drupal's admin theme is how do we bring successful design together with Open Source. I'm really happy that Jan-C. Borchardt, agreed to speak at DrupalCon and share his knowledge and experience with us. Jan is a big supporter of usability and design in free and open source software, with projects including A guide to Usability in Free Software, OwnCloud, Libre Projects, and the brilliant Terms of Service; Didn't Read.

It's really important for Drupal for us to gain insight from people outside the community and learn from other projects. Thanks again Jan for agreeing to speak! I can't wait!

--
Lewis Nyman (LewisNyman)
DrupalCon Amsterdam Frontend Track Chair

Training spotlight: Introduction to Headless Drupal

stephelhajj — Fri, 12 Sep 2014 12:47:09 +0000

We know Drupal is an amazing platform for making websites. But did you know it’s also a world-class content API that can easily be integrated with a other technologies?

In Introduction to Headless Drupal you'll write your first Node.js application(s) and learn how to integrate Node.js's real-time wizardry into Drupal's content management magic.

Meet the Trainers from Four Kitchens

Matt Grill (drpal) Engineer at Four Kitchens
Matt taught himself HTML in 1996 while making a fansite for The Simpsons, even though he’s never actually watched the show. Matt’s interests in technology range from Arduino to automation and deployment. Matt currently maintains Is It Shaking?, a Node.js powered app for tracking and analysing earthquakes worldwide, Is It Shaking?. He has been working with JavaScript for nearly 10 years.

Michal Minecki (mirzu) Director of Technology at Four Kitchens
Mike Minecki has been building websites since 1999, and has been working with Node.js and Drupal for about a year. He has worked on www.drupalpoetry.com, a responsive web game that mimics the experience of playing with magnetic poetry on the web. He has taught Node.js in Austin and San Francisco, and has been speaking at events around the country about how to integrate Node.js and Drupal.

Attend this Drupal Training

This training will be held on Monday, 29 September from 09:00-17:00 at the Amsterdam RAI during DrupalCon Amsterdam. The cost of attending this training is €400 and includes training materials, meals and coffee breaks.

Many of our training courses, including Introduction to Headless Drupal, are nearing capacity and we will not have waitlists, so if you are planning to attend, we strongly recommend you register this week.

Training spotlight: Design, Prototype, and Style in Browser

stephelhajj — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:31:57 +0000

Design, Prototype, and Style in Browser (formerly Advanced Sass and Compass for RWD) is back! One of our most popular courses returns, with even more great new content - and now is your chance to attend this training at DrupalCon Amsterdam!

With more mobile device activations per day than human births and full internet browsers coming to television sets and gaming consoles (both home and portable), the old techniques we have used to create pixel-perfect sites for desktop audiences have already become a thing of the past.

We will explore content strategy as a method for designing responsive websites, building separate components and layouts, and will emphasize creating DRY code. We will dive deep into the power of Sass and Compass and a handful of JavaScript tools and how they can be utilized for your growing website. These tools can ease much of the hard work related to creating truly awesome responsive websites.

Meet the Trainers from Four Kitchens

Chris Ruppel (rupl) and Ian Carrico (iamcarrico) are Frontend and Backend developers at Four Kitchens respectively. Both are well-known in the Drupal community as both RWD and Sass experts, having trained and spoken at numerous events around the world, including Portland, Denver, New York, Austin, San Francisco, and Munich, Germany.

Neither are strangers to community contribution: Ian maintains the Aurora base theme and Magic module and contributes to many RWD-related Compass extensions such as Toolkit, Singularity, and Breakpoint. Chris maintains the Modernizr module and has contributed to Modernizr, the Drupal 8 HTML5/Mobile initiatives, and the Drupal.org D7 upgrade.