Thunder - A D8 Distribution for the Publishing Industry

In this session, Burda Magazine Holding’s CTO Ingo Rübe and Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire explain how a major German publishing house is addressing digital transformation while becoming a major Drupal contributor and attracting new partners to the Drupal/publishing ecosphere.

The publishing industry--print- and paper-based for centuries--has been undergoing rapid change. Burda Media, a German publishing house responsible for hundreds of magazine titles in Europe and around the world, is determined not only to grow new business, but to lead the way in the digital era. Burda is embracing digital transformation in business and technology and becoming a major Drupal consumer and contributor. Thunder is a Drupal 8 distribution, tailored to the needs of today’s publishers now and tomorrow, and available to them to adopt and further improve.

Burda is migrating the digital footprint of most of its titles to Drupal 8 and Thunder’s feature set is growing and evolving apace to meet their various needs. The Thunder distribution is open source; all of its features and functionality are available to anyone who wants to benefit from Burda’s industry experience and help establish a culture of sharing CMS knowledge in the industry.

The Thunder coalition - Burda is working on Thunder in coalition with a growing list of publishing houses, contributing to Drupal to further expand and improve what they intend to be the industry standard in digital publishing. Furthermore, Burda has also invited a handpicked set of industry partners to build Drupal 8 integrations and offer--some for the first time--freemium versions of their products and solutions. Small publishers can take advantage of these best-of-breed solutions at no cost, and the solution providers gain access to the publishing industry.

• What are the current feature-needs of a publishing industry in dramatic change?
• What Drupal 8 modules address these needs and who is making new contributions to Drupal?
• Initial experiences implementing Thunder and working with it day to day across several digital properties.
• Roadmap, open issues, the feature request process
• Invitation to join the Thunder coalition.

Presenters:

• Ingo Rübe, CTO - Burda Magazine Holding
• Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire - Evangelist, Acquia