Let's be human at DrupalCon
Being human comes with a broad spectrum of emotions and experiences. Amongst the hustle and bustle of life, we often forget that we are only human.
The Being Human track stands proud amongst all of the other techie tracks at DrupalCon. We put the software and tools aside to put the spotlight on the human beings who are behind it all.
Here are the main topics that we invite you to speak about.
Happy, healthy, diverse teams
Drupal is a worldwide community. It enables us to gather together from all over the world and collaborate on projects. How do you embrace the diversity, join together and make it work?
Hard deadlines, blockers and setbacks can be tough. Every team experiences tough situations. The Drupal community faced many battles during the development of Drupal 8. How do we overcome challenges, learn from the past and move forward?
We want to hear about your teams. How are they successful? How did you get setup? Is it possible to build and sustain a happy, healthy team?
Interacting with other human beings
Life involves a *lot* of interaction with other humans. Nowadays you can interact and respond to communication extremely fast online. You can skim through blog posts, conversations, tweets and instantly type out and post quick reactions online. This inevitably leads to possible miscommunication, wrong interpretation and conflict between humans.
Human beings are now contactable 24/7 absolutely anywhere in the world. It’s all too easy to not forget that we are all different and we have no real concept of what is happening in each other's lives when we are online.
The Being Human track has a big space for helping others learn more about communication, share best practices and discuss how we can improve within companies or the Drupal community.
Looking after ourselves and others
Many of us pour all of our energy into our jobs, our families, our hobbies and into Drupal; sometimes all of these things at once.
A company or community may ask you to step up and take on big things that may push you physically and mentally. It could be taking charge of a project, travel, making decisions, speaking out to an audience, or being present at events.
How can we manage these things and still look after ourselves?
There are many aspects in our jobs and within the Drupal community that can drain us and many people have physical or mental health issues that they need to manage on top of all of their tasks and responsibilities. How can we better support this?
This track humbly invites speakers to be open and honest about their challenges and experiences with looking after themselves and others. And to be most proud of what they have overcome or achieved to date.
We also need strong reminders that human beings simply cannot achieve everything. We are however able to mentor and support each other to try and provide benefit to a project without pushing humans too far. This track welcomes sessions that can provide advice to support (not sustain!) the hectic lifestyles and projects that we place ourselves in.
Being human in open source
We want to celebrate human success within the Drupal community.
How did you find your place in the community? How has the Drupal community changed your life? What are the benefits of contributing with others?
Do you organise events that go out of their way to support attendees? Does your role in the community have a positive impact on humans? We want to hear about it!
And finally we look at the broad (but very necessary topic) of, how can we better support the community with contribution? The community needs your help.
Now go submit a session!
Well done for making it to the end of this post! We hope something piqued your interest.
Please remember that you have until the 6th July 2016 at 23:59 (UTC +1) to submit a session.
You can find the track description and a full list of suggested topics here and you can propose a session here.
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Emma Karayiannis
Being Human Track Chair
DrupalCon Dublin