Session Tracks

Tracks are a series of sessions sorted by topic which span in experience level from beginner to advanced. Sessions are 60 minutes unless otherwise noted.

Business and Strategy

The Business and Strategy track is for professionals looking to understand Drupal from an executive’s perspective. Learn how to sell, plan, estimate, manage, and deliver Drupal services and products in a competitive market. Sessions in this track will be non-technical in nature.

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • Making a strong case for adopting Drupal products and/or services
  • Understanding the RFP process: how to build and select top-tier proposals
  • "What's my ROI?" Showcasing the value of investing in Drupal (and open source)
  • Scope, strategy, and requirements management
  • Methodologies to maintain control over the systems development lifecycle
  • Implementing best practices for client communication
  • Recruiting and retaining talent and building healthy teams

Coding and Development

With Drupal 8 hurtling towards completion and the fantastic growth and availability of evolving web technologies, this is an exciting time to engage with one of the world’s largest open-source development communities. The DrupalCon Los Angeles 2015 Coding and Development track is focused on preparing developers for the future of Drupal and the expanding web software universe.

Topics include preparation for and participation in Drupal 8; engagement with other frameworks and technologies; high performance and large scale development experiences; and exploring the advantages of participating in open-source culture. Come share the vast wealth of knowledge and lessons learned and collaborate with other engineers from around the world!

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • Drupal 8
    • The conversion is beginning!
    • Tools and techniques for upgrading modules
    • What both beginner and experienced developers should know
    • How to get involved
  • Engaging with the wider Coding and Development universe
    • Symfony / Frameworks
    • Node.js / Angular / Backbone and others
    • Headless Drupal - leveraging the backend
    • OOP standards, namespaces, injection
    • PSR standards & why you should care
    • Design patterns
  • Coding for performance
    • Caching
    • Code and query optimizations, performance analysis, performance best practices (e.g. are you adding async or defer to your drupal_add_js?)
    • Case study would be ideal
    • PHP internals; how it works, how to optimize
  • The cultural component to Coding and Development
    • Collaboration over going it alone
    • Best practices & standards (includes testing)
    • Mentoring & multiplication - how to grow your dev team and get more done
    • Disruptive open source - the business politics for opening proprietary projects up, replacing commercial with open source

Core Conversations

Core Conversations are a place for people actively working on and contributing to Drupal core to meet, discuss and plan the future of Drupal.

This is the place for big ideas about the future of Drupal, as well as discussions about where we want to go, and how we're going to get there. Where regular tracks and sessions focus on the present and immediate future, Core Conversations are about long-term.

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • Targeted, specific proposals for improvements to:
    • Drupal core
    • The Drupal development process
    • The Drupal community management process
  • Further proposals for how Drupal can get further "off the island" and more actively embrace the broader PHP community
  • How Drupal can embrace the cutting edge of web development tools while still maintaining broad support for the "click-together" developer

DevOps

With Drupal entering the enterprise and with more components defining our stack, we want to ensure that we can still empower developers to easily create their web applications. Moreover, we want to make sure their project is going to actually work in the real world. Actually working can mean a lot of things:

  • Satisfying client requirements
  • Ensuring the application runs quickly
  • Making sure that the application works on a variety of browsers/devices
  • Establishing an application that is easy for a new developer to start working on it
  • Verifying that the application can be easily and consistently deployed

The DevOps track will provide a wide range of talks curated for experienced Systems Engineers to learn about new and exciting tools and techniques. It will also provide new-comers with an introduction to why the world of DevOps makes the difference between stifled and empowered developers.

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • CI Tools (Jenkins, Bamboo, etc)
  • Testing Frameworks (Behat, PHPUnit, PhantomJS, etc)
  • Front end testing tools (Mink, PhantomJS, CasperJS, etc)
  • Front end build tools (Yeoman, Bower, Gulp, etc)
  • Performance benchmark tools (xdebug, kcachegrind, etc)
  • Local provisioning tools (Vagrant, Docker w/ Chef/Puppet/Ansible/etc)
  • Automated development/deployment of environments and/or software
  • Other command line tools (Drush, Symfony/D8 Console, etc)
  • Server infrastructure with Drupal as a service

Drupal.org - New!

The Drupal.org track is a collection of sessions about Drupal.org the website. The Drupal Association Engineering Team will attend the sessions to provide feedback and participate in discussions. Community members leading Drupal.org-related initiatives are welcome to submit sessions to share progress on their initiatives, solicit community feedback, and attract more volunteers to help push their initiatives forward.

If you are an experienced Drupal.org volunteer and you’d like to pitch an idea for Drupal.org; would like to help with and/or start an initiative, your submissions are also welcome. Make sure that your idea is ready and well-thought-out, with a clear use case and benefit for the community. Include a detailed description in your session submission and links to previous discussions / posts about the idea.

These are examples of the sessions we are seeking for this track

  • Drupal.org Testbot 2.0. What's coming next?
  • Supporting Drupal 8 translations on localize.drupal.org
  • Making issue queues better for mentoring; merging http://drupalmentoring.org/ with Drupal.org
  • Improving Drupal.org documentation; plans from the Documentation Working Group.
  • Managing large initiatives on Drupal.org: How we do it? How can we improve?

Drupal Showcase

The Drupal Showcase track is your chance to spotlight the great new Drupal sites and projects you've created for clients, to show what's possible, and to inspire. Be prepared to show the inner-workings of the project, who participated, the process and methodology, the problem or opportunity you addressed, and best of all, how it was all made possible with Drupal!

Make sure that you have informed (and received consent from) all parties involved in the project. Don’t surprise your clients!

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • Breaking new ground, and redefining what’s possible
  • Solving problems with Drupal
  • Creative or inventive solutions

Front End

Front End practice has grown and continues to expand at a blistering pace, both inside and outside of Drupal. How can developers keep up and marry the best of front end practice with the best of what Drupal offers?

In the end, the web is just HTML, CSS and Javascript, but the road from idea to rendered page is complex; the tools and methods we use to build the modern interface are more varied and powerful than ever before.

In our responsive, componentized, decoupled, touch-first, mobile-first, test-driven, designed-in-the-browser world, what does it mean to be a Front End Developer and what does it take to be a successful one? What is our relationship with our tools, our best practices, and Drupal?

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • Front end development tools and techniques
  • The maturation of front end as an engineering practice
  • Front end practices outside of the Drupal world
  • Existing and emerging technical standards (Web components, Flexbox, Javascript)
  • Current and developing best practices (BEM/OOCSS, static prototyping, design in browser, progressive enhancement)
  • Front end in the D8 era
  • Performance
  • Frontiers of UX engineering (interaction patterns, ‘mobile’, ‘responsive’)
  • Sustainable patterns of development
  • And most importantly -- Why are we doing this? What do we hope to achieve? Why, as a Front ender, use Drupal at all?

Site Building

Learn how to create a dynamic and engaging Drupal experience, from quick page layouts to contextual displays. Drupal has the ability to produce endless representations of your data and content, even providing that content to other systems through APIs. Take advantage of the wide array of contributed modules and create amazing functionality without writing one line of custom code.

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • Distributions for quick starts
  • Drush for Site Builders - Scared of the command line? We’ll show you why you shouldn’t be.
  • Building Securely - You’ve built your site, but how can you be sure it’s safe?
  • Commerce without Code - Build e-commerce sites with tools already in your toolbox
  • Surviving as a solo member of a Drupal team.
  • Drupal as a content API - Another application needs your data? No problem.
  • Complex data interactions through configuration

User Experience Design

UX design forms the foundation of all interactions on the web. It’s inherent in all aspects of production - from strategy to design to development. Whether you identify yourself as a UX practitioner or not, any part of the web that you touch affects the user’s experience. This track will focus on the rich ecosphere of elements that compose the user experience design. Conceptual thinkers, strategists, decision makers, content creators, designers and developers are encouraged to present topics on their area of expertise.

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • UX process and techniques
  • Strategy and planning
  • Content strategy
  • Visual design
  • Usability
  • Integrated and holistic marketing methodologies

Symfony

The Symfony track is dedicated to exploring the Symfony Components that build Drupal 8. Learn from the Symfony core team new and elegant approaches to coding with PHP. Enhance your knowledge of the Symfony components and understand how Drupal8 runs, save time when you code.  Join industry leading experts for a full day of Symfony, Drupal, Twig, and PHP talks. Whether you're a Symfony aficionado or a novice eager to learn more, this track will have something for everyone.

If you are an experienced Symfony developer submitting a talk, don’t forget to adapt your talk from a Drupal perspective, to let the Drupal community understand as much as possible the Symfony ecosystem and components.

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics

  • ClassLoader
  • DependencyInjection
  • EventDispatcher
  • HttpFoundation
  • HttpKernel
  • Routing
  • Serializer
  • Validator
  • Yaml
  • Assetic
  • Forms

This track is hosted by SensioLabs.

Business Showcase

For companies serious about growth in today's world, having the right suite of tools and knowledge of current trends is critical. Come hear sponsored business-level content and meet with Drupal businesses to fill up your toolbox with helpful resources from leaders in our industry.

This track is for curated sponsor content and is not open to general submissions. To inquire about paid speaking opportunities, contact our sales team.