Tracks

From sessions that teach you how to create ambitious digital experiences with Drupal to case studies that highlight the power of Drupal solutions, we are looking for session proposals that highlight the art of the possible.

If you are interested in submitting a session proposal, please read below to determine the appropriate track and make sure to read up on what that track is looking for and tailor your submission to fit. Please also review the Speaker Agreement before starting your submission.

The following tracks are a collection of sessions sorted by topic which span in experience level from beginner to advanced. Sessions will range in time with both 25-minute and 60-minute options available.

Back End Development

This track is about what makes a Drupal site tick - the underlying PHP code, the database, and anything that powers the site. Examples include process workflows, tools, code review, and whatever else supports the long term success of an engagement. With Drupal 8 having been out for some time, preference will be given to sessions that focus on Drupal 8.

Demonstrate how you are leveraging OOP, Symfony, & PHP 7 in Drupal 8
Explain how you handle debugging, improve performance, or write tests for your site in Drupal
Share something exciting or teach something useful that we haven’t seen before, such as a difficult problem that you’ve encountered and think others can learn from

Being Human

The Drupal community is comprised of a diverse group of individuals, all of whom bring their own unique life experiences, backgrounds, challenges, and motivations. Rather than focus on toolsets, software, or processes, Being Human invites speakers to explore the personal side of Drupal-- who are we, and what do we care about? Share tools to be the healthiest you when working with others - either in an opensource community or at a job. How do we thrive both personally and professionally, in a world that is aggressively fast-paced, and fraught with conflict and stress?

We invite speakers to share their stories, strategies, and solutions related to themes such as:

Health and Well-being;
Personal and Professional Growth; and
Empathy and Communication

Business

The Business track is aimed at attendees looking for actionable advice and ideas from business owners, operators, and executives on how to manage and grow their Drupal business successfully. Sessions in this track will be non-technical, aimed at generating ideas and inspiration for recruiting and hiring, company culture, sales and marketing, digital strategy, and products and service offerings. Panels are welcome, but preference will be given to individuals sharing direct experience: story-driven narratives that provide in-depth lessons learned.

Building Community

Together we’re building something better than any of us could do on our own. Through meetups, camps, collaboration, and code, we are creating a powerful and innovative tool to build digital experiences.

We are looking for talks to inspire attendees to learn and discover ways in which we can strengthen and grow our community. How can we provide safe and inclusive spaces where everyone feels welcome and is empowered to do their best? What roles can each of us can play in creating the community we aspire to be?

Ideas for session topics:

Talks about diversity, inclusion, culture, values, ethics, accessibility, or biases
Community governance, creating and enforcing a code of conduct
Organizing camps and meetings, recruiting and encouraging dedicated volunteering

Content and Editorial

The heart of the web is communication, and DrupalCon's Content and Editorial track is all about planning, building, and managing content that matters. Whether you're designing site maps and content models, looking for better tools to help content editors do their work, or trying to bridge the gaps between design, development, and marketing, these sessions will provide you with strategies and techniques you need to help your CMS projects succeed.

Suggested topics:

Content strategy: Modeling, managing, and measuring the raw material of your site
Editorial tools: Building better tools for content creators and managers

Core Conversations

Core Conversations are a way for active and prospective core contributors to share their ideas about Drupal core and Drupal.org. 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 typically focus more on the present, Core Conversations focus on the longer-term.

Suggested topics:

Core improvements to increase Drupal 8 adoption by developers
Functionality to better compete with content management and framework competitors
Approaches for long-term maintainability and health for both code and contributors

DevOps

How we develop our Drupal sites has changed significantly in the last few years. Composer based workflows, containerized local dev, automated testing, continuous deployment and other good DevOps practices are no longer “nice-to-haves” but business critical parts of every development cycle. Come learn how to deploy better quality code both fast and frequently and unlock new efficiencies and value for your business or organization.

Suggested topics:

Composer based workflows (e.g. GitHub, Bitbucket, Gitlab)
Automated testing and continuous delivery/deployment (e.g. Travis and CircleCI)
Why my business or organization should adopt DevOps practices
Best tools and practices for DevOps

Front End Development

Front end development is concerned with crafting the parts of a website or application that face the user. With the proliferation of new user interfaces across a multitude of devices, along with an ever-growing toolbox to choose from, the front end has never been more exciting or complex. As a result, modern front ends involve an increasingly broad spectrum of technologies, extending beyond simple HTML, CSS and Javascript and require a depth of expertise in languages, tools, process, and a bit of imagination as well.

Suggested topics:

Front end JavaScript frameworks and Drupal (headless/decoupled)
Integration of design patterns and style guide/CSS frameworks with Drupal themes (component-based design and development, etc)
Testing, automation, build processes, and the front end (visual regression testing, JS unit testing)

Horizons

Websites are not the only way users engage with the internet, and a homepage is no longer a user’s first touchpoint. From digital assistants to virtual realities, engaging on every channel is the only way to reach your entire market. Powering these digital experiences is critical to keeping Drupal relevant, but what can a content management system do outside of the browser?

In the Horizons track, we look for sessions that cover the future of Drupal and the open web. Here are some examples of topics we’d be interested in:

How Drupal can power user experiences across multiple channels
Bleeding-edge technologies that Drupal should take advantage of
The future of how users engage with digital businesses, governments, schools, brands, and more

PHP

This track aims to explore the world beyond Drupal to learn from—and contribute back to—the broader, richer PHP community. With Composer and the explosion of reusable PHP libraries, like Symfony components, projects are now able to save development time and focus on specialized features. We are also interested in learning how to abstract our Drupal code so that it can be used by other PHP projects.

Suggested topics:

Adoption and sharing of PHP libraries.
Modern PHP application development.
What is new in Symfony 4? How do you upgrade? Other related topics such as Symfony Flex, Symfony Recipes, Twig, etc.

Project Management

The Project Management track unpacks what it means to produce something of value for someone. While Drupal is an amazingly flexible system for building complex solutions, how do we determine what solutions to produce? How do we understand what “done” means? How do we communicate expectations or make commitments when we can’t predict the future? How do we best set the stage for delivering value at a sustainable pace?

In this light, we’d value talks that touch on one or more of the following:

Tools and practices for determining what to build and how to build it
Techniques for improving and maintaining overall team health and productivity
Strategies for success while dealing with timeline and budget constraints
Examples where Drupal 8 assists in the delivery of solutions

If you’d like to discuss any questions about this track or ideas for a session to submit, please mention Kelly Albrecht in the #project-management channel in the Drupal Slack Group.

Site Building

The Site Building track is about letting Drupal do the hard work. By assembling the right modules and configurations we can create rich and complex features, without worrying about reinventing the wheel and writing complex code. We are also looking for case studies that highlight what it's like to work on a project with Drupal 8 and how it positively impacted your project and company.

Suggested topics:

Showcases that explain site building approaches, case studies, and lessons learned as a site builder
Module presentations, best practices and comparisons of competing site building tools for problems like layout management, workflows, or content modelling
Descriptions about how site building can best fill the gap between end users, content editors, developers, UX designers, and anyone else involved in Drupal web projects

Technical Leadership

Building a strong, diverse, and inspired technical team is not easy. The new Technical Leadership track is designed for current and aspiring technical leaders who want to discuss what it means to be effective in related roles; how to balance people skills with technical expertise; and how to pivot from managing code to managing a team.

Suggested topics:

Building teams: Hiring, diversity and inclusion, finding and fostering culture, working with remote teams, performance management
Thought leadership: Leading a team to change, growing capabilities, defining best practices, identifying and fostering innovation, growing your own capabilities as a leader
Caring for teams: Building trust, managing burnout and overwork, handling toxic employees, marketing your team and celebrating their successes

User Experience

Companies that invest in UX stay competitive; they build engaging products with maximum efficiency. User experience is often referred to as “the science behind design.” Being strategic about UX means gathering insights about how to provide the most value to your site visitors, as well as analyzing metrics that validate your design decisions. If you want to share your knowledge on how to improve user experience on the web, we want your submissions!

We are seeking sessions which align with the following topics:

User Behavior
- Understanding user psychology & building empathy
- Conducting user interviews to define & understand website audience goals and behaviors
Strategy
- Brainstorming & ideation techniques.
- Digital governance, style guides, documentation & scaling UX across teams & projects.
- Common UX design patterns & heuristics.
- Organizing & determining information architecture.
Usability & Validation
- Accessibility & usability testing across varying devices, connection speeds, demographics & global locales.
- How to collect metrics, run A/B Tests, & define useful analytics.