Journey inside Yale's digital transformation as we reveal how our Drupal-based YaleSites platform has become the foundation for Beacon—an AI system that transforms bureaucratic complexity into intuitive conversations.

Prerequisite
Basic familiarity with Drupal site building concepts
Interest in how large institutions manage digital knowledge
Curiosity about practical AI applications in higher education
No specialized technical expertise required

Outline
This session takes you inside Yale University's ongoing journey to transform our digital landscape using Drupal as the foundation for conversational AI that breaks down traditional bureaucratic barriers.
When we began, Yale faced challenges familiar to many institutions: thousands of isolated websites built by different departments, critical information scattered across disconnected systems, and complex processes requiring navigation through multiple knowledge silos. Our YaleSites Drupal implementation has become the cornerstone of our solution.
We'll share:

Yale's Knowledge Challenge: How we identified the disconnect between our mission of knowledge creation and our fragmented digital infrastructure that made knowledge harder to find and use
YaleSites' Evolution: The architectural decisions that transformed our Drupal implementation from a website platform into a knowledge ecosystem, including our block-based component library and semantic structure
Beacon's Development: How we built and continue to refine our conversational AI agent that navigates Yale's complex landscape, including the discovery that Drupal's structured content creates the perfect AI foundation
Organizational Transformation: The deliberate process we followed to change not just our technology but how Yale approaches digital challenges entirely.

Real Yale Examples: Live demonstrations showing how we are creating conversational experiences rather than bureaucratic mazes

The session will reveal both technical implementations and organizational strategies, showing how our approach balances academic independence with institutional coherence, creating a system where knowledge flows freely across traditional boundaries.

Learning Objectives
Architectural Blueprint: Our proven approach to structuring Drupal content that simultaneously serves human readers and AI systems, transforming static pages into dynamic knowledge resources
Component Design Principles: Yale's methodology for creating block-based "knowledge components" that maintain their integrity across contexts while enabling AI to recombine them intelligently in conversation
Process Transformation Strategy: Our framework for identifying which bureaucratic processes deliver the highest value when transformed into conversational experiences, with metrics for measuring impact
Cross-Functional Collaboration Model: Yale's successful approach to building teams that bridge technical, editorial, and organizational perspectives—creating true institutional capability rather than just technical solutions
Implementation Roadmap: Our phased approach to evolution rather than revolution, allowing institutions to build on existing Drupal investments while systematically expanding capabilities
Governance Framework: Yale's model for balancing departmental autonomy with institutional coherence, creating systems where freedom and structure reinforce rather than conflict with each other

Experience level
Beginner