We went to DrupalCamp London 2017
DrupalCamp London celebrated its fifth birthday this year, and for the first time Real Life Digital were official sponsors of the CxO day.
Every year this conference seems to roll around more quickly than the last. DrupalCamp London celebrated its 5th year in 2017 and we were there to catch all of the action.
Not only were we in attendance but for the first time we also had a presence as sponsors of the CxO day on the Friday.
The CxO Day
This year we sponsored the CxO and as a result, I also attended my first CxO day! Whilst Barry has attended 4 out of 5 CxO days, I have never felt the need to attend as I’m neither chief nor officer of anything, but I quickly realised I’d made a big mistake skipping this day for the past few years.
The talks were absolutely phenomenal. Despite some last minute alterations to the lineup - there wasn’t a single speaker who didn’t deliver something inspiring or thought-provoking.
The first speaker of the day was Professor Andre Spicer (opens in a new tab) (Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Cass Business School City University London) who delivered an excellent breakdown of his published theories around The Stupidity Paradox (opens in a new tab) - essentially an examination of why intelligent people dumb themselves down in corporations - to the long-term detriment of themselves and their organisations.
Another fascinating talk was delivered by Ben Finn OBE (opens in a new tab) (Co-Founder of Sibelius (opens in a new tab) and CEO at Stealth Poker) who delved into how to manage huge issue queues and feature releases in software, in order to maximise profit and keep the users happy.
Stepping in at the last minute to deliver what might have been the talk of the day was Alex Elkins (opens in a new tab) (Entrepreneurship Education Manager at City University London), reflecting on how new businesses can solve real-world problems as opposed to focusing on useless solutions.
And finally, a great interview with Sarah Wood OBE (opens in a new tab) (CEO & Co-Founder of Unruly (opens in a new tab)) wrapped up the day, focusing on how she with her two co-founders turned a grassroots startup into an international success story.
Even for a mere mortal, this was all very inspiring stuff and I’ll certainly be keen to attend the CxO day for future events.
It was also great to catch up with Crispin Read (opens in a new tab) and learn more about the Drupal apprenticeship scheme over a few beers. The guys at MWDA are doing some fantastic work to develop (pun absolutely intended) the next generation of Drupal developers.
All in all, this was a fantastic start to a DrupalCamp which I’d wholeheartedly recommend to anyone working in our industry.
Image: Copyright Pivale Ltd. All rights reserved.
Saturday’s keynotes, sessions and social
On Saturday I bounced between sessions and a spot of networking, whereas in previous years I’ve spent most of the day attending the sessions.
I attended three sessions of note on the Saturday:
- Twig Recipes was a really great session from Mauricio Dinarte (opens in a new tab). Twig is the “new” HTML template system for Drupal 8 and there were some really great tips and tricks in this session.
- Virtual Reality on the Web - Introduction and How to… was my favourite session of the weekend delivered by Wes Ruvalcaba (opens in a new tab) from Lullabot (opens in a new tab). This talk gave a really quick overview and yet surprisingly in-depth exploration of the native web VR technology known as A-Frame (opens in a new tab) currently being developed by Mozilla (opens in a new tab).
- More than a CMS: Lessons learned from 7 years delivering integrated, mission-critical native Drupal CMS, CRM & BPM solutions by James Abrahams (opens in a new tab) was a fantastic reminder that sometimes integrating third-party systems (particularly CRMs) into Drupal is a missed opportunity to build better systems natively in Drupal itself.
The morning keynote with Matt Glaman (opens in a new tab) from CommerceGuys (opens in a new tab) was also a very inspiring story about one man’s journey from delivering beer to becoming Drupal royalty! There was also a gigantic cake for DrupalCamp London’s fifth birthday - apparently, the largest ever cake at a Drupal event!
As usual, Saturday was concluded with an evening of drinking and dancing at the Blacksmith and the Toffeemaker (opens in a new tab) with Alex Burrows (opens in a new tab) spinning the decks (well his laptop anyway!)
Image: “Woman Using VR Goggles Outdoors” (opens in a new tab) by Bradley Hook (opens in a new tab), Pexels License (opens in a new tab), via Pexels.
Sunday’s keynotes and sessions
Sunday was a day of recovery and networking for us at Real Life Digital.
Unfortunately we didn’t get to attend any sessions but it was great to see Jeffrey A. ‘Jam’ McGuire (opens in a new tab) delivering Sunday’s keynote on delivering more than just websites with Drupal - a sentiment that we’ve long been shouting about!
The closing keynote was also a fascinating perspective on open source from Danese Cooper (opens in a new tab) (chairperson of the Node.js Foundation).
After a long and busy weekend, Barry and I were delighted to discover that all of our goodies and giveaways from the sponsorship had been snapped up meaning we could leave nearly empty handed on the journey home.
Until next year DrupalCamp London!
Image: “City University of London Northampton Square Clerkenwell London EC1V 0HB” (opens in a new tab) by Spudgun67 (opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab), via Wikimedia Commons.
Future events
There are some great events coming up in the Drupal calendar that we’re interested in attending that you might also want to look at.
As usual, there are camps up and down the country and across the world, as well as specific developer days and front end united meetups but an event has caught our eye this year that we were previously unaware of.
Drupal Business Days in Frankfurt is taking place on the 18th - 20th May 2017 and seeks to bring together the Drupal community with the CxOs of organisations who are interested in getting on board with (or are already working with) Drupal.
The upcoming DrupalCons are in Baltimore (opens in a new tab) in April and in Vienna (opens in a new tab) in September. Whilst we are unlikely to make the Baltimore conference we will almost certainly be present in Vienna this year and hope to see you there too.
Image: “Vienna Skyline” (opens in a new tab) by Fabian Lackner (opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 3.0 (opens in a new tab), via Wikimedia Commons.
