Gravity Works Reflects on DrupalCon Europe 2022
At Gravity Works, we believe that one of the best ways to serve our clients is to stay up-to-date with the latest development tools, softwares, and programs that continue to push the boundaries of creating an accessible and user-friendly web presence. In our commitment to being at the forefront of these advancements, members of our team attended this year’s DrupalCon expo in Prague, Czech Republic on September 20–23, 2022 to network and learn the latest surrounding the Drupal community.
Gravity Works Founder and COO, Jeff McWherter was even selected to lead a session at the conference on the basics of Cross Functional Teams. Now that the conference is over, we talked with our development team lead, Kurt Trowbridge, who attended this year’s conference to hear what he’s taking away from this experience.
How was your experience at DrupalCon? Was it a welcoming and a good learning environment where you could collaborate with others?
Kurt: DrupalCon was — as expected — great! It always feels like a good opportunity for me to get out of my “bubble” and really spend some time seeing what others in the Drupal community are doing, then reassessing how we’re approaching our work. It was wonderful to spend time with our team — especially Tommaso and Brittany, who live out of state, so I rarely see them in person — and think more about Gravity Works in terms of teams and processes, instead of being so focused on specific projects and tasks. I also got to see a few people that I’d so far only met online, which was fun!
Were there any new features/announcements that really made you excited about the future of Drupal?
Kurt: Interestingly, I felt that the Driesnote — the regular keynote by Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal — focused less this time on specific features and more on what the Drupal project aims to achieve, particularly for the type of user he’s referred to this year as the “ambitious site builder.” In a way, I liked that there was less direct focus on features and technology, and more of a zoomed-out view to remind us for whom we’re building sites: content editors and site visitors.
Were there any major differences between the setup of the DrupalCon event in Europe versus DrupalCon events in the United States?
Kurt: This was my third DrupalCon, following Nashville in 2018 and Amsterdam in 2019. I really enjoy DrupalCon Europe because in addition to the work-related learning I’m doing, I get to explore the conference’s host city and learn more about its culture. Plus, it’s fun to walk around the venue and hear all the different languages attendees are speaking! DrupalCon sessions are given in English, but it’s usually not everyone’s first language, so speakers would sometimes slip in a few words from their primary language, and that’s fun to experience.
Did you meet anyone or see any work that inspired you to try something new or expand your skill set?
Kurt: I attended two sessions that focused on designer/developer collaboration, something that’s been a hot topic for our teams lately as we continually try to improve our cross-functional processes. I’m looking forward to bringing their perspectives back to our UX and front-end teams! Additionally, I attended a session from a speaker who went from a developer to a CTO at a company, taking a similar path into management as where my career has been taking me over the past couple years, so hearing her advice and experience was both gratifying and guiding for me.
Was there anything you learned that might be helpful for future Gravity Works projects?
Kurt: Cutting-edge Drupal projects have started to move much more toward a decoupled, JavaScript-based direction, and we haven’t steered into that much yet at Gravity Works. Combining Drupal’s strengths as a content modeling and management system with the performance benefits of JavaScript-based frameworks like Gatsby is something I’ve been curious to explore more, and so I was glad to attend a couple talks that got into a bit more depth on that approach and its benefits and drawbacks. We’ll definitely be digging more into that space soon!
What was your most memorable moment from the conference?
Kurt: Every year at DrupalCon, there’s a trivia night where attendees can test their Drupal knowledge. The questions are designed to be tough, even for developers with years of Drupal experience. Gravity Works came in seventh place out of 44 teams, which is something to be proud of! I think it speaks back to our commitment to stay at the forefront of the latest in tech for our own personal growth and for our clients.
If you are talking to a Drupal developer that has never been to DrupalCon before, what would be the one thing you would tell them that makes it worthwhile to attend next year?
Kurt: There’s no one right way to attend DrupalCon and get the most out of it. For some people, networking with a lot of new faces is the way to optimize their DrupalCon experience; for others, it’s quietly listening and then bringing information back to the team. Our developers reviewed session schedules together beforehand and came into the conference deciding that we wouldn’t try to divide and conquer attending all the sessions, but we’d go to what would make us think and talk to each other while DrupalCon had our undivided attention. I think that strategy helped us come out of the conference having had some good discussions and action plans, and it’s one that I’d recommend for future DrupalCon attendees too.
As we continue to advance our capabilities with the latest web development tools, we here at Gravity Works are honored to be able to have opportunities such as attending DrupalCon to gain experience, learn from like minded developers, and grow our industry knowledge that can translate into helping our clients. We can’t wait to attend DrupalCon next year!
