Looking back at DrupalCamp London
There are a few conferences worldwide which me and my colleagues at LimoenGroen like to travel to, such as DrupalCamp Gent, Frontend United, Drupal Dev Days and DrupalCamp London. Last weekend I was in London to attend this yearly Drupal event.
Friday: CXO day
Remarkable about DrupalCamp London is that it offers a full day of business-related sessions, apart from all the technical sessions. On the Friday before the event the CXO-day is being held. On this day business owners and clients come together to share knowledge about running a business, growth and operation.
For me personally this is one of the most valuable days of the conference. The sessions during this day focused on leadership, success stories and diversity in tech. We even got a short history class bij Rasmus Lerdorf, the founder of PHP. I found it a weird idea that without his work, I would never have founded LimoenGroen nor would I be in that room during his talk.
Traditionally, the day is ended with a so-called “Agency Leader Dinner”. Characteristic about this dinner is that the evening is only for managers and business owners, and that nothing about what is discussed leaves the room. Since the wine always flows richly, maybe that’s better too.
Saturday: sessions & social event
The first conference day began with a keynote by Rowan Merewood, Developer Advocate at Google. After his keynote a full day of sessions followed, spread over 6 rooms. The sessions varied from technical talks to new insights on marketing & communication. Like last year, the day ended with a social event in a great vegan restaurant called “The Blacksmith & The Coffeemaker”.
Sunday: more sessions and then back home
We started the Sunday with a keynote by Preston So about decoupled Drupal and context-less content. Stating that content is more and more published on more than one platform (such as Google Voice, Alexa) Preston appeals to train content editors now in writing contextless content. He uses an example of the State of Georgia, for which all content is rewritten so that it can be read out loud. Important here is that the content should not include link that can only be opened on a website.
Another session which I found very interesting was given by Anton Staroverov, about writing reusable frontend components. Not only was his talk very clear and informative, but he even shared a lot of code to get others up te speed. A nice subject to dive into on my next Sustainable Thursday.
I look back on another instructive and successful edition. My flight back to Amsterdam is delayed, which gives me the time to reflect and write this post. And to drink one more English pint. Cheers and see you next year!
