DrupalCon Lille 2023: Exciting Session Picks From Our Team’s Attendees

Bonjour to everyone who develops or uses Drupal websites! Half a year has gone by since DrupalCon Pittsburgh, and it’s time for the entire Drupal community to join together again as DrupalCon Lille is just around the corner!

Our team is inspired, and excited to attend the upcoming DrupalCon Lille. The days before the event will include packing our suitcases, learning some key phrases in French, and imagining ourselves strolling along the cobbled streets of Lille. But, of course, the most important thing for every DrupalCon is the insightful sessions full of priceless knowledge that could boost our workflows in various ways. We asked each of our team’s attendees to pick the session that looked most interesting to them and tell us why.

Sessions the ImageX team is most excited about at DrupalCon Lille

The DrupalCon Lille 2023 program from October 17 to 20 is jam-packed with exhilarating sessions by top speakers. There are over 140 sessions in the program, which include classic presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and more. So that there really is something for everyone, the sessions are grouped into tracks such as Makers & Builders, Users & Editors, Agency & Business, and so on. 

The variety can be overwhelming — we know it was hard for our team members to pick just one. It’s great that in reality, everyone will have a chance to attend many more sessions. Anyway, here are the top picks based on everyone’s preferences. 

“Accessibility for Everyone!” by Daniel Angelov

There can never be too many discussions of web accessibility — it always deserves more time. Instead of seeing accessibility as a set of rules to follow, the session by Daniel Angelov promises to give the attendees a deeper understanding of it, so they can “THINK accessibility.” The session will also feature examples of issues and their resolutions based on the newly released Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. 

Since our team is deeply committed to creating accessible websites and always strives to go beyond the accessibility standards, it’s no wonder that Anastasiia picked a session about it.

Anastasiia Pysanska Middle QA Engineer “I'm looking forward to learning more about accessibility as we're doing a lot of accessibility testing right now. I have general knowledge, but accessibility is more than just contrast ratio and alt text, so I'd like to extend it so our clients can have sites that are accessible to any user! I would like to know more testing tools and what is important for end users to make ImageX one of the strongest companies in accessibility testing.”

“How we integrated AI as a new colleague” by Ulrika Mengshoel Wedelin and David Holmlund

In 2023 when ChatGPT made its arrival, the Drupal community swiftly responded by creating helpful modules for integrating OpenAI/ChatGPT. Of course, this year it would be impossible to imagine a DrupalCon without multiple sessions about AI. 

ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools effectively boost various workflows of teams. Comparing AI to a colleague, and how we can see it as a new team member, is an interesting analogy used in this session.  The speakers will share their experiences with integrating AI, mainly ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Copilot, into their daily operations. 

Mariia Voloshyna Senior Researcher “I'm looking forward to the DrupalCon session titled "How we integrated AI as a new colleague." This session holds particular interest for me because it explores the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the workplace, which represents a significant paradigm shift in the modern world. In my opinion, the last major transformational change of this magnitude was the advent and popularization of the Internet. With the rapid development of AI technologies, we are witnessing a transformative era where AI is becoming an integral part of various industries and professions. This session promises to provide insights into how organizations are incorporating AI as a collaborator or "colleague" within their workforce. I'm eager to learn about the specific use cases, challenges, and benefits organizations have encountered during this integration process.”

“Layout builder ecosystem Vol.2” by Boyan Borisov

Since Layout Builder was introduced in the Drupal 8.6 core, it has won the hearts of multiple users and developers thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, flexible layouts, real-time previews, responsive design, and much more. Thanks to all its benefits, we are widely using Layout Builder in our projects, building sleek, modern, and highly customizable content pages for our customers.

This should be a great session on using some cool LB modules.  Together with its growing popularity, the ecosystem of modules to extend Layout Builder has been growing as well, and now their number has reached a whopping 90. Our team’s developers maintain a number of modules on that list, one of the most impressive examples being the Bootstrap Layout Builder.

Leonid Bogdanovych Senior Software Developer “This "Layout Builder Ecosystem Vol.2" session at DrupalCon Lille 2023 appears highly relevant and valuable for Drupal users, given its coverage of the evolving Layout Builder and its ecosystem, including over 90 modules. The session promises to provide insights into selecting the best Layout Builder-related modules, offering pros, cons, and practical use-case scenarios, making it a must-attend for those seeking effective Drupal website development tools. And this is interesting to me as I have not worked with LB before and at ImageX we have many projects built using LB.”

“Single Directory Components in Core” by Mike Herchel

We’ve recently seen some particularly outstanding improvements in front-end development in Drupal 10.1. Without a doubt, one of the brightest stars of this set of impressive updates is Single Directory Components (SDC), set to make front-end development workflows much more seamless by combining all of a UI component’s assets into the same directory. 

Our team’s front-end developers are always on top of the latest trends, recently holding an internal workshop on SDC, as well as are committed to building amazing contributed modules like the Bootstrap UI Kit and more. Considering that SDC is on everyone’s radar it shouldn’t come as a surprise that our technical copywriter Nadiia is inspired by the idea of hearing a thrilling session about it. 

Nadiia Nykolaichuk Technical Copywriter “Writing articles on the most cutting-edge Drupal trends is my passion. SDC is one of the most trending and game-changing solutions I’ve had a chance to write about this year. At DrupalCon Lille, I’d like to take an even deeper dive into the secrets of SDC, that’s why I’m looking forward to attending the session by Mike Herchel. A profound understanding of how SDC works should be very useful for my future articles in the front-end realm. Furthermore, the creators of SDC promise their future integration with Drupal’s built-in tools like Layout Builder. I have some experience building out website pages for our customers using LB, and this might be based on SDC next time.”

“Strategies for Overcoming Common Software Development Challenges: A Management Perspective” by Jorge Tutor

Website development is not a walk in the park — it’s full of challenges for many involved. From a management and delivery perspective, this can include unrealistic deadlines, poorly defined requirements, and more. 

But who’s afraid of these challenges? In this session, the speaker will overview the management and delivery challenges in project development, as well as some useful practical strategies for overcoming them.

Anna Gelfand Service Account Manager “I am interested in this session because managing competing requirements and ensuring client satisfaction can bring challenges. I am consistently eager to learn different perspectives on how to tackle various challenges, ensuring a project's success, the client's delight, and the fulfillment of the wider team.”

“When things take longer than you thought: Moving workloads to background processes” by Pablo López Escobés

Every developer works to improve website performance, but this presents a special challenge on sites with large volumes of content that need to be updated based on various triggers. When seemingly simple automation tasks get complex or involve many Drupal entities, the risk of running out of time or resources becomes higher.

Shifting the tasks to background processes looks like a great solution here. Luckily, Drupal comes with some powerful tools for that such as batches, Cron, and queues.  This session will explore those tools, providing real-world examples and explaining various approaches and strategies to use.

Vasyl Kletsko Senior Software Developer “As a developer working with high-load websites, I'm eager to discover the tricks on how to ease the burden. This session promises to provide practical tools and strategies that I can potentially implement in my projects. Learning how to effectively leverage background processes in Drupal could be a game-changer for me and the team, and I'm excited to uncover new approaches to optimize performance and streamline workflows. It's not just about troubleshooting but about revolutionizing the approaches to complex tasks in web development."

Driesnote by Dries Buytaert

Of course, the central session of every DrupalCon is the captivating Driesnote — the keynote by Drupal’s creator Dries. It’s always a can’t-miss chance for everyone to hear about the most vibrant Drupal updates and new concepts but also to be inspired by the incredible energy of the person who brought us all together by building our favorite CMS. 

Brent wondered whether his choice was too obvious when he said he was looking forward to the Driesnote before everything else. Indeed, it’s obvious but just because Driesnote is amazing, and no DrupalCon picks would be complete without it! 

Brent Wilker Chief Growth Officer “Dries' insights and vision have played a pivotal role in shaping the Drupal community and the open-source landscape as a whole. His keynote promises to provide valuable perspectives on the future direction of Drupal, innovations in technology, and emerging trends in web development. Given the strategic importance of Drupal in our organization's digital ecosystem, attending this keynote is very important. It should not only enhance our understanding of the platform's roadmap but also enable us to align our strategies in a way that leverages the full potential of Drupal for our customers. I look forward to the invaluable insights and inspiration that Driesnote is bound to offer.”

See you in Lille!

We can’t wait to hear all those and many other compelling sessions directly from the creators of groundbreaking functionalities and cool professionals sharing their experiences. And we are infinitely grateful to our management for this opportunity. There is less and less time left until the event kicks off, so if you are planning to attend, we might see each other very soon in Lille and discuss all those cool sessions together. Au revoir!