For the first time in over two years, I’m on the road for work! I’ll be in Portland, Oregon all week for DrupalCon 2022.
I’ve attended a number of virtual conferences in 2020 and 2021, and while I think it’s fair to say that digital conferences are better than no conferences, they are definitely not an even replacement for an in person experience. Having said that, I’m pretty nervous going into this week. As many of my friends and colleagues in the community have pointed out (as reasons they aren’t attending DrupalCon this year), Covid is still very much a force in our world and I’m taking every precaution to try and keep both myself (and everyone around me) safe.
Government Summit
Monday’s activities are primarily comprised of the Government Summit. This is an event I’ve been privileged to participate in a number of times over the years. It brings together government employees or private sector folks (like me!) that regular work with government organizations. I’m so thankful that the Drupal Association recognized this sector a few years ago and started this summit. It’s always brilliantly organized (by Jessica Dearie and Rebecca Goodman) and I’m excited to be presenting this year during the lightning talks.
Streamlining your processes and data collection with Drupal Webforms
The summit kicked off with a presentation from Jasmyne Epps who is a Product Manager at Digital Services Georgia. They use Drupal multisite to manage their digital platform in the state, and she had some really excellent points about designing with empathy.
It’s so refreshing hearing a government organization is focused this much on not just on user experience, but how to use common Drupal tools (like Webform) to create a terrific end-user experience for their users. Obviously, many organizations out there think about both design and usability, but I’m not sure I’ve heard many of them coming at the topics with “empathy” for their users in mind. How different would the web be today if more organizations approached their digital presence with empathy?
She also had some terrific pointers that should apply well beyond the government sphere with regards to security and the collection of sensitive and/or personally identifiable information (PII).
You should really not be collecting PII in most cases, especially if your hosting isn’t PCI compliant (in other words, you can’t safely and securely accept, transmit, or store private data). If you do have to collect PII, consider how you will secure it, where you will store it, how you will ensure it’s safely stored and access, etc. As someone who has personally had highly sensitive personal data stolen (thanks OPM Data Breach) because my data was not stored safely / encrypted at rest, I can personally say how big of a deal this is. So! Just because you can easily use Webforms (and/or Drupal itself) to collect data, be smart about what data you collect and what you do with it.
She also mentioned a module called Antibot that is apparently more effective for their organization at stopping spam than Captcha / Recaptcha. So I’ll definitely be checking this out!
Lightning Talks and Case Study
The rest of the day was taken up by terrific case study from Aten Design Group about the City of Boulder, and some lightning talks (of which I was happy to participate in). The topics here where much shorter than the main talk, and I won’t try to replicate all the good material here.
Remainder of the Day
Honestly, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon prepping for my talk on Tuesday. Conference wifi wasn’t awesome today, and since the bulk of my talk is “doing it live” I didn’t want to risk connection issues tomorrow. So, I have pre-recorded videos now “just in case.” I also had a chance to get out for a nice little run (I only got rained on a little) before returning to the convention center for the opening reception.
Which, by the way was super cool. A BIG CONGRATS to webchick on winning the 2022 Aaron Winborn!
That just about wraps up day 1! I saw a ton of folks that I haven’t seen in literally years, and I’m so thankful to have the opportunity. I had a lovely time at dinner and the reception and I’m looking forward to tomorrow!
If you’re kicking around the convention center, I hope you can join me for my talk at 11:00 https://events.drupal.org/portland2022/sessions/lets-do-it-live-setting-all-development-devops-tools-new-drupal-project. I’ll also be talking about DevOps tools at the Acquia Booth at 12:45 and on hand at the booth from 1:30-3:30 in the afternoon. Finally, if you haven’t registered for Acquia’s party, we’re at OMSI Tuesday night and I hope you can stop by!
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Live from Portland, thoughts and experiences from DrupalCon 2022: Day 1.