DrupalCon Barcelona Group picture by Bram Driesen (source)
Hola de nou barcelona
Barcelona for me has a long history of Drupal. For Drupal Dev Days 2012 I organized a mapping sprint, we cycled to DrupalCon Barcelona 2015 as part of the #tourdedrupal report , pictures and it was nice to visit a more local event - Drupal Summer - in 2016 (report, pictures).
Drupal CMS: una nova experiència immediata per a Drupal
This year, the focus was on Drupal CMS (previously known by its internal development name Starshot) which is all about bringing Drupal to the next level by creating an out-of-the-box experience including a new way to create layouts (Experience Builder), integrating AI features and many more features. If you like to dive deeper into Drupal CMS, check out the meta issue listing all work tracks as well as the landing page on Drupal.org.
A similar, prepackaged version of Drupal already exists, handcrafted by many individuals and agencies. Recipes have recently been introduced to Drupal core. They allow to package configuration and content to pre-configure Drupal for common use cases like Search, SEO-optimization or an Event calendar feature.
Check out our blökkli starterkit that provides you will a fully-preconfigured setup that we use at Liip.
Drupal al govern
We saw Drupal's wide adoption for Government at DrupalCon Barcelona.
Implementing AI solutions for the French government - in this session it was demonstrated how public services were improved. AI technology would support the public servants by pregenerating responses that would be validated and modified by the public servant. The use of AI technology cut down response times from an average of 19 days to 3 days and a plus of 11% found the received answers helpful.
Running a fleet of web sites with ease via LocalGov Drupal Microsites Platform showed a feature that we are also planning to roll out to one of our customers soon. You can easily manage multiple microsites in Drupal and configure on a per-site-basis the needed styling options in order to customize it to each site needs. By leveraging one CMS basis, the time-to-market and total cost of ownership for each microsite can be heavily reduced.
Large-scale content creation with Drupal — Delights, Pitfalls and support structures to help editors - in this session our customer Thom Nagy & our product owner Jonathan Noack presented their case study on relaunching bs.ch. I liked to see how a trustful collaboration with strong communication and stakeholder management combined with agile delivery and innovation led to an outcome all participants are proud about.
The website is our flagship showcase for blökkli, the interactive pagebuilder that has delighted many of our customers already and is available for the community under the open-source license.
Even though the canton is embedded in a typically restrictive government environment, they even launched the first AI-based assistant "Alva" that answers any questions the public might have about the canton in their own language using GPT-based technology.
Sostenibilitat
Conferences that bring together folks from all over the world have a hard time being sustainable. I appreciate the efforts to promote sustainable transport for example when amongst the attendees traveling by train, a winner was selected.
The organizing team also worked with the sponsors to make sure they were taking sustainability into account for how they set up their booths and limit the swag they would give out to participants.
The next DrupalCon Europe has been announced to happen in Vienna October 14-17 2025. I am particularly excited for this location as I grew up in Vienna and have been part of the Drupal Austria community as an organizing member before moving to Switzerland.
As Vienna is at the heart of Europe, I encourage you to think about sustainable ways to get to the conference.
If you travel via Hamburg, Bregenz/Feldkirch, Roma/Blorence/Bologna or Amsterdam, you should even be able to sleep on one of the new generation nightrains that offers better comfort, single-cabins and wheelchair-accessible sleepers. You typically can book your train 6 months ahead. As they introduced dynamic pricing recently, it is recommended to book your tickets early.
I leave you with some pictures from this year in Barcelona.
Would you like to learn more about Drupal? Find an event near you. See you 2025 at one of my favorites Drupal Mountain Camp in Davos or at DrupalCon Vienna.