Drupal GovCon 2024

When altering thousands of Nodes, either by moving content from Node fields into separate Paragraphs, populating metatags on existing content or re-tagging everything, it can be challenging to do these kinds of large operations reliably, make sure everything runs smoothly, and log it all. This session explores easier and more reliable ways to do large scale batch operations on government sized sites. See how the Department of Veterans Affairs and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services contributed a module for other agencies to make big changes more reliably, on the record and with less effort.

Slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRAmQh0Cr0eXaP3ol9FTwhA9mJCfBGFJhS5m_NT0XKtpoAcIomJfnwAoNlRTvMvxbhbVGfkuAg1VHEM/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=5000

swirt
Senior Drupal engineer at CivicActions

ChristianB
Senior Back-end Engineer at CivicActions

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692986

Digital.gov’s Site Scanning Program is tracking 26,000 publicly available federal .gov websites. Tracking the known CMS in this list, by far the greatest number of sites are Drupal.

What can we learn about how these sites help support the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act and OMB Memo M-23-22? How do these Drupal sites compare to the sites built in other platforms?

Data analysis like the WebAIM Million can help developers of different CMS understand the impact they have. What can we learn, from different data sources, about how Drupal is supporting the President’s Management Agenda for Customer Experience (CX)?

Participants will have the opportunity to explore the advantages (and disadvantages) of Drupal in delivering a good Customer Experience. They will also be left with a challenge on how the Drupal community can do better to ensure that we are collectively supporting the needs of modern digital government.

mgifford
Senior Strategist, W3C Invited Expert, Accessibility/Sustainability, Drupal Core Accessibility Maintainer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692860

We worked with the Duke Office of Clinical Research at Duke University to create the new My Duke Research website to improve engagement between Duke and people who participate in clinical research. A key component of connecting with this audience was delivering a smooth experience for site users relying on assistive technology. We worked with Ablr, a full service accessibility vendor to produce a site that went beyond merely meeting standards to genuinely improving the user experience for people with disabilities. Unlike many accessibility sessions, we will talk about the process of working with an accessibility partner from design concepts through beta delivery, remediating at each step, and how this collaboration delivered a great website.

Stephen Pashby
DesignHammer, Account Manager, Building Smarter Websites

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693878

Empower yourself by learning the less obvious, but directly applicable, aspects of Theming with modern Drupal. We'll cover topics including render arrays, caching, debugging your theme, and advanced Twig usage.

We demonstrate both diagnosing and resolving a few of the most common theming bugs we encounter when auditing Drupal projects.

Moreover, we'll do so using modern tools and techniques, some of which are newly introduced in Drupal 10.

And finally, we share tips for architecting your theme in a maintainable, Drupal-friendly way which simplifies integrating with modern libraries such as USWDS and Tailwind.

As a cherry on top, you'll walk away with a functioning code sample which you can continue to utilize after the session is complete.

Ashraf Abed
Founder & lead instructor at Debug Academy.

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/691679

Early in 2021, Lullabot's CEO gave the team a goal: find ways to standardize and simplify our processes across multiple projects. While Lullabot has a long history of sharing Drupal best practices through articles, podcasts, and open source contributions, we wanted to improve our work when teams transitioned between projects or when teams were reformed with different members.

After research and discussion, Lullabot decided to implement Architecture Decision Records (ADRs). Lullabot has published over 40 ADRs that are publicly available at architecture.lullabot.com. The journey was a long one, with many challenges to overcome!

Come to this session to learn:

- What ADRs are
- Review example ADRs to see how they communicate decisions
- How to develop an ADR-based process for technical decision making at your team, project, or organization.
- How ADRs have changed Lullabot's technical practice over the past three years.
- How to apply project-specific ADRs, with examples from a state government platform.
- Our plans on an update to our tooling for building your own ADR website.

deviantintegral
Director of Technology at Lullabot

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692904

Learn valuable insights and practical techniques to streamline handling large amounts of websites both Drupal and beyond.

See how KWALL uses Accorbis with clients to handle and analyze websites while keeping sites up to date automagically.

The Accorbis session topics to be covered:
-Introduction to the Accorbis platform
-Essential strategies for effective site management
-Key tools and techniques for optimal performance
-Best practices for ensuring successful project outcomes

Kevin Wall
Launch Sites in Minutes, not months

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/689178

You can get ahead of those pesky POA&Ms and make your infrastructure more secure along the way using open source tools and content to mitigate and automate the security side of the ATO process.

Whether your framework is a STIG or CIS benchmarks, you don't need to recreate these mitigations yourself.

This talk is geared towards all Junior, Mid and Senior level DevOps/DevSecOps engineers or even those who are doing those tasks despite having a different title.

Ben Hosmer
DevOps Office Hours

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/696051

You want an accessible website that everyone can use to easily find information and perform important tasks. You also need to make sure that it complies with laws and regulations. Automated accessibility checkers can be extremely helpful, but only cover about 30% of potential issues.

In this session, we’ll discuss:
- Which success criteria automated checkers can test (and which Drupal tools can help)
- Methods you can use to test each success factor (508/WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2)
- How to group and sequence tests for efficiency
- What *free* tools can be used to help with manual testing

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mQgxjL7FNHK4Ewtlf2n6-6G2-xTjQH-qIY2iq122q-s/edit#slide=id.gb3d640e12c_0_148

Jeanette Stair
Project Director, Government Services and Accessibility Lead at Forum One

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693838

We've all been taught that professionalism means not showing emotion, staying even toned and tempered, and putting on a smile even in the face of stressful situations and clients. But what if I told you that this advice is outdated and can do more harm to a client relationship than good? In this talk, we'll discuss how bringing your authentic self and showing your emotions strategically can strengthen your client relationships and invite your clients to do the same.

Britany Acre
Senior Client Success Manager at Palantir.net

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693666

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BFPsHUPlnYEd_-ymTEg3bHvKPlJQ2tRVvr6oz74xnzE/edit?usp=sharing

Imagine this scenario. You need to update a PDF on your Drupal website named "document.pdf" and there are hundreds of pages that link to the document at /sites/default/files/document.pdf (there may also be inbound links that you can't control).

You try uploading the new version by editing the Media through Drupal's admin interface. Unfortunately, you quickly realize that Drupal adds an "_0" to the filename and uploads the new document to "/sites/default/files/document_0.pdf".

Further, you realize that the old version is still accessible by the public at "/sites/default/files/document.pdf".

What do you do? You could use FTP to overwrite the old document, but then why even have a Content Management System in the first place?

What if you need to maintain revision history for the old document for traceability? You could try to update all links across hundreds of pages or maybe add a redirect to the new version. But even then, the old version remains public and could be viewed/downloaded if someone has the old URL.

There is a better way. This session will cover a Document Library methodology designed to improve Drupal's document handling, revision control, security, and avoid broken links.

Originally crafted for the Texas Education Agency (tea.texas.gov) and later implemented across numerous sites, including the City of Colorado Springs (coloradosprings.gov), the National Security Archive at GWU (nsarchive.gwu.edu), and Black Hills Energy Services (blackhillsenergyservices.com), this approach has become our default configuration at Monarch Digital for new Drupal websites.

Participants will learn how to implement this methodology utilizing Drupal's private filesystem, media entities and revisions, and document folders using taxonomy, aliases and Pathauto.

Whether you're handling educational resources, city records, or other critical documents, this session will equip you with the tools and knowledge to implement a better Document Library in Drupal.

Caleb Thorne
Support Manager, Monarch Digital

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693730

Drupal thrives on community contributions in the form of merge requests and documentation to both contributed modules and core. This helps the project move forward and stay relevant.

Not everyone who works on open source projects is a senior developer or interested in contributing code at all. Smaller tasks help people increase confidence and gain experience, which, in turn, leads to more contributions. Contributing back to Drupal helps us to become better technical writers, developers, marketers and designers. A more-polished Drupal leads to a better overall experience for our end users.

**But how does one become a contributor?**

This will be a session reviewing areas of contribution, the process of finding an issue to work on, creating an issue, spinning up a Drupal instance, and learning how to provide your first meaningful contribution to the Drupal project. We encourage you to follow along or share our open source and accessible slide deck.

mradcliffe
Core Mentoring Coordinator, Drupal Project

Do you have data that could benefit from a map visualization, but a Google Maps or OpenStreetMaps implementation would be overkill? Do you have the need to display a simple, custom defined map of a specific area?

This session will cover the "Simple Interactive Maps" module; a user-friendly solution that allows your customers or end-users to define and view SVG based maps and to use them to navigate through your site or view topics of interest by simply clicking.

But that's not all – this module allows you to define user interactions individually for each region on the map, or create groups of regions that inherit the same interaction and styling options.

Furthermore this module can be enhanced with custom plugins that enable you to define base maps that meet your specific needs and apply the same user interaction options to them.

This module makes use of Drupal’s plugin API to allow developers to create their own custom base maps or map actions in response to user interaction.

During this demonstration, I will:
- Showcase the module's versatile functionality
- Unveil customization possibilities for site owners, web producers, and content editors
- Illustrate real-world applications and use cases
- Provide comparisons with other common mapping solutions
- (Time permitting) Provide a review of the plugin design that allows developers to define custom maps.

Whether you're a non-technical site owner or an experienced developer, this session promises to be invaluable. The module's intricate design will captivate senior developers, while its simplicity and intuitive nature empower non-technical professionals to deliver high-quality visualizations without the need for coding expertise.

Jason Murray
Technical Supervisor, Mobomo

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/709507

Introduction:
The foundation for a successful Drupal website project lies in a well-crafted, detailed, and accurate proposal. It sets the stage for expectations, outlines the process, defines the work to be done, and establishes the criteria for success. Unfortunately, inaccurate project budgets and estimations can lead a project down the path of failure from the very beginning. We believe that the creation of a website proposal playbook can provide the necessary detailed context and guidelines, ensuring accurate estimations and innovative solutions that can save the government both time and money. By implementing a well-defined RFP/RFQ playbook, federal agencies can better communicate their needs, resulting in more accurate estimations and cost-effective, innovative solutions from industry contractors.
What the Presentation Will Cover:
Our presentation will delve into the necessity of a standardized RFP/RFQ playbook that outlines the requirements for federal digital transformation projects. Key areas of focus include traffic patterns, content types, custom modules, custom code, user types, SEO tracking, “time to paint” rendering, and response times. We will cover the level of detail required and why it is crucial to empower contractors to provide more accurate and innovative solutions.
Who Should Attend:
This presentation is tailored for federal web managers, procurement officers, IT professionals, and Drupal development contractors involved in government digital projects. Attending this session will equip you with the knowledge to create comprehensive RFPs/RFQs, leading to successful project outcomes.

Jason Schulte
Chief Operating Officer for Mobomo

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693697

As expected, Drupal 11 was released 2 weeks before Drupal GovCon, and many arel likely be starting the process of upgrading - or at least the investigations leading to an upgrade plan for Drupal 11.

We'll explore the automated tools available as well as the manual steps necessary to get your project - whether a contrib module, a single custom module or a whole site upgraded to Drupal 11.

Nick Dickinson-Wilde
Backend Drupal Manager - Taoti Creative

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693923

ARIA attributes bridge the gap to address accessibility issues that cannot be managed with native HTML. Join us as we explore what ARIA is, what it can do, when you should use it - and when not to.

What are the learning objectives?
At the end of this session, attendees will be able to properly apply ARIA attributes to their sites and apps, including when it's best to stick with native HTML.

Who is this session for?
This session is for anyone who is interested in the accessibility of their sites or apps.

Are there any prerequisites?
Attendees will get the most out of this session by being familiar with HTML.

Kat Shaw
Kat is a Lead Engineer and Accessibility Advocate (CPACC) at Lullabot

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693696

At DrupalCon Portland 2024, Dries Buytaert unveiled the "Starshot" initiative, a vision poised to bring the most significant transformation to Drupal since its Symfony rewrite over a decade ago.

Named after JFK’s famous “Moonshot” speech, the Starshot initiative aims to create a radically more user-friendly version of Drupal. This ambitious project encompasses several key sub-initiatives, including:

- Recipes
- Experience Builder
- Project Browser
- Automatic Updates
- Improved Documentation
- A new starting point called “Drupal CMS”

In this wildly entertaining session, I’ll guide attendees through the essence of Starshot, explaining each sub-initiative and how they interconnect. I’ll also discuss what this initiative means for Drupal and its potential benefits for government websites like yours. Lastly, I’ll provide updates on each sub-initiative, their current statuses, and ways you can contribute!

mherchel
Senior Front-end Developer at Agileana

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693764

The pandemic stole a lot from us, including our established Drupal gatherings. This panel will look at ways to pick back up with group activities, like restarting Drupal GovCon and reviving the UMD Drupal User Group. A vibrant and cooperative community is one of Drupal’s greatest strengths, so let’s share what we’ve been doing to rebuild our community with a panel of folks working to connect people who build Drupal websites.

Panelists:

Amy Swackhamer- UMD Drupal User Group
Nina Ogor - Drupal4Gov
John Doyle - DC area Meetup
Anoop John - Drop Times

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693207

I can't wait for Starshot (Drupal CMS)! Literally - it's going to be awesome - but I can't wait. I have sites to build right now.

“Out-of-the-box” Layout Builder is pretty terrible. This session presents one way of configuring Layout Builder that makes it easier to use with beautiful results that anyone can implement. You’ll come away with a list of recommended contrib modules and configuration settings, and a completed "Startersite" launched with one click of your mouse. The Startersite is hosted on Gitpod (I have support videos on the entire setup) and comes with a complete set of styles, pre-set blocks and more - all without a line of code and without locking in to any vendor.

We’ve been using this approach to convert 30 non-Drupal sites over very quickly, along with making the content editor’s job a LOT easier.

Rod
Drupal Trainer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692768

While it would be amazing to focus 100% on our code in our work, the reality of modern DevOps is we also need to worry about where it runs. In a simpler time, the operations team would grant us precious disk and machine resources after a requisition request. Security was tight, as those servers were locked down behind private networks and gateways. Living in the modern world of platforms as a service and infrastructure as code, IaC, means just taking security for granted is no longer an option.

Even if the security team could manage every possible bit of your infrastructure, understanding how to manage security better is going to help everyone stay safe, especially at scale.

Takeaways:

- What does good security look like
- What can go wrong?
- The security issues (and benefits) IaC brings
- When the security team should be involved
- Local/individual testing for scale

mcdwayne
Developer Advocate at GitGuardian and huge fan of open source

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692878

Data catalogs are an integral part of open government and transparency policies around the world. By bringing data publishing, sharing, and metadata standardization into Drupal, the DKAN module aims to make data more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (“FAIR”) for agencies and the public.

Join CivicActions’ Liz Tupper, Director of Product, and Dan Feder, Co-Maintainer of DKAN, as they show how they have built modern, standards-focused, and API-first open data catalogs for a variety of specific use cases.

In this session, we will demonstrate how we have used Drupal’s features as a foundation for storing and presenting data and metadata and how we have built alternatives to several Drupal paradigms to better integrate with open standards and wider data ecosystems. We will also look a bit toward the future and explain how DKAN is preparing to meet the needs of new, more powerful metadata standards (such as DCAT-US v3) and new types of data consumers (such as Large Language Models).

We will cover:
- A brief overview of DKAN and how it is used in government
- Demo of standing up a data catalog from scratch and customizing its schema, with a look at what’s happening behind the scenes
- How we develop DKAN collaboratively and in the open
- Our current roadmap

Liz Tupper
Director of Product @ CivicActions

Dan Feder
Senior Back-End Engineer @ CivicActions

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/716884

Planned Parenthood Direct launched a B2C app to connect Americans with healthcare and the legislative landscape meant complex challenges and complex constraints! Learn how Evolving Web leveraged a robust discovery process and a laser-focus on converting website visitors to app users to develop an elegant, efficient and secure decoupled experience - powered by Drupal.

Adrienne Smith
Senior Digital Strategist

Simon Morvan
Director of Technology @ Evolving Web

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/730676

So many websites suffer from content bloat, especially the all-important homepage. Government sites seem particularly susceptible, as they try to meet the needs of a wide-ranging audience (especially internal staff and leadership).

Multiple call-to-action sections, image sliders, department news, upcoming events, workshops, registrations, mission statements, and navigation menus that stretch on and on. It’s all too much!

Let’s put the focus back where it belongs – on your users. What do they need most? What actions and pathways do you want them to take? How can we simplify the navigation and make a better user experience?

We’ll move through the stages of resolution, from identifying when there is a problem to the joys of finding solutions. Using real case-studies from past government projects, we’ll talk about strategies for taming the homepage, and applying the same lessons to your site navigation and other landing pages.

Slides at https://bit.ly/better-homepage

Dan Moriarty
Electric Citizen, CEO and Creative Director

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693861

The team that developed content moderation in Drupal 7 is back with collaborative editing for Drupal 10. Using open-source tools, the Edit Together module provides secure, real-time collaboration inside the Drupal editorial interface. Editors may update content simultaneously and leave threaded comments requesting clarifications or changes. And it all works with content moderation workflows!

Like content moderation, collaboration is a game-changing feature for Drupal as a Content Management System. So what might it look like to put these tools into Drupal core?

In this workshop, we'll cover the following elements:

A quick demo of collaboration features
- Editing
- Commenting
- Versioning
Introducing the tools required for collaboration
- Yjs as a stable dependency
- ProseMirror and the need for end-to-end data integrity
- WebRTC and signaling servers
Current state of the Edit Together module
- Installation requirements
- Core workarounds for Edit module assumptions
- Test scenarios and support
Open question and answer
Identifying steps to core inclusion

We'd like to use this time as a collaborative effort to identify a plan, note any blocking concerns, and begin the process of adding this feature to Drupal's roadmap.

agentrickard
Sr. Director of Consulting, Palantir.net

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693649

So, you’re thinking about changing a feature on your site, but you aren’t sure whether it’ll make a positive difference. This is where you might want to think about leveraging an A/B test. These are tests where you can run two versions of a page (or element on a page) simultaneously to different users and measure their effectiveness.

In this session we’ll look more at what A/B tests are and how to use LaunchDarkly within Drupal to build out these tests.

We’ll cover:
- Basics of A/B testing
- Feature Flags
- LaunchDarkly’s Experimentation Feature
- Using LaunchDarkly with Drupal

This session will be from the point of view of a developer, but should be beneficial to many different roles on a project, such as designers, ux, content strategists, analysts, site builders, etc.

Michael Kinnunen
Back End Engineer at CivicActions

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693122

Learn the power of the Group module for Drupal.

This session will show you how to create communities with your website.

The Group module topics to be covered:
- Introduction to Drupal's Group module
- Strengths and Weaknesses
- Use Cases for Groups

Expect to learn
- Setting up Group types
- Managing Group content
- Sharing (or not sharing) media and content
- Group menus
- Group Workflow

Mark and Forum One staff have used the group module to great effect in several municipal, county, and NGO applications.

Mark Mahon
Managing Director, Forum One

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693727

We've talked to organizations big and small; many of them have the same request: how can I understand what our vendors are doing so that I can better participate?

We'll discuss determining appropriate goals for you & your in-house team. Do you want to:
- Evaluate development work?
- Edit Drupal's backend code?
- Edit Drupal's theme or styles?
- Edit configuration?
- Edit page layouts?
- Or even build the entire project in-house?!

Knowing which goals to target requires understanding, at a high-level, how Drupal sites are managed. Which goals *should* I want my team members to have?

Accomplishing each goal requires different skillsets and therefore different training plans.

In this talk, learn how to assess your team, evaluate training options, and set goals that are both actionable and worthwhile.

Ashraf Abed
Founder & lead instructor at Debug Academy.

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/718692

The most successful projects are aligned with organizational goals and contribute measurably to organizational success. For projects to be fully aligned, key questions need to be asked and answered during discovery. We will walk through a process for facilitating these discussions, documenting decisions, and ensuring a project is aligned and successful.

Stephen Pashby
DesignHammer, Account Manager, Building Smarter Websites

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693876

By now, many people are aware of the utility of “GitOps” automation platforms like GitHub Actions, BitBucket and GitLab Pipelines.

These tools are fantastic ways to quickly build out continuous investigation and testing, but they have their limitations.

The servers are ephemeral: they are destroyed as soon as your scripts are done. The sites are inaccessible, trapped on the provider's hosted infrastructure.

There is a solution: Self-hosted runners.

Self-hosted runners let you run your jobs on any server, hosted anywhere.

The benefits are significant:

1. All events run almost instantly. No webhooks or polling.

2. Runners reach out for job information, allowing them to run behind a firewall. No need to expose preview sites to the web.

3. Logs for every job are available in the GitHub interface.

4. Direct integration with GitHub’s commit status and deployment APIs. Developers see test results and deployment status and links directly to preview sites in the Pull Request interface.

5. Secrets management. Pass secrets to scripts using workflow configuration.

6. Sites can remain online after test driven, allowing manual review or debugging.

7. Developers control what commands are run using source code.

This session will give an overview of how Git runners work, with a demonstration of the DDEV Sites Runner we built for Washington State University, Vancouver.

For more information on Site Runner, see https://www.thinkdrop.net/run-cicd-preview-environments-anywhere-self-hosted-git-runners

Jon Pugh
Enterprise Drupal Consultant, Architect, & Engineer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693851
Jon Pugh
Enterprise Drupal Consultant, Architect, & Engineer

In this session, we will review the options currently available for the 300,000 sites still on Drupal 7. We will cover upgrading to Drupal 10, upgrading to BackdropCMS, using the Retrofit module, and exploring various options for Drupal Long Term Support (LTS).

Drawing from real-world case studies, we will delve into the technical intricacies of migrating off Drupal 7, offering practical tips, best practices, and common pitfalls to avoid.

Focusing on the migration from Drupal 7, this session will explore the strategic considerations, technical nuances, and cost-effective solutions for organizations navigating the transition. With less than a year until the end-of-life for Drupal 7, many organizations face the daunting task of staying on a secure CMS while working within constrained financial parameters.

Attendees will gain insights into developing a migration roadmap that maximizes resources, minimizes risks, and ensures a seamless transition.

From module compatibility and data migration to theming considerations, participants will leave with a comprehensive understanding of the technical challenges involved and practical solutions to overcome them.

Whether you're a developer, project manager, or decision-maker, this session will empower you to make the transition off Drupal 7 a smooth and cost-effective journey.

Irina Zaks
Web Developer, Open source evangelist

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693966

Explore the transformation of vote.gov's online presence as it evolved from a simple bilingual static site into an inclusive, multilingual application with 20 languages. Learn more about the advanced Drupal 10 multilingual content management features used to ensure critical voting information is more quickly accessible to underserved communities. We will walk through code examples solving tricky multilingual challenges experienced during the development of the vote.gov website, including lessons learned working with unique language characteristics.

Samira Sadat
Software Engineer at the General Services Administration

Ray Estrada
Bixal, Lead Software Engineer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692576

At the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), our external and internal Drupal website teams regularly balance the difficulty of sharing developer resources. In fact, we’ve turned it into one of our greatest assets. Using our recent effort to migrate the agency's external-facing blog into Drupal as a case study, we’ll demonstrate how our communication, technical, and UX teams shared resources and knowledge throughout the effort. We'll cover the major steps of the design and migration to www.uspto.gov/blog, and expand on how our intranet team incorporated lessons learned to streamline a separate blog project for employees.

View a copy of our slidedeck here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/35j0hf9xzj6p3jkam13ul/DrupalGovCon_SharedResources.pdf?rlkey=ywflg44qsrkyxe8wi3q3nchu7&st=ieemw813&dl=0


Teresa Verigan
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office


Henok Mikre
Sr. Developer at BLEN Corp


Lauren Emanuel
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693739

Every year up to $140 billion in government benefits go unused. During this session, we’ll share our work with USAGov’s team to create a benefit finder to make finding benefits easy and accessible for everyone. 12.5% of people living in the US speak Spanish as their first language. Despite sharing a language, those 42 million people come from 22 countries spread across 4 continents and as such make up a very diverse audience segment. We will examine the importance of transcreation in communicating with our Spanish-speaking audience with the same empathy and nuance that we use with our English-speaking audience. Attendees can expect to leave this presentation with new ideas and some practical strategies and processes they can use to better understand a multicultural audience and create content to serve them.

Nick Pistone
Digital Marketing Analytics Manager at Bixal

Nick Doyle
Senior UX Researcher at Bixal

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693894

Being an effective developer is more than just writing clean code. Documentation is an important skill that has numerous benefits to developers and their teams throughout the life cycle of a project—whether in the form of meeting notes, decisions made during development, or technical implementation details. But even beyond that, these notes have long-term benefits for maintaining projects and building team skills.

In this session, attendees will learn best practices on writing effective technical documentation. Early in the course of a web development project, it helps with the early planning and decision-making that help make a project successful. Later, it provides clarity that eases website maintenance and helps build collective knowledge that your team can build upon in future projects. And as artificial intelligence tools play more of a role in our daily workflows, the value of written documentation will only increase for you and your team. This session will highlight how an early focus on documentation, written by and for developers, can have lasting benefits.

Kurt Trowbridge
Front-End Development Team Leader, Gravity Works Design + Development

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693703

We’ll explore the dynamic world of mobile app development with Drupal, focusing on optimizing development time and resources. This session delves into our applied experience where integrating a mobile client app with an existing web application saved upwards 80% of development time compared to building native apps from scratch. We'll discuss the advantages of this approach, including faster time to market and enhanced product flexibility, which allowed for quick updates and agile development processes.

We'll also address the challenges encountered, such as the eventual need to decouple the app for a standalone experience, prompting a shift to native app development due to evolving requirements and lessons learned. Despite these changes, Drupal remained a crucial component throughout the project.

Key takeaways include understanding when to leverage integrated mobile development strategies versus native app development, how to achieve product flexibility, and ways to maximize resource efficiency. This session is perfect for developers, project managers, and key decision makers looking to make informed decisions about mobile app development approaches, particularly when working with Drupal.

Taylor Payne
Digital Marketing Manager, Five Jars

Alex Schedrov
Five Jars, CEO

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693971

Security of websites and the data that is hosted and transmitted is one of the most important and most overlooked parts of website development. This Drupal and Security presentation is intended to provide practical information, discuss what the risks are, how to assess risk and protect your Drupal web site. We will introduce the principals of security, threat modeling, discuss the OWASP top 10 and how to ensure your Drupal site meets all the requirements to protect from the most common attacks. Don’t become a victim.

Krista Trovato
IQ Solutions, Associate Director of Web Development

Rick Cisneros
IQ Solutions, Lead Developer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692501

In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, leaders face the critical challenge of managing the human side of technology. This session delves into the essential aspects of effective Human Management in the digital age.

As organizations embrace technological advancements and undergo digital transformations, leaders must navigate the complexities of change, including handling resistance to change and guiding teams through technological transitions.
This session offers insights, strategies, and practical approaches for leaders to effectively lead their teams through these pivotal moments.

Key topics covered in this session include:

-The "why" behind the what: How change impacts humans, not just code.
-Turning FUD into fuel: Taming the fear of the unknown and using it to drive progress.
-From "no way" to “oh yeah": Strategies to win buy-in and get your team excited about the journey.
-Tech's not the enemy: Building a culture of continuous learning and embracing change as a superpower.

Jeff McWherter
Chief Operating Officer at Gravity Works Design

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692867

The greatest asset of open source software is the ability to fork and improve. When it comes to tech culture, are we accepting all pull requests? Can we be better? If so, how? To the science! This session explores the mathematical algorithms and scientific studies describing the advantage of diverse teams. We’ll dive into existing research and real-world situations that solved complex problems. We’ll also explore a mathematician’s theory that “diversity trumps ability.” We’ll also explore how Star Trek played a pivotal role in being the allegory for this concept. Attendees will take away concrete ideas, examples, and processes to, hopefully, increase the output of their team in the long-term.

Fredric Mitchell
Principal - Bright Plum, Inc.

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692947

Dive into the world of WebOps in this detailed session that explores how embracing a WebOps mindset can revolutionize your website management. We'll cover the essentials of WebOps, demonstrating its potential to boost efficiency, enhance collaboration, and fortify the security and performance of your websites. Suitable for digital agencies, enterprises, SMBs, and freelancers, this session promises to deliver actionable insights on optimizing your web operations across various scales and needs.

What Will Be Covered:

Introduction to WebOps:

-Definition and significance of WebOps in modern web management.

- Key concepts and components that define the WebOps framework.

Practical WebOps Examples for Drupal:

- Automated Workflows: Customization techniques for automating repetitive tasks.

- Collaboration Tools: Strategies for integrating communication and task management to foster teamwork.

- Advanced Monitoring: Methods for implementing real-time performance tracking and alerts.

- Security Features: Overview of proactive security measures essential for website protection.

Future of WebOps:

- A look into our open source WebOps Manager roadmap.

- Interactive Q&A session to delve deeper into WebOps features and user-specific scenarios.

Key Learning Objectives:

- Understand WebOps Fundamentals: Acquire a solid grasp of the primary pillars and domains of WebOps and how they influence digital strategies and team dynamics.

- Implement Automation in Projects: Master the setup and customization of automated workflows to enhance operational efficiency and reduce redundancy.

- Monitor and Secure Websites Effectively: Learn to integrate advanced monitoring and security protocols to ensure peak website performance and safety.

- Apply Real-World Use Cases: Witness practical implementations of WebOps strategies through detailed examples and discover how these can be adapted to benefit your operations.

Les Peabody
Director of Technology for Digital Polygon

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693593

RFPs are tough. There’s so much riding on getting it right. Knowing where to start, how to identify an excellent Vendor, and how to sort through dozens of responses effectively – it’s often overwhelming.

Session designed to equip professionals with the tools and knowledge to create and optimize Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for website design, development, and support. In this fast-paced session, you will learn:

Key considerations for selecting the best web design and development partners
A step-by-step guide to crafting effective RFPs
Best Practices and Common Pitfalls with real examples from our RFP team
The good, the bad, and the ugly of project impacts of poorly drafted RFPs - directly from our Project management team experiences!

P.S. Come just to grab our Full Government RFP Template and Scoring Matrix!

Amy Groenhof
Promet Source

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693753

Rules as Code (RaC) is gaining momentum and has considerable transformative potential, if done right. This is especially the case for governments, because complex legislation and government rules in a constantly changing landscape can be codified to drastically simplify digital experiences for its citizens.

Although Rules as Code can be applied to any set of business rules, it can greatly improve a citizen's digital journey and experience, particularly when navigating the complex forms and multi-department process for social benefits, for example. Creating and delivering ‘dignified experiences’ for such digital journeys can be challenging.

The Australian Government has taken up this challenge by establishing an incubator Rules as Code program. This pilot involves a cross-section of departments, testing various use cases to determine how Rules as Code can improve their users' digital journeys.

Hear from the Head of GovCMS Nathan Wall with the Australian Department of Finance, via a pre-recorded video, about the GovCMS initiative to bring RaC to Australia at scale and why the Australian Government is committed to RaC to help improve delivery of government services.

Some of the many use cases for government include:
* Simplifying tax calculations
* Compliance checking
* Eligibility across a vast array of areas (e.g. licenses, visas, etc.)
* Urban planning
* Environmental regulations/compliance
* Policy twins

In this session we’ll cover:
* What Rules as Code is, including a quick demo of how it works
* The advantages of using Drupal with OpenFisca – the open source ‘rules engine’
* Governments' role in creating dignified experiences for digital service delivery
* How the Australian Government is using Rules as Code for personalisation to deliver social benefits and entitlements
* About the Australian Government's Rules as Code pilot program
* A quick Q&A session with our Rules as Code expert

Phillipa Martin
Rules as Code Champion, Salsa Digital, Australia

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693990

By combining design systems with Layout Builder and Drupal features such as blocks we can drag and drop experience for site builders.

In this session, attendees will learn:
* How to integrate design systems with Drupal
* How to combine component libraries with Drupal Blocks and Layout Builder
* How to leverage prebuilt built components on other websites
* How this approach builds on Drupal's inherent flexibility

Ashley Burns
Test Early Test Often!

Rod
Drupal Trainer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/716834

The code to use recipes has already been merged into Drupal 10.3, and will be a key feature in how we use Drupal 11, and the coming Starshot initiative.

But how will recipes make your life easier, building and managing Drupal websites? In this talk we'll explore exactly what a recipe is, how you can use them, and how you can make your own. We'll talk about the recipes already available, and how the recipes still being developed will play a central role in the future of Drupal.

mandclu
Solutions Engineer at Acquia

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693842

Single Directory Components (SDC) streamline the organization of reusable UI elements by consolidating all related files into a single directory.

This approach simplifies development workflows, enhances maintainability, and promotes consistency, making it easier for developers to collaborate.

They are now in Core, so let's start using them now ensuring your projects are future-proof and efficient.

Outline:
- What are the SDCs
- Advantages of using them.
- Some examples.
- Generating your first components.
- Complementary modules.

jidrone
Drupal Architect at Agileana

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/714657

The contract is signed, the project team is defined, and goals are set. So you’re probably thinking, let’s kick the project off. Although it’s exciting to jump in and make progress on a new project, there’s a lot to think about before getting started.

Successful projects are a result of great partnerships, and it’s important to establish a strong project team and be on the same page from the start. In this session, we’ll cover the importance of:

Business and client team building
Encouraging Trust through transparency and delivery
Empowering decision-makers with a discovery-first approach
Performing phased projects to deliver success when dealing with high-risk and uncertainty
Synopsis
In the tech agency space, agencies may perform poorly because they act as a "middle man" instead of a "facilitator". Whether you’re an agency or work with one, join us to learn the best practices for successful project management and a successful agency partnership.

Learning objectives
At the end of this session, attendees will be able to host valuable and transparent team-building activities with their partner businesses and produce successful projects.

Prerequisites
Attendees will get the most out of this session by being familiar with business-client relationships.

tekNorah
Senior Technical Project Manager @tekNorah

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/687659

The website www.ATF.gov recently migrated to Drupal 10, using a progressive migration strategy to move from D7 to D10. The ATF team was able to transition by section, or as they call them, "islands." This approach allowed a single domain, www.atf.gov, to seamlessly serve content from two Drupal websites as one.

In this session, you will learn:
- Goals of the atf.gov migration
- Why a progressive approach was chosen
- The challenges of a progressive migration approach
- Prioritization of the island process
- Tips for taking a progressive migration approach

stephencross
Drupal Developer and Linux Enthusiast

Mayela Jackson
ATF

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/689478

This session will review how StoryBook allows us to develop and document UI components in isolation. and create a visual library of components that can enhance reusability, streamlines the development process, and foster better collaboration between developers and designers.

Additionally, steps in Atomic Design process will be covered. This approach promotes modularity and reusability, enabling developers to build complex interfaces from simple, reusable components.

Bill Renk
Director of Engineering, WebFirst

Arsen Yunusov
Sr. Web Developer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693042

Join us, and dive deep on the most relevant challenges and lessons-learned facing a digital transformation from proprietary-to-open. You are sure to come away with some tips that will aid you in planning for and keeping your large-scale and mission-critical projects on track. Some highlights include:

1. Establishing and maintaining trust, accountability, and a teamwork-oriented relationship between a government organization and their technical partners

2. Dealing with urgency in the context of government bureaucracy

3. Evaluating and selecting open source alternatives

4. Identifying and promoting the key benefits of open source to government clients

5. Balancing reliability with innovation in replacing a utility-grade component without end users noticing a difference

6. Working agilely within a waterfall contract structure

7. Ensuring compliance with established and emergent requirements

8. Keeping on-track and on-task among a flurry of conflicting priorities

We’ll provide real world examples from a recent project with the Metropolitan Transport Commission: 511.org shares transportation information with over 7.7 million residents and visitors of the San Francisco Bay Area. It was relying on an increasingly unstable and unmaintainable proprietary system for gathering upstream data. It failed regularly, causing major, costly outages. All stakeholder groups were negatively impacted. This is the story of how to successfully replace such a legacy application with a maintainable, expandable open source platform that can adapt in real time with the fast-changing needs of stakeholders of all kinds.

This session will be useful to you if you are considering, or in the midst of a technological transformation or a partnership between a government agency and technical partner. No matter your role, we think you’ll come away with some immediately useful tips to apply to your circumstance.

Download the slides here: https://bit.ly/kalamunaGovCon

Sean Lehane
Senior Program & Project Manager, Kalamuna

Andrew Mallis
CEO @ Kalamuna

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/692997

Design systems get a ton of praise, and for good reason! Despite a significant investment, the returns - whether in terms of efficient and scalable tech or unified brand expression - are compelling, especially for large organizations. When Evolving Web was brought on board to accompany a health authority in their migration from a centralized SharePoint setup to a multi-site Drupal architecture, a design system was top of mind.

This talk will cover the what, why and how of building design systems from scratch; ways to bridge the gap between developers and designers when collaborating on their creation, implementation and evolution; and lessons learned from our experience to ensure scalability and longevity.

Adrienne Smith
Senior Digital Strategist

Yue Lu
UX/UI Designer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/729892

Ever need to quickly build up, deploy code, and begin development of a simple Drupal Site within a few hours? Want to have the benefits of containerization and Docker? Don't have comfortability with DevOps?

In this session we will walk through a simple codebase that allows you to generate an Azure Kubernetes Service Cluster, an Azure Container Registry, and an Azure Blob Storage using Azure ARM templates, then be able to deploy a simple Drupal codebase using Azure Pipelines. After the environment is deployed, we will talk about the benefits of containerization and Docker, as well as walk through simple alternative options for different pieces of the solution.

Mike Redman
Mike Redman, DevOps Engineer, Mobomo

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/709517

Compliance is crucial for federal websites, ensuring accessibility and uniformity. In this session, I will investigate different methods to assess your .gov site for compliance with the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) and Section 508 under M-24-08. An overview of the GSA site scanning program, its API, and the codebase available at Digital.gov will be provided. Breaking down compliance requirements into specific categories helps organize and simplify the process. I will review our contributed module that enables site scanning and reporting directly in the Drupal admin UI using the site scanning API. Explore how to effectively use these tools to proactively ensure your federal site meets all necessary standards.

Nathan
WebFirst, Sr. Project Manager

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/689509

The landscape of websites is undergoing a seismic shift, driven by an insatiable demand for new content and the impending influence of artificial intelligence. In this session, we embark on a journey into the heart of "The Future of Websites," exploring the dynamic interplay between escalating content needs and the transformative role of AI in shaping the digital ecosystem.

Join us for a forward-thinking session where we dissect the symbiotic relationship between content demand, artificial intelligence, and the evolution of websites. As the story unfolds, be prepared to glean insights that will empower you to navigate and lead in the dynamic future of website development.

Potential Topics for Discussion:

Content Proliferation:

Uncover the driving forces behind the unprecedented demand for content in today's digital era.
Analyze strategies to meet the content explosion, ensuring websites remain not only relevant but also thrive in a content-saturated environment.

AI's Impact on the Ecosystem:

Delve into the imminent influence of artificial intelligence on website functionality and user experience.
Explore real-world applications of AI in content creation, personalization, and adaptive user interfaces.

The Unfolding Narrative:

Peer into the future as we paint a compelling picture of what lies ahead for websites.
Discuss anticipated trends, challenges, and opportunities that will define the narrative of website development and management.

John Doyle (_doyle_)
Building a Better Internet

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/687366

Search API is one of the great things about Drupal. The ability to take any of your content and map its fields, run it through processors, and add boosts allows for crafting a powerful search all from the Drupal interface. Then comes configuring the search experience itself from setting up facets, to rearranging the pager/sort/per page fields, to configuring field displays, to trying to get Ajax to work. I’ve spent hours upon hours trying to get everything working, looking correct, and working correctly. After much struggling I usually get something working but I always leave thinking surely there's a better way. Especially when I show it to site owners who comment that what I did build doesn’t feel modern, that it’s too slow, that the typeahead doesn’t feel right, that the date facet is hard to use, etc.

The fact of the matter is Drupal Search API is great but views and facets struggle to create the experience that site owners and users expect from a modern search experience.

No worry though there’s a solution to our problem! Javascript! Leveraging Search API, custom web components, Drupal, and a little bit of javascript we can create a truly modern search experience that seamlessly integrates into any Drupal site.

In this session, we’ll cover
Why decoupling search makes sense
The general architecture of a decoupled search
Important considerations when connecting all the moving pieces of a search page
A working demo of the search_web_components module

ctrladel
Founder & Principal at True Summit

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693989

The Open Website Alliance was co-founded by major open source CMS communities TYPO3, Drupal, and Joomla. It represents an open effort to enhance web technology standards and practices across these applications. amazee.io's Lagoon provides an Open Source web hosting solution based on Kubernetes. Its developer-first approach promotes flexibility, reliability, and open source from top to bottom, significantly reducing web developers' operational overhead.

Come along and see why these CMS communities are again rallying behind an open source approach and how embracing open source hosting can be a powerful complement to your open source strategy.

Join me in championing the open web from top to bottom: Your Open Website Alliance sites like Drupal are built on open source software - shouldn't they be hosted on an Open Source platform, too?

Rolando Scott
Director of Drupal Development at Taoti Creative

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693688

Managing dates and times is often complex: recurring events, timezones, daylight savings times, regional formatting conventions, and more. Add in additional presentation requirements like add-to-calendar links, registration links, and related content (like agendas, that change for each date instance) and the complexity can seem bewildering.

Fortunately Drupal offers a rich toolset for solving these challenges. In this session we'll explore the solutions, not only showing how they work, but also detailing the modules and the configuration needed.

During the session we'll take a fresh install of Drupal 11 and configure it to meet some advanced use cases, in real time. Along the way we'll use some readily available recipes and contrib modules that you can leverage in your own Drupal site.

mandclu
Solutions Engineer at Acquia

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/718936

Your website is full of content. Some may be useful to your constituents, some might need TLC, and other content...well...it's just time to take it out.

You wish you could burn it down and start over.

Unfortunately, most government agencies don't have the time, resources, or budget for full redesigns. But you can see opportunities, so what can do you? A small-step content strategy might be exactly what you need—without burning it all down first.

See how the State of Massachusetts Division of Apprentice Standards did just that.

Erin Schroeder
Senior Content Strategist - Lullabot

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/687509

Do you understand how Drupal's configuration system is supposed to work? Do you ever experience inconsistencies between environments? Are you interested in building a best-practice continuous integration and deployment solution with configuration validation? This session, led by a 10-year maintainer of Drupal's configuration system, will focus on how the configuration management system is designed to work, explore its integration with continuous integration systems, identify common configuration pitfalls, and discuss how upcoming initiatives like Recipes will enhance the robustness of your site's configuration.

Matthew Tift
Lead Engineer at Lullabot

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693859

Have you ever wondered why some content resonates with your audience while other pieces fall flat? The answer often lies in the principles of behavioral economics. Join us for "Mind Games: Leveraging Behavioral Economics in Content Strategy" to uncover the psychological insights that can transform your content into a powerful tool for engagement and action.

In this session, we'll take you on a journey through the fascinating world of behavioral economics, revealing how small "nudges" can lead to big improvements in user engagement. We'll share real-world examples from government and public sector websites, demonstrating how these principles have been successfully applied to drive user behavior.

We'll tell the story of how understanding behavioral economics has revolutionized our approach to content strategy, helping us overcome common challenges and achieve remarkable results. Through this story, you’ll learn not just the theory, but practical applications that you can use to enhance your own content strategy.

Key Takeaways:
* Nudging for Engagement: Learn how subtle changes in content presentation can significantly influence user behavior.
* Choice Architecture: Discover how to structure choices in a way that guides users towards desired actions.
* Social Proof: Understand the power of testimonials and user-generated content in building trust and encouraging engagement.

By the end of this session, you'll have a toolkit of behavioral economics techniques that you can immediately implement to make your content more compelling and effective.

Amy Shropshire
Strategic Marketer with a passion for nonprofits and startups

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693659

Drupal is the swiss-army-knife of content management systems. It provides the flexibility to build pretty much any site you want. This is why so many of us choose Drupal for our backend technology.

**Jamstack vs Static**

You can find tons of resources on Drupal with React, Gatsby, Next, Vue and Nuxt, yet not so much static-focused non-Jamstack content beyond using the Drupal Tome module (which is a great tool!). Why are JavaScript frameworks such a hot Drupal topic yet simple static frontends not so much? I think static Drupal has a marketing problem!

**Benefits of Static**

Drupal provides the tools and workflows that content editors want. With Paragraphs and Layout Builder and Views, there is much to love. But for many sites, they would also reap the benefits of having a fully or mostly static frontend such as:

* Enhanced security
* Increased performance
* Better scalability
* Less CO2 emissions
* Higher Lighthouse scores
* Improved user engagement

It’s often more cost-effective too!

Although you can’t use static for everything, it’s not unusual to be able to leverage a static frontend for a good part of your website while routing dynamic pages back to the Drupal backend. This provides the best of both worlds:

1) Drupal with its flexibility and features, and

2) static with its speed, security, scalability, and better environmental footprint.

Let’s discuss how to leverage a fully or partially static frontend for your Drupal website for all the wins!

Kristen Pol
Co-Founder & Open Source Enthusiast

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693981

Join us for an open demo and Q&A session for EditTogether, the module bringing secure and open-source real-time collaboration to Drupal 10. We’ll demo how real-time collaboration integrates with the Drupal editing interface, showcase the various ways that developers and site builders can extend and customize EditTogether, and have an open discussion around your questions, comments, and particular workflow needs.

By the end, you’ll have an understanding of how EditTogether looks and feels, what sorts of configuration options it offers, and how you can use it to streamline your content workflows. EditTogether is built to serve the Drupal community, so bring your thoughts and let’s chat about them!

Alex Jones
Senior Technical Architect at Palantir.net

agentrickard
Sr. Director of Consulting, Palantir.net

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/719586

It's August 2024. If you haven't started migrating to D10 now, your timetable is rapidly closing. With most complex migrations taking a year or more to perform. Staying secure beyond end-of-life is paramount for Government agencies who need to comply with regulatory and compliance standards like FedRAMP. In this talk we will talk more about the Drupal 7 Never-Ending Support initiative.

Allison Vorthmann
Senior Software Engineer

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/693852

In the era of digital transformation, integrating advanced AI technologies into content management systems is essential for enhancing productivity and user experience. This session will explore how Azure OpenAI can be harnessed within Drupal to create intelligent content solutions. Attendees will discover innovative methods for distilling and summarizing user comments, generating high-quality text, and creating visually compelling images, all through the power of AI. By leveraging Azure OpenAI, content managers and developers can automate routine tasks, improve content quality, and engage users more effectively. Join us to learn how these cutting-edge tools can transform your Drupal site into a smarter, more dynamic platform.

Anand Kumar
American Institutes for Research - Managing Director, Chief Solutions Architect

Volodymyr Mostepaniuk
American Institutes for Research - Senior Software Developer

Matt Decker
American Institutes for Research, Principal Applications Architect

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/689842

What’s that? Another AI session?

Yep, but this time I’m going to tell you why AI is a bad idea.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad, but AI is developing fast and furious with hardly any thought given to the consequences of doing so. Open AI and Microsoft even laid off or lost whole ethics and AI risk teams. People love to quote Zuckerberg, “Move fast and break things.” That’s all fine and dandy when the thing you’re breaking is an input field or a signup feature, but what if it’s society, what if it’s the world?

AI has far-reaching implications that we maybe haven’t even thought of yet, but let me share some of the negative implications that are already happening today. This isn’t a dystopian future I’m talking about. I’m not a harbinger of doom and gloom. I’m going to talk about real things that are happening right now and the real effects they’re having on real humans today.

Hanna Kras
Web Developer, NIST

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/695425

Drupal 7's end-of-life is right around the corner, this January!

Many site-owners invested heavily in their Drupal 7 sites and would like to continue to reap the benefits of their investment. They don't necessarily *want* to migrate to Drupal 10 - the Drupal 7 site is doing the job just fine! So, how do we migrate away from Drupal 7 efficiently, cost-effectively, and what options should we consider?

In this talk we'll walk through real-world examples of migrating non-trivial Drupal 7 websites to Drupal 9 & 10. We'll demonstrate decisions (both technical and non-technical) made by the clients and the developer teams which resulted in time savings of as much as 60%.

Amani Mansour
Technical Lead / Senior Drupal Developer at Debug Academy

Ashraf Abed
Founder & lead instructor at Debug Academy.

https://drupal-govcon-2024.sessionize.com/session/718686