DrupalCamp Vienna 2015 #dcvie – Connecting Open Minds

From 27th to 29th November 2015, a DrupalCamp was held in Vienna for the third time. At the sold out FH Technikum Wien, 400 attendees from 28 countries took the opportunity to expand and share their knowledge, especially concerning Drupal 8.

In collaboration with the PHP User Group Vienna, a wide range of relevant topics from the web industry was covered in 40 talks and countless code sprints, following the event motto “Connecting Open Minds”. The main topics of the talks included coding and development, frontend development and design, business and content strategies, community and user groups.

To begin: For me, DrupalCamp Vienna 2015 was a complete success, as I had the impression throughout the weekend that it had successfully lived up to its motto “Connecting Open Minds”. Furthermore, as a so called “Frontender”, I am delighted that “beautiful” markup is possible in Drupal 8 with the help of TWIG.

The sessions at #dcvie

Jenny Wong – as a representative of the WordPress community – kicked off with her keynote on “Bridging Communities”.

In her talk, Jenny Wong emphasised the necessity of strengthening the “web community” by focusing on collaboration and knowledge transfer. According to her, this can only function through mutual respect and recognition of others, regardless of their community. Every developer should therefore look beyond their own horizons, attend various conferences, and most importantly, share knowledge. Only in this way can each individual receive feedback and thus improve with the help of others.

Karin Christen, an interaction designer, illustrated the importance of teamwork with a team, using personal experiences with remote work in her talk HOW TO RUN A REMOTE BUSINESS WHILE TRAVELLING THE WORLD. Karin Christen described how she managed to combine travel and work despite all the difficulties that working whilst travelling entails (keywords: internet connection, different time zones).

She conveyed authentically how her constant movement to new places provides the necessary inspiration for new ideas. However, she underlined that excellent communication skills are required to work effectively and successfully in a “remote team”. As the most crucial point, she highlighted the fact that EVERYTHING must be documented in writing.

In the second keynote TYPOGRAPHY FOR DEVELOPERS, Marko Dugonjić elucidated the importance of typography for developers. He believes that every developer must possess a certain minimum level of typographical knowledge and understanding because text and images are an essential part of every web product.

Alongside some best practice examples (dropcaps, css-shapes, etc.), he discussed the importance of progressive enhancement when using web fonts. He stressed that performance strategies are absolutely necessary so that the end user sees the information first on screen and does not have to wait for content until a font has loaded.

Josef Dabernig gave an overview of Drupal 8 and Contrib modules in his talk STATE OF CONTRIB MODULES IN DRUPAL 8. He illustrated which modules are already available in Drupal 8 Core and which Contrib modules are already available and usefully functional.

In the talk THE BACKEND OF FRONTEND, Lauri Eskola informed about what has changed for themers with Drupal 8. For example, all theme functions have been transferred to TWIG Templates. This means there is no more PHP in .tpl files, which implies very flexible markup and more security for the frontend.

Morten Birch echoed this sentiment in his talk NO MORE DIVITIS – DRUPAL8 THEMING. In his usual amusing and exaggerated manner, he announced that the so called “divitis” of Drupal 7 is history. Using “Classy” and “Stable” as base themes, he showed how themes are structured in Drupal 8 (BEM, SmaCSS, TWIG, etc.) and how much fun “theming” with Drupal 8 is.

For all frontend enthusiasts, the talk FUTUREPROOF STYLING IN DRUPAL 8 was also a great asset. Tamás Hajas’ explanations assume that in the multitude of possibilities and complexities, there is no single right way to style a website with CSS. However, this poses the risk of a lack of clarity (“CSS is easy to do wrong”). Therefore, it is important to find a method that works for you and consistently apply it in your work. Using code examples, he explained his approaches. For instance, he works according to the BEM method and subdivides CSS classes into objects and components.

A developer should always ask themselves who they are working with. (“You never work alone, you always work in a team”). Even if you work alone, assume that you always work in a team. Therefore, always comment your code, because you are your future colleague.

In his talk HEADLESS DRUPAL 8, Ruben Teijeiro started from the premise that frontend development always evolves faster than any CMS/framework ever can. “Frontend moves faster than Drupal, whether you like it or not”. In an era where content must be available on various devices (smartphone, smartwatch, Internet of Things, etc.), Ruben Teijeiro showed the audience how, in Drupal 8, content can be easily and straightforwardly used in JSON and HAL format for further processing in various frontend frameworks and devices, thanks to the RESTful Web Services Module.

Of course, our Sebastian couldn’t resist holding a session himself. Sebastian Siemssen also addressed the topic of web services in his talk on GRAPHQL. He explained the advantages of GraphQL to the audience and why he developed a module for it. You can read more about it in our blog post.

Sebastian also highlighted the benefits of GraphQL with a live demo, which received much applause from the audience.

Ali Sharif illustrated the importance of team culture in his excellent talk CREATING A BETTER DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE. He gave a brief overview of Scrum and an insight into his working methods with it. Using examples such as pair programming and mob programming, he explained how important motivated developers are to create a good product.

He believes that a team must be on the same wavelength (“similar mindset”) to be productive, and is of the opinion that so called social skills outweigh coding skills, at least in the long term. In his explanations, he assumes that only genuinely meant feedback delivered positively can strengthen teams as a whole (“Don’t play the blame game”). Blame destroys teams. Ali Sharif also relies on the power of listening.

According to his experience, active listening is a crucial success factor. It’s not about how much you say, but what you say. You don’t have to and can’t know everything. It’s therefore no problem to say: “I don’t know that”. At the end of his remarks, he reminded that development takes time and success cannot be forced overnight.

In the talk DRUPAL GOES TO COLLEGE, Balazs Dianiska and Adam Boros addressed the topic of complexity in web projects. It was explained how a multisite can function with the use of Panopoly and how important it is to avoid complexity while remaining flexible. It was also shown how difficult it can be to estimate the actual workload in advance.

Adam Boros believes that client expectations must be managed (“Guide your client”), structures clarified and defined in advance, and complexity avoided wherever possible. The talk advocated the approach that complexity must always be explained. The two believe it is easier to add something than to take it away, which was illustrated with the example of an over salted soup.

My conclusion on #dcvie: Looking beyond your own horizon counts

In conclusion, I would like to emphasise that I was shown once again how important it is to look beyond your own horizon by leaving your own community island and respectfully approaching others. Through the talks I heard and conversations with other participants of DrupalCamp Vienna 2015, I was strengthened in my resolve to remain open to new ideas.

I think a suitable foundation for this has been created with Drupal 8. What I personally found very interesting was that the topic of complexity in web development, and how we can manage it in diversified teams, ran through many talks. Other important topics for me that I took away from the sessions were teamwork, knowledge transfer, and management.

What I heard at DrupalCamp Vienna 2015 reinforced my belief that it will become increasingly important to manage the constantly growing complexities within a team. Therefore, there cannot be one fixed way to implement things in and for the web. All the more, one must – especially in web development – always be open to new things. This by no means implies chasing every trend, but rather improving a product step by step in a team with a similar “mindset”.

You can find some impressions from this year’s #dcvie on our Flickr account.