The journey there was certainly an ordeal. If starting at 5 AM was already a challenge, my posterior had to endure a true test of endurance during the roughly ten-hour flight between Amsterdam and Portland/Oregon. At least you can't complain about Delta Airlines' entertainment programme - Steven Soderbergh's new film Side Effects is quite entertaining. But that's just by the by ;).
After an immigration procedure that was unusually personal for Europeans (my passport looked “too new” and aroused suspicion), we made our way to the city centre and our hotels using public transport. Wolfgang Ziegler (aka @the_real_fago), however, headed straight for core discussions after a 16-hour journey - a level of dedication that earns all our admiration.
The nine-hour time difference isn't easy to cope with and throws one's internal clock a little off. However, with the targeted intake of palatable cold hop beverages at the subsequent meetup, we effectively helped our bodies adjust towards the evening.
Day 0: Warm Up
The DrupalCon, as is well known, only officially starts on Tuesday 21st May. However, that doesn't mean everyone sits around idly on Monday. There was a hive of activity in the Coders Lounge. People were either working on their own modules or participating in the Core Codesprints.
Finally, I was able to sort out my schedule for the next few days. To be fair, it wasn't easy. In every timeslot, there were at least two or three sessions that would have greatly interested me. I would have liked to be in two places at once - but unfortunately, I had to make some tough decisions.
Tuesday, 21st May
- Automated Testing with Jasmine and PhantomJS (Ronn Abueg, Aisha Kaliel)
- Asset Management in Drupal 8 (Sam Boyer)
- The state of Drupal 8 - Dries Keynote (Dries Buytaert)
- Using Backbone.js with Drupal 7 & 8 (Vadim Mirgorod)
- Status of the new Entity API and Typed Data (Sascha Grossenbacher, Wolfgang Ziegler)
- Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS (Jonathan Snook)
Wednesday, 22nd May
- Thriving in a world of change: future friendly content with Drupal (Karen McGrane)
- What's new in Drush 6 (Moshe Weitzman, Mark Sonnabaum, Jonathan Hedstrom, Owen Barton)
- Mistakes agencies make (Seth Brown)
- SASS - OO'S'CSS with extends and silent placeholders (Dale Sande)
- Using Twig: The new template engine in Drupal 8 (Jen Lampton, Fabian Franz, John Albin Wilkins)
- The Zen of HTML prototyping & designing in the Browser (Josh Riggs)
Thursday, 23rd May
- The engineer, the designer and the dictator (Michael Lopp)
- Managing responsive web design with SASS and Breakpoint (Mason Wendell, Sam Richard)
- Using the Drupal 8 configuration system (Greg Dunlap)
- The joy of cooking - whip up a Drupal environment with Chef (Nathen Harvey)
Friday, 24th May - Webvisions
- Making Meaningful Design with the Internet of Things (Carla Diana)
- One Web to Rule Them All! The Real Responsive Process (Steve Fisher)
- Just Make It Fun: What Designing For Kids Can Teach Us About User Experience (Debra Gelman)
- Mobile Web Design Anti-Patterns (Dave Shea)
- Your CSS is a Mess (Jonathan Snook)
- Your Responsive Tool Box (Jacob Surber)
Indeed, while writing this, I also noticed the slight front-end bias in my selection. However, this is a matter of personal preference and has nothing to do with the overall DrupalCon offering, which is certainly more diverse. The complete schedule can be found here.
With that, I conclude my first report and mentally prepare myself for an exciting first day at DrupalCon Portland. Stay tuned!
