Intermediate

How to Theme Like A Rockstar

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Theming a site is NOT doing a grid, modifying the CSS & changing a bit of HTML - Theming starts when the first field is created!

This is where Design, UX, Drupal stuff, functionality and content (read: user input *argh*) all comes together as a big "happy" family - or rather all wanna have its say, and nobody wanna take the responsibility for all the stuff nobody thought of.
Its a battleground where quick n dirty solutions will hunt you down in about 6 months, decisions that were made in the start process (and all forgot about) now is a problem.

Intended audience

Questions answered by this session

What's a themer's role?

What to do when the design is not a grid

Why you should use a basetheme.

When to code, when to {display:none}.

Why custom markup is so important, to be able to do

OXFAM + Drupal = Great

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Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working together in 98 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice. Since they need to communicate quickly and richly with their staff, partners, and allies across the world, they turned to Drupal as a framework to help build and power many of their public and private websites. This presentation will focus on how Oxfam is adopting Drupal as an organization to meet its unique goals and will highlight, through case examples, how Drupal is used to power Oxfam's public website (oxfam.org) and their global intranet (sumus.oxfam.org).

Intended audience

This session is focused on those interested in how an NGO like Oxfam uses Drupal to power important websites and general Drupal developers and site builders looking for new techniques to create collaborative and social websites.

Questions answered by this session

How does an NGO like Oxfam use Drupal?

What techniques can I use to foster collaboration on my Drupal websites?

How can Drupal be used as a global communication platform?

How do I build rich features for my internal users?

How do I design and build a site for a globally diverse set of users?

A Bulletproof Approach to Theming

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Theming is not rocket science, but it can be difficult being a themer on Drupal projects that are larger in scale. Often you find yourself being pulled into projects at an especially unfortunate moment, or maybe you’re the lucky one that gets included from the start, but without a clear overview as to what the IA, design or basic functionality looks like.

Intended audience

This session is intended for front-end developers and designers or project managers looking for better ways to utilize a themer. Those unfamiliar with Drupal, will gain an insight into the workflow required to create a strong theme, and ultimately an entire website.

Questions answered by this session

How to design and build a theme that works with Drupal and not against it.

How to identify and use the basics within a design, minimizing the need for constant design iterations.

How to use HTML5 and CSS3 to your advantage.

How to use a themer more efficiently.

How to start designing in the browser and use your skill set more efficiently.

Continuous Integration Will Solve Everything

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Continuous integration(CI) is the process of which a system is integrated on a continuous basis, leading to multiple integrations in a development cycle. This provides a means to monitor the quality of code, test it and receive quick notifications of errors.
It provides a quick overview of the current state of a project, from both a managers stand point and a programmer's.
It can turn integration from a multi day process to a non-event done on an hourly basis.

Intended audience

Drupal developers and Drupal architects intending to build sites who wish to know on a frequent basis when their complete integration fails.

Questions answered by this session

Setting up a CI server to build a drupal site

Setting up a basic build script

Packaging a site into a single deployable file

How it can help team size issues

The Prairie Initiative - Redesigning the Social Spaces of Drupal.org

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Since the Prairie Initiative was kicked off at the Chicago Drupalcon earlier this year, a small but active group have been working on achieving our goals of:

  1. Improving the collaboration tools on Drupal.org so that we can do more and better work together and make Drupal better, faster.
  2. Growing the pool of contributors by making Drupal.org a better and easier place to become a contributor - to make it less intimidating to people who want to get started contributing.

Intended audience

Anyone who contributes to Drupal today or who is interested in contributing in the future.

Questions answered by this session

What is the Prairie Initiative and what are you trying to achieve?

What are you working on?

What parts of Drupal.org are you touching?

What is Social Architecture?

How can I get involved?

The Economist: An Informal Technical Case Study

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For people interested in big websites and their unique challenges, this panel offers a behind the scenes look at The Economist site. A team of experienced Economist developers will talk about the complicated challenges, the innovative solutions, and the still-to-be-solved issues of this popular website. There will also be a (lively, no doubt) Q&A.

Intended audience

Developers and business people interested in the technical aspect of The Economist website and the big-website solutions the team has developed.

Questions answered by this session

How does The Economist handle workflow and quality control?

How does The Economist handle testing?

What performance solutions has The Economist developed?

What aspects of The Economist site are custom-coded in innovative ways?

What's the status on The Economist migration to Drupal?

Building Your Drupal Products the Right Way: Customer Development and Business Model Generation in a Lean Startup

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Every day more and more companies start using Drupal and the day will come when it'll make all the difference if you are more than just-another-Drupal-shop.

Drupal is a very innovative community, and we've got a wide range of companies and individuals that are constantly pioneering new technologies. For several of these pioneers this is a conscious differentiation strategy, an attempt to increase personal or company karma. Commercially however this innovation has not always been particularly successful.

Intended audience

Business owners, consultants

Questions answered by this session

What is customer development

What is a lean startup

What is business model generation

How could we make an ethical Drupal appstore

What is wrong with alpha and beta release mentality

Mad Skillz: Become the Best in the World

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Are you a themer or developer who wants to work on bigger, more complicated projects? Do you want to send your resume to top Drupal shops and get hired? Do you want to assess and approve your skills?

If so, come to this session and create your plan. You will leave with you a take-home list of essential traitz and skillz. You'll also find out what a few top Drupal shops and in-house Drupal team leaders say are the "Most Important Skillz" their best developers possess.

We'll focus on three essential questions:

1. What specific skillz do I need to build?

Intended audience

Drupal development professionals who want to beef up their mad skillz and want a clear, researched answer to the question, "what skills are essential to have in the Drupal talent marketplace"? Team builders who want an outline of what to look for in potential developers.

Questions answered by this session

What technical skills are foundationally necessary for a Drupal themer or developer?

What technical skills are Drupal shops and clients looking for?

What non-technical skills are Drupal shops and clients looking for?

What are some essential traitz of top developers?

What are effective ways to prove my skills?

With One Click

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Joel Spolsky describes the Joel Test as his "highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of a software team" and one of the questions he asks is: Can you make a build in one step?

If you're a Drupal developer who's making changes to a site, your deployment process to push those changes to live probably goes something like this:

Intended audience

developers, sysadmins

Questions answered by this session

What tools are available to help deployment?

What changes do you need to make to your infrastructure to take advantage of these tools?

How can you automate the build of a new environment?

How can you deploy a site with a single click?

Product, Framework, or Platform? What They Mean, And Why You Should Care

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As Drupal's popularity has grown, its core audience of hobbyist developers has exploded into an international community of businesses, nonprofits, independent developers, startups, and governments. Bubbling under the surface is a recurring debate: Is 'Drupal' a product for people who build web sites, a framework for web developers, or a platform that other products are built on?

Intended audience

Core developers and decision makers looking to understand the history and motivations of the 'smallcore' movement; developers looking to shape or participate in the development of Drupal's APIs; business stakeholders considering the future of Drupal for their web applications and web projects.

Questions answered by this session

What's the difference between a product and a framework?

How has Drupal's evolving community shaped the software's priorities?

What parts of Drupal are hot spots for this debate today?

Is it possible for Drupal to be both at once?

How can we answer these questions and build a stronger, more resilient ecosystem?

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