Figure on Figuring it out: strategies for cracking Drupal without cracking up
Many people find themselves overwhelmed during the first weeks and months they spend working with Drupal. Whether one has a background as a content manager, developer or otherwise, it's easy to fall into a paralysis of choice when determining how to approach a given task. In this session, we'll step away from talking about specific modules and solutions, and instead focus on how to develop an individualized, effective development process. After talking about strategy and process, we'll dive into some real-world examples. We'll also discuss how to apply these strategies to community contributions and help you climb the rungs of the Drupal Ladder. This session was inspired by spending the past year mentoring a person who was completely new to web development, and has since been hired as a junior developer with my agency. In addition, it's informed by having spent several years directly supporting the developers of hundreds of Drupal websites at a large state University.
Who should come? This talk is focused towards those that are fairly new to the world of building sites with Drupal, especially those without previous development backgrounds. However, there are things here for more experienced developers, especially those who aren't naturally highly organized.
Why would I come? You want to hear from someone who has spent years in the trenches of site development, but has the fresh perspective of having recently worked with someone learning Drupal from scratch.
What will I learn? How to segment a daunting task into manageable pieces and turn small wins into total victory.
Comments
I think this would be an extremely useful presentation to expose Drupal to a wider developer audience for two reasons:
This is perfect timing for a talk like this at a time when we're integrating with the Symphony framework, and non-drupal Devs are undoubtedly looking towards us, this presentation could help as a way-finder to provide practical info to get over that initial overwhelming (head-scratching?) look into the Drupal ecosystem.
I'd like to ultimately translate the slides for this presentation to Spanish which will really help for wider exposure to existing markets of non-drupal Devs located in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Sounds interesting!
This could be a new and interesting way to introduce new developers to our community.
This presentation can help newcomers and experienced Drupalers alike and offer an interesting new take on the "how do we get more people into Drupal" problem. These are lessons that agencies will be able to pick up and apply immediately. So overall I would say a perfect Drupalcon subject.
acrollet is an experienced Drupaler that has helped a lot of people with Drupal, is completely engaged with the community day in and day out, and can command the stage and present with no problem so would make for a great speaker.
Full disclosure - I work with Adrian in the same company, but that just means that I know for a fact what a cracking presentation it is and how well he can deliver it :-)