Insightful stories that revolve around technology, culture, and design

Learning and development sessions present a prime opportunity to expand the knowledge base of all employees in an organization. Constant learning improves employee performance and boosts morale which improves productivity and quality standards. Learning and knowledge sharing is an integral part of our values at QED42. We invest in our team’s professional as well as personal growth. Our leaders believe in building an environment that values passion and determination and emphasizes learning over knowledge.

We, at QED42, in collaboration with Choose To Thinq have been organizing interactive and informative ‘Same Page Sessions’ for our team. Such knowledge sharing sessions are the building blocks of any flourishing organization. It encourages a constant learning environment and helps in filling knowledge gaps. These empowering sessions promote an innovative mindset, increase efficiency and develop leadership qualities in an individual.

The idea behind ‘Same Page Sessions’

The intent behind these sessions was to present insights into some brilliant personal development books in an engaging way for individuals. These sessions are introduced to promote an interactive way of learning and development. This is very similar to Blinkist but with a human touch. These sessions are a holistic addition to the existing technical learning and development program of QED42.

Why Books?

Reading books makes people empathetic; it empowers them to excel at tasks and open their mind to new innovative ideas. Given the everyday hustle of life, people do not always have time to read books. Same Page Sessions are focused on providing a solution to this problem. These deep engagement sessions focus on the key takeaways from the bestselling books of renowned authors. It reinforces curiosity and learning and fosters an overall behaviour change in every employee.  

We’ve had 3 same page sessions conducted at QED42 so far:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Let’s dig deeper into what goes into these sessions.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

We all have habits, good and bad; but do we know how these habits are formed and how can one change them? This breakthrough book from James Clear is the most comprehensive guide on how to change your habits and get 1% better every day. Based on this bestselling book, our first Same Page Session focused on the science behind our habits, empowering QEDians to:

• Build a system for constant improvement
• Break bad habits and stick to good ones
• Avoid the common mistakes most people make when changing habits
• Overcome the lack of motivation and willpower
•  Develop a stronger identity and self-confidence
• Make time for new habits
• Make easy and small changes that deliver big results

Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die

Have you ever wondered what goes into making an unforgettable idea? This book unveils the secret to making an idea memorable. Based on this bestseller by Heath Brothers, our second Same Page Session focused on how we can convert any idea into a sensational one based on the principle of SUCCESS - Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories. This 60-minute interactive session educated QEDians about the kind of ideas that stick and are understandable, memorable and effective in making an impact. It empowered the team in making client presentations memorable and being unforgettable and a better communicator.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

The concept of ‘Flow’ describes a mental state where a person is completely absorbed in a challenging task. Our most recent session was based on the bestselling psychology book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Much like the state of Flow, the session too focused on creating an engaging experience that was deeply enjoyable and genuinely satisfying. This engaging informative session majorly covered:

• What is Flow?
• Who experiences Flow?
• What happens in the Brain during Flow?
• How to achieve Flow?

Packed with interesting and fun questions for the participants, the session taught practical tips to enter the state of Flow, improve concentration and increase efficiency and productivity.

Upcoming Sessions

There are many interesting books in consideration for the upcoming sessions. Some of which are: 

• Alchemy - Rory Sutherland
• Built To Last - Jim Collins
• Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future - Ashlee Vance
• Good to Great - Jim Collins
• Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
• Switch - Chip and Dan Heath
• The Checklist Manifesto - Dr Atul Gawande

Here’s what QEDians have to say about the sessions
 

The session was both knowledgeable and interactive. The book selection was impressive. There were small interactive activities along with learning which made the whole experience fun.

– Nikita Aswani, Senior Full-Stack Engineer

The session was really helpful. It got help in boosting my daily productivity. I loved the interactive activities in between the sessions.

– Alphons Jaimon, Drupal Development Intern

The session was great and thought-provoking. The book was very inspiring and motivational. The entire session was interactive and interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

– Saloni Sinha, UI/UX Designer

Conclusion

Looking at the active participation from everyone and the popularity of these sessions across teams, we are determined to keep organizing them regularly. These sessions allow everyone to set aside the daily tasks and deadlines to connect with peers on a human level. An hour of interactive knowledge sharing is just the break everyone needs while working from home, with upskilling and learning as a bonus! 

DrupalCon North America 2021 has been the highlight of 2021 for the open-source community and we promise to bring you a recap of the largest Drupal event of the year. But before we do that, here's a recap of the Driesnote! 

DrupalCon North America saw over 2300+ attendees, out of which 30% were newcomers! Beyond celebrating the success of Drupal 9, the keynote focused on the five strategic initiatives undertaken by the Drupal community, addressing the issue of how difficult it is to contribute, and more.

The focus areas of the Driesnote were as follows: 

1. An update on Drupal 9 and the plan for Drupal 10
2. Falling in love with Drupal
3. Getting off the island

How is Drupal 9 fairing so far? 

Dries kicked off by showcasing how rapidly the world has adopted Drupal. For instance, all but one of the major COVID-19 vaccine-producing companies use Drupal and big brands like WWF, Budweiser, IBM have already moved to Drupal 9! 

It’s barely been 10 months since the launch of Drupal 9 and there are thousands of ambitious digital experiences running on Drupal 9 already.

We also looked back at Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 vs Drupal 9 now; here are the statistics that Dries presented:

Comparing Drupal 9 vs the previous versions of Drupal, it took Drupal 9 merely 1 month to reach 60,000 websites making Drupal faster than ever.

One of the major factors contributing to making the Drupal 9 upgrade faster than ever was the readiness of the contributed modules. Back in 2017, 17 months after the Drupal 8 launch, only 20% of the modules were ready whereas currently, 90% of the top 50 Drupal 8 contributed modules are ready and stable. Making it easy to start upgrading! 

One of the reasons why these contributed modules are now stable and ready is because of some key changes made w.r.t how Drupal is developed and released. There are no longer drastic breaks in between major versions anymore, instead, there is an upgrade path and backward compatibility.

The target release date for Drupal 10 is Summer 2022!

Dries covered the  major strategic initiatives that the Drupal community is currently working on:

1. Decoupled Menus Initiative

Drupal's move to become RESTful in the core has laid down a path for Decoupled Drupal and with this initiative, Drupal is looking at a way to decouple the menu from its core's rendering.

A few highlights of this initiative are:

• JavaScript projects are now on Drupal.org
• Drupal is branching out into the world of JavaScript, as it continues to solidify Drupal as a leader in the Headless CMS arena
• This initiative aims at making Decoupled Drupal easier compared to other Headless CMS's

2. Easy Out of the Box Initiative 

Here's a quick update around Claro, Media Library, and the Layout builder:

• Claro (admin theme) added as a beta now
• There has been limited progress around Media and Layout builder

3. Automated Updates Initiative

This initiative looked rather very green for the following reasons:

• Automated updates are now available for Drupal 7 & Drupal 8
• The community is taking these learnings and applying them to Drupal 9

4. Drupal 10 Readiness 

To sum it up in one sentence, the Drupal 10 Readiness Initiative is a ginormous initiative and needs a lot of support from the Drupal community!  

5. New Frontend Theme Initiative

This initiative is closer to the finish line with Olivero now in the Drupal core as beta.

Looking at the progress these initiatives have made so far, we do agree with Dries when he said that "Drupal 10 is closer than it appears".

Key milestones 

Important dates for Drupal 7 & Drupal 8

Dries also addressed the question as to why Drupal 7 is supported longer than Drupal 8? Drupal 7 end of life is scheduled for November 2022, whereas Drupal 8's end of life is November 2021 because the upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 is very difficult. 

Falling in love with Drupal

Dries acknowledged the fact that contributing to Drupal has been tough and tricky for a lot of contributors. And that we need to give every user and contributor a reason as to why they should adopt Drupal.

Looking back at Drupal’s roots; Drupal was all about empowering site builders by being able to:

• build ambitious websites 
• with low code

Unfortunately, the site builder is now the forgotten user. Drupal has completely ignored this persona while focussing on developers and content authors. Drupal’s efforts (OOP, Symphony, Composer) towards modernization have in turn added a lot of complexities for the site builder. These modernizations have helped Drupal, but have also made Drupal complex.

How do we focus on improving the site builder experience?

Dries addressed the challenges that site builders face, for instance; how difficult it is to find the right module and install it. And to top that up, Composer makes it even more difficult to install a module.

Dries proposed two ideas to make Drupal the go-to tech for site builder experience:

1. Introduce a project browser
2. Improve UX for configuration management, paragraphs, views, entities+fields, etc.

Getting off the island

Drupal has one of the most scalable, robust and mature development communities. With 10,000 people collaborating, Drupal had to put in place powerful collaboration tools and processes. 

When Dries started the Drupal Project, tools like GitLab/Github didn't exist. They used to share patches over emails and used CVS.

It is time for Drupal to adopt more modern tools and ways of contributing. One of the steps in this direction was to merge request workflow and move to GitLab. 

We then dived into the contributor experience with Matthew Grasmick who showed us how people expect to contribute vs how their contribution experience is.

Since contributing to Drupal is much tougher than contributing on GitLab, the Drupal Association is expanding the engineering team to get off the island quicker - by fully utilizing the GitLab features to improve the contribution experience! 

Check out the DrupalCon North America 2021 Driesnote recording: 

‍

If you’d like to contribute toward making Drupal easier and faster, visit - https://www.drupal.org/community/contributor-guide/contribution-areas

It’s time for another virtual DrupalCon! 

DrupalCon North America 2021 is right around the corner, and QED42 is excited once again to be a part of the largest Drupal conference of the year. This is the third virtual Drupal conference since the pandemic and will be hosted on Hopin, a leading platform for hosting interactive and personalized virtual events. Check here, for detailed information on how to access Hopin for DrupalCon NA.

About DrupalCon

DrupalCon is a mission-centric program of the Drupal Association designed to bring people together to share thought leadership around open source and ambitious digital experiences, provide professional development opportunities, and invigorate Drupal project momentum.

Wondering why attend DrupalCon NA? 

This year DrupalCon North America offers you exclusive access to insights from open source with 100+ sessions from tech industry leaders and Drupalers, 5 summits, initiative days, networking opportunities with more than 3000 attendees and more! 

So whether you’re new to Drupal or a long-time enthusiast, you’ll find valuable information, skills, and connections at DrupalCon NA

DrupalCon NA introduces Initiative Days! 

This year, DrupalCon NA is introducing a special focus for each day - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Each of these days will have a special focus on Drupal Project’s Strategic Initiatives and will begin with an Initiative Keynote. Be a part of these initiative days and hear from the key members for each of these initiatives, about the goals of each initiative and how it will empower you to build better products for the future of digital experiences. Click on each initiative below for more information on what to expect each day:

Decoupled Menus Day
Keynote - April 13 | 11:00 AM UTC

The Decoupled Menus Initiative will talk about the progress the initiative has made so far, as well as its next steps and how you can be a part of this initiative. The key highlight of this initiative is the hackathon where you can build your custom menu with your preferred JS framework! 

Easy Out of the Box Day
Keynote - April 14 | 11:00 AM UTC

The Easy Out of the Box Initiative is a new strategic initiative of the Drupal project. 

Here is what Emilie Nouveau had to say about the initiative – 

“The easy out of the box initiative is about making the editorial experience clear and empowering from the moment Drupal is installed by enabling Media, Layout Builder, and Claro (that are stable but need more work to be enabled by default) finished up for the standard profile.”

Automated Updates Day
Keynote - April 15, 11:00 AM UTC

The Automated Updates Initiative is a strategic initiative to lower the cost of ownership of Drupal, increase security, and help Drupal users stay on the leading edge of new features.

Drupal 10 Readiness Day
Keynote - April 16 | 11:00 AM UTC

Drupal 10 is planned to be released in June 2022, Drupal 10 readiness day dedicated to the Drupal 10 Readiness Initiative. Where you can learn about how the preparation is going so far, contribute to Drupal 9 and 10 readiness of contributed projects, documentation and early marketing material, and more. 

Also, catch Ashish, Technical Architect - Backend, as he shares QED42’s Drupal 9 upgrade story in Gabor’s keynote! 

DrupalCon North America Summits

DrupalCon NA will also have Industry Summits that will focus on the digital issues faced by each industry. These summits are scheduled throughout April and not just the DrupalCon week, enabling attendees to manage the time efficiently while networking with their peers on one on one basis during the summits. Know more about each summit by clicking on the links in the schedule below.

Community Summit - April 6, 2021

Higher Education Summit - April 20, 2021

Healthcare Summit - April 22, 2021

Nonprofit Summit - April 22, 2021

Government Summit - April 29, 2021

Keynote Sessions we are looking forward to

Every year, DrupalCon brings together industry leaders who share their insights on various topics. This year we are excited about having these main stage speakers at DrupalCon NA: 

The Driesnote

Drupal project Founder, Dries Buytaert will take the main stage on 14th April for the Driesnote, where he will celebrate recent successes and detail the vision for where Drupal is going next.

Allyship - the key to unlocking the power of diversity 

UK's Top Most Influential Women in Tech, Sheree Atcheson will talk about how to create inclusive environments and inclusive technology at the main stage on 12th April.

Accessibility for Deaf Beyond Video Captions & Sign Language

Did you know that over 1 billion people cannot use your product at all if it is not accessible? This DrupalCon NA learn how accessibility goes beyond captioning, sign language or interpreting with Svetlana Kouznetsova on 15 April.

Check out all the main stage speakers here 

QED42 at DrupalCon North America 2021!

This DrupalCon, join us as we share our latest Higher Ed & Nonprofit implementations, along with our Drupal Migration and Decoupled Drupal expertise. Attend live talks, workshops and panel discussions, win exciting giveaways, and stand a chance to win an Apple Watch with us! 

Things you shouldn’t miss at our virtual booth – 

How ILAO leveraged Design Systems

A chance to interact with Gwen Daniels - Director of Product Development at ILAO (Illinois Legal Aid Organization) at our DrupalCon NA booth on 12th April, 7 PM UTC and learn more about how - Migrating to Drupal 8 and Design System has expedited their content management. 

QED42’s Lightning Talk 
Where: Hopin - Room 5 on 13th April at 17:35 UTC.

Join Piyuesh Kumar, our Drupal Practice lead, share how we migrated the world’s top business schools website to Drupal 8 and how we standardized their Design. Immediately post the lightning talk, hop into our virtual booth to get in-depth insights on our Higher Ed success story.

QED42 DrupalCon NA Giveaways! 

DrupalCon NA Quiz

DrupalCons are not just about tech and networking, come play our DrupalCon NA Quiz and stand a chance to win QED42’s designed t-shirts or an Apple Watch. 

Personalized Audits

We are also offering free personalized audits for your website! Our experts will design a completely personalized action plan for you based on your audit requirements. This DrupalCon we are offering:

• Drupal 9 Readiness Audit
• User Experience Audit
• SEO & Performance Audit

Watch out for our Intermission Programme! 

As a part of the intermission programme, we are bringing you DrupalCon North America themed mixology! Make your favourite DrupalCon NA themed drink and share a picture with us (tag @qed42). 

Don’t be a stranger! 

We would love for you to come by our virtual booth for a chat! If you’d like to book a slot with our team click here.

We are excited to have four Design interns join us last month. Akansha, Anwesha, Harshit, and Prakriti have a high diversity of competences and will contribute with new skills and knowledge across our various marketing and design initiatives here at QED42. We are very excited to work together with these talented students in shaping the future of design!

On the account of completing a month with us at QED42, our design interns have received a surprise in the form of a book - Hooked. And guess what! They decided to publish an exclusive scoop about their experience so far. Right from their onboarding assignments to working on marketing and design projects, they are ready to spill the beans.

So, without much ado, let’s read what they have to say. 

Akansha – First impressions are important

"While searching the internet for my graduation project internship, I stumbled upon QED42’s website. After researching the company’s work culture and reading the reviews on LinkedIn, I instantly connected with the idea of interning here. After applying, they invited me for an interview where I presented one of my projects. The interview went smoothly, and I felt comfortable as they looked patiently at my work and heard my thoughts. Usually, most interviews make you feel nervous but here the atmosphere was friendly, and I could present my thoughts and learnings much better as compared to the other interviews.

During my first month at QED42 here, I had the got an opportunity to interact familiar with my team members, get acquainted with their way of working, and the projects. I enjoy the playback meetings, where we meet the entire team to share the learnings from our the tasks in the form of a story and discuss the feedback.

So far I am loving the experience of working virtually; although, I feel if it was an in-office internship, I would have met all of my team members in person and experienced the office culture of QED42." 

Anwesha – Learning the importance of interaction

"My first week at QED42here was an honest entry to a professional life where I was welcomed with open arms. It opened my eyes to the importance of interaction at every step and how beautifully QED42 facilitates and inculcates that for us. I learned the core needs of design, how to take feedback and how to work on them. I understood that no aspect of the design strategy is hypothetical. Interaction with my seniors and peers has enabled me to understand the crucial parts of a smooth functioning workplace.

My onboarding assignment was to create a component library for designing user flows and sitemaps for not only designers but other departments as well. This not only required me to interact with a lot of people but to engage in a conversation about their journey and work. Talking about the same principle briefly with different people and understanding how everyone functions and how it all comes together in the end, was very educational. 

I used to shy away from asking too many doubts or questions and usually ended up not understanding anything, however, in our daily reviews and playback meetings, we touched base multiple times on the same concept multiple times until I understood it. Help is always available here, all you’ve got to do is ask. During my initial weeks, the biggest skills I learned were to ask, keep my hesitation aside and convey my thoughts, and learn from the educate myself with all the feedback.

Initially, I was looking forward to an in-office internship and working together with my team and seniors. I thought I'd feel more disconnected as all of my friends are interning at places with zero interaction. But, here at QED42, we interact with our team at every step."

Harshit – A thrilling shift from college to professional life

"Before joining QED42, I was looking forward to interacting with the skilled and experienced team here and I am glad that I got the opportunity to work with them.

My experience here has been incredible so far. With supportive mentors, seniors, and teammates, it has become really easy to explore and learn more in the domain. I am being groomed in my approach towards the daily tasks. 

Sometimes, the shift from college to professional life becomes a challenge to deliver the exact design and I keep revolving around the surface, but that is what enables me to push my limits. Overall, it has been a marvellous experience to create and increase the level of knowledge and understanding in the domain.

As I am a design intern and still exploring the ways to come up with some good creations, even though find that my pace is slow while ideating scenarios but I’m sure I will be able to fix this under the guidance and supervision of my team."

Prakriti – Collaboration is the key to success

"The design team at QED42 has been very supportive and engaging. I like how interns are treated just like full-time associates and get assigned actual and meaningful tasks. Here, documenting a project is just as important as finishing it. The team has been really helpful. We are encouraged to communicate with everyone in the organization and expand our network. The people here are friendly and approachable. 

All the daily meetings and weekly playbacks are planned efficiently and effectively, making our work easier. 

Everyone here has a collaborative approach. We are assigned tasks with process breakdowns and relatable content samples for inspiration. There has been a constant flow of knowledge from our seniors. The assignments are interesting and engaging and help us to brainstorm and expand our knowledge.

QED42 has a 'We got your back' attitude and I have experienced it first hand while working here. Our seniors are always ready to handle our messy situations."

Some exciting things are in store for the interns next month

Our first month was all about onboarding assignments, getting accustomed to the professional life, learning a great deal from our seniors, and working on internal projects. It seems like we have done so much in such a short span of time; working on marketing and design initiatives like HEY illustration library, Drupal swag store, QED42’s design website, sitemap marketing site, and so on. 

Each day is filled with so many challenging and meaningful tasks. As per our seniors, next month is going to be even more rewarding and exhilarating as we will be working on QED42’s live projects. Even as interns, we are adding value to the mission of our organization - reshaping the digital landscape and delivering ambitious digital experiences to our clients worldwide. Isn’t that, what ‘Design’ is all about!

QED42 is an end-to-end solutions provider, focused on delivering ambitious digital experiences to customers around the globe using usable Design and cutting edge technology. We are currently looking for a Visual Designer to join our team. Apply at careers@qed42.com

"Hi, I am Saloni, I recently joined QED42 as a UI/UX Designer and I would love to share my experience of being a part of the QED42 family.

I recently joined QED42 as a UI Designer. My hiring process involved an assignment. The interviewers listened very patiently while I presented my assignment and noted the positive and negative points. They were intrigued by my idea; unlike my other interviews where my efforts went unnoticed.

Constructive feedback is crucial

Because we all want to know the feedback on the work we have done. WHY? Even if the feedback is negative, we can always improve our next attempt. They gave me the feedback just after the presentation which I truly liked. 

Meeting my team

After I got selected, right from the HR discussion to Team Introduction Meeting I never felt uncomfortable. The experience has been very pleasant throughout all the interactions with the HRs and my team members. The first meeting turned out to be fun and enjoyable. They gave me the chance and time to practice and learn properly before I dived into the projects. 

Picked up some great work habits too

It is a great experience because I never got the chance to learn first and then start working on the projects. I was asked to make a note of all that I learned during this process which wasn't my habit before, but believe me, it's a great way to keep all the learning in the mind for long term. Remember how in our school time we were asked by teachers and parents to write whatever we learned? Most of us forgot that rule, including me. So from now onward and in all my future projects, I will follow this habit of documenting my learnings. Being a member of the QED42 family, I am super excited and feeling great, looking forward to my journey with them. My overall experience has been awesome and enjoyable. 

My onboarding process

It's been 2 weeks since I joined QED42. During this period, I underwent my onboarding process where I was given a couple of tasks. It was also a great opportunity to get acquainted with team members, tools, projects, and their way of working. Even though I haven't started working on any project, I learned a lot by merely attending the daily design reviews meetings. The suggestions and discussions were helpful. The tasks assigned during the onboarding process helped me focus on details, and I learned that tiny changes surprisingly make a big difference. 

The best part about QED42 is that your learning curve begins from the very first day, which is the most important part of your professional growth and I loved it! 

So, overall it was a great experience. And I am very happy to be a part of the design team!"

Finally, it was my turn to share feedback –

Here are a few questions and my honest responses: 

Tell us one thing you thought QED42 would be about (before you joined) and found that to be true (after you joined)?

"The HR had informed me about the professional growth and the chance to learn, which I took lightly since it is something every company claims to provide. But yes, with QED42 it did turn out to be true."

Which is the one core value of QED42 that you saw in the team, please share an example/experience, if any.

"Perfection, craving to learn, ready to iterate until it is perfect (design can never be a perfect piece, there is always a chance to improve), and sharing ideas. The one value that I admire is that everyone shares ideas as a team along with constructive feedback."

Whatʼs one thing we could have done differently to improve the first week of your onboarding experience?

"The onboarding experience was great. But one thing which I missed was to meet my team in person." 

Who was your favourite peer for the last 2 weeks, tell us why?

"I am sure all my teammates are super talented and unique, but since I had more interactions with my buddy Archita, I have more words to add about her. She was very helpful, soft-spoken, has good experience, explains the points very clearly, and always asks her team to share their ideas."

Do you feel disconnected because we are physically far? How was the experience of remote collaboration for you?

"Yes, definitely. It was my first time I am working remotely and not liking it much."

About QED42

QED42 is an end-to-end solutions provider, focused on delivering ambitious digital experiences to customers around the globe using usable Design and cutting edge technology. Today 200+ global customers trust us for our thoughtfully designed web and mobile experiences. If you’d like to be a part of our team, apply at careers@qed42.com.

After a very successful DrupalCon last week, we are now gearing up for the Decoupled Days 2020 | July 22nd - 23rd. Initially, to be held in New York City, Decoupled Days will now be conducted online. We at QED42 are not only excited for the tech content Decoupled Days will feature but also that 2 of our team members will be speaking at the conference.

Decoupled Days is a premier conference that revolves around the future of content management systems and their architectures. In its fourth chapter, Decoupled Days lines up excellent content for Architects, Developers, and business decision-makers looking to build Decoupled CMS Platforms.

Decoupled architectures have been stirring the digital experiences by segregating the frontend and backend of an application. With a CMS as a content service for other non-CMS applications, whether they are in native desktop or mobile, universal JavaScript, set-top boxes, IoT devices, conversational interfaces, or other technologies.

Here are the amazing tracks lined up this year at Decoupled Days:

• Traditional CMS - will cover the use of Drupal and WordPress as a content service and the range of architectures in decoupled Drupal and headless WordPress.
• Headless CMS - will cover decoupled and headless CMS including web services (e.g. GraphQL), proprietary headless CMS (Contentful, Prismic, GraphCMS), and other decoupled or headless CMS. architectures.technologies.
• JavaScript and JAMstack - will cover modern JavaScript and its use in decoupled CMS architectures.
• People and Community - will cover the personal and community dimensions of decoupled CMS, including issues of inclusion, accessibility, and mental health.
• Business and CXO - will cover decoupled CMS in the business, consultancy, and client landscape.  

QED42 Sessions at Decoupled Days

Check out these sessions from Anand Toshniwal and Abhay Kumar: 

https://decoupleddays.com/session/powering-multi-vendor-e-commerce-platform-gatsby

Traditionally Drupal commerce has been an exceptional CMS for serving e-commerce websites. However, it falls short at matching the modern commerce sites when it comes to performance and User Experience. Gatsby can be leveraged to solve both these problems by rendering blazing fast static data, yet support commerce functions via direct API calls. In this session, we will share our experience around building a marketplace e-commerce site powered by Drupal commerce at its back-end and Gatsby as the front-end.

https://decoupleddays.com/session/graphql-nodejs-mongodb-blazing-fast-apis

We will have a glimpse of how GraphQL along with NodeJs and MongoDB enables us to reduce the response time of the REST APIs. I will explain the basics of GraphQL and NodeJs and why is GraphQL so relevant in the REST world. The attendees must have at least a basic understanding of REST API development and NodeJs. From this talk, the attendees will learn how to leverage GraphQL with NodeJS for developing performant APIs.

Looking for more content around Decoupled architectures? Here are some articles:

• Decoupling Drupal Commerce with Gatsby
• Implementing User Authentication for Gatsby and Drupal Decoupled site.
• Authenticated User Cart with Gatsby and Drupal commerce
• Integrating Headless Drupal with Gatsby (JSON:API)
• Progressive Decoupled Drupal Setup
• Gatsby incremental build for self-hosted Drupal environments
• Querying Static vs Dynamic Data in Gatsby
• Dynamic Routing in Gatsby
• GatsbyJS Plugin Alert - Simplify data navigation

Register for Decoupled Days 2020 now - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decoupled-days-2020-registration-88407670723

What divides us pales in comparison to what unites us.

     - Ted Kennedy

This especially rings true in the time we're living in now.

Because of a much needed country-wide lockdown here in India to prevent the spread of COVID-19 disease, everyone has been locked-out in their homes and have socially distanced themselves form their communities. This, of course, includes the Drupal India community as well. And what better way to bring this community together than an online pan-India contribution weekend organized by Drupal India Association.

First-ever fully-remote pan-India contribution event

Today, on 18th April 2020, Drupal India Association (DIA) conducted it's first online 'Contribution Weekend'. It's the first event of its kind in that it was completely remote and saw participation from Drupalers across India.

We had 116 RSVPs, 22 Mentors, 96 Issues on Contribkanban board.

Thank you, organizers!

Before I talk more about the event, I would like to give a huge shout-out to everyone who was involved in the planning of this amazing event and a special shout-out to Rakhi Mandhania, Surabhi Gokte & Sharmila Kumaran (#WomenInDrupal FTW) for managing this so well. The planning team worked super hard to make this a success. They took time out of their personal and professional lives to have various meetings for issue triaging, communication and marketing for the event, arranging for speakers and much more. Thank you, everyone, who contributed to planning this.

The introductory hour for new/first-time contributors

We started the event at 8:45 in the morning,(Yes, That's 8:45 in the morning!) with a special session for new and first-time contributors. A big shout-out to all the newcomers and especially the mentors who took time out this early in the morning to volunteer for mentoring them. And boy did we have a lot of mentors! We had a mentor-to-mentee ratio of 5:1! Don't you feel special now mentees!

Main event

The main event started at 10:00 AM with more than 40 people joining in. And more people kept pouring in as the event went by. At a time we had around 70 people in the call!

Drupal India Association

Rakhi, our host, got us started and handed over the call to Mukesh Agarwal. Mukesh is CEO of Innoraft, one of the member organizations of DIA, and introduced us to DIA, its goals and purposes and the role it is going to play in representing the Indian Drupal community to the world. Major goals of DIA can be summarised as:

1. Becoming an exemplary community leadership organization to the rest of the Drupal world
2. Developing thought leaders in Drupal who will enhance India’s image in the Drupal world
3. Becoming a major influencer and enabler in the adoption of Drupal in the Gulf & ASEAN region
4. Making India an innovation hub for Drupal
5. Making Impactful Contribution to community & the extended stakeholders of Drupal

Drupal Association needs our help!

Mukesh's introduction was followed by Tanisha Kalia, a representative from the Drupal Association, and she talked about DA and the financial effects of COVID-19 on DA and the larger Drupal community. DA is a very important entity for the whole Drupal community. Among the numerous things they do for the community, a few are:

• Managing, hosting and conducting DrupalCons
• Managing the infrastructure of drupal.org

Tanisha mentioned that the majority of DA's funding comes from the revenues of DrupalCon events and the almost inevitable possibility of cancellation/postponement of DrupalCon NA has put DA in a big financial hole. DA needs the community's support. 
Tanisha encouraged community members to either donate to DA directly via #DrupalCares initiative or support DA by purchasing/subscribing to be a member of DA, the cost of which starts from just 15 USD.

As of this moment, DA has reached 25% of its USD 500,000 goal:

As an individual member or an organization, you can help DA sustain the COVID-19 Impact and help reach its goal. Read more here: https://bit.ly/2VyKbmM

Tanisha also talked about the initiative taken by prominent members in the community to encourage donations and financial contributions. Some of these are:

• From now until April 30, Vanessa and Dries are offering a dollar-for-dollar match for new, individual contributions to the Drupal Association - up to a total match of $100K! More details: https://bit.ly/2KefaPJ
• Gábor Hojtsy, Acquia, will be donating 9EUR for every module ported to Drupal 9 for a total of up to 900EUR. More details: https://bit.ly/2wS5uaE
• Jeff Geerling, @geerlingguy, will be donating 2$ for every like on his recent Youtube video for a total of up to 1000USD. Video link: https://youtu.be/fdk7zUwDQdM

A big thanks to all of you! 

Thanks to an amazing community, we had 6 new individual memberships registered before the introduction call finished.

Code-of-Conduct and Tips for the day

Next up Rakhi communicated the Code-of-Conduct to all the contributors and shared the various channels for communication that people could use throughout the day.
We were using channels on DIA slack. There were various channels set up for clear and effective communication:

1. #new-contributors: For first-timers and newcomers.
2. #regular-contributors: For experienced contributors.
3. #issue-reviews-contribution day: For issues ready for review.

This setup was really efficient and was instrumental in keeping people engaged and active throughout the day.

Hussain kicking off the day 

Rakhi then handed over to Hussain Abbas from Axelerant who joined us as guest speaker for the sprint. He started by talking about the power of open source and how open source has in past sustained and in fact grown in face of financial crises. Truly, Open Source is here to stay!
Hussain then proceeded with talking about the path for Drupal core and contributes projects to Drupal 9 and how we can make sure that projects we frequently use and maintain can be made ready for Drupal 9. The Drupal community has created various tools to help us with these:

1. drupal-check: A PHP CLI tool to get a report of any deprecated code used. This can be integrated into build processes and continuous integration systems.
2. drupal-rector: A tool for automated deprecation fixes for some common cases.
3. Upgrade status module: A wrapper module around drupal-check internals that generates a full site report of contributed and custom modules used in the site. This report can be used to assess the overall Drupal 9 compatibility of the modules.
4. Upgrade rector: A user interface on top of drupal-rector, which also integrated with Upgrade Status.

Read more about these tools in the official Drupal documentation: https://bit.ly/3apZhAA

After Hussain finished his session and just before we were about to wrap up the call, we realized that Rachel Lawson, Community Liason - Drupal Association, has joined us in the call. The presence of the Community Liason from DA also inspired & motivated us to give our best to this contribution weekend.

Let's code!

After all the sessions, it was time for the code contribution now. From the start, one could tell that it was going to be a productive day. Just under an hour we made significant progress and moved a lot of issues to RTBC or Fixed.

Start of the day:

An hour into contribution:

Come for the code, Stay for the community!

Highlights of the day were the appreciation that the mentors received from the newcomers and first-time contributors for their help and support. We had a first-time contributor who had been contributing back to the WordPress community in the past as well as trying their hands-on Drupal contribution for the first time. They really loved the experience and appreciated the welcome and support they received from the community. In their own words: "You all (Drupal community) are awesome and doing great work!"

With our spirits high we continued the rest of the day with the contribution. And to have the feeling of togetherness in this endeavour, we had the zoom bridge open throughout the day so that people could freely reach out to each other. We even had regular check-ins every couple of hours so that everyone feels connected.

We ended the even at 3:30 pm with a call where everyone shared their experience and appreciation for the community. It turned out to be a very fruitful day of contribution. By the end of it, we were able to move around 50 issues from needs work/active to RTBC/Fixed.Thanks to all amazing mentors for their support to make this happen: 

@azeets, @JayKandari, @piyuesh23, 

@yogeshmpawar, @AshishVDalvi, @joshua1234511, 

@ankushgautam76, @meenakshig489, @sonvir249, 

@abhisekmajumdar, @forhemant, @dipakmdhrm, 

@malavya88, @nitesh624, @durgesh29, @subson, 

@iampratik_dk, @vaibhavjain_in, @heykarthikwithu. 

In the end, this would never have been possible without all you contributors who supported the event with writing patches, reviewing/testing them,  showing up to the event motivating all organizers. We hope for your continued participation over the coming Sprints.

My experience

Overall, it was a very productive day! I really enjoyed this new experience of contributing from the comfort of my home and it was also a much-welcomed distraction from the grim time we all have been having because of the current pandemic. I appreciate the opportunity to work with everyone from the community and would love to do it again soon.

Oh yes! That reminds me of something! Guess what? We already have another contribution weekend planned for next month! It's planned for May 16th and I would love to see and work with the community again. Read more about the event here: https://groups.drupal.org/node/535887.

See you all again on 16th next month.

Until then, stay safe!

The COVID-19 pandemic has paused life across most of the world. As governments put into place strict measures around the movement to slow the rate of infection and contain the virus, most of the businesses across the world are working from home. It will take us time - perhaps a few months before we can be confident that the virus has been contained.

Worldwide the impact of this pandemic was underestimated. Every day comes with the terrible news of suffering and death to be consumed as a statistic and % change from the previous day. As we move forward in this lockdown our priority is to ensure the well being of our people and communities that we participate in. We are putting in honest efforts to help each other and stay close digitally, keeping in mind that this is a phase which will bring us closer and make us stronger than ever.

Last 3-4 weeks have been busier than usual at QED42, trying to proactively deal with the impact it might have on the safety and mental wellbeing of our team members.

Working Together

QED42 has always been remote for its customers, though we have had three physical offices our team members have had the choice from where they work from with 10% of our team fully remote (pre-COVID), unmetered work from homes and infrastructure setup that allows for mobility. The only guideline has been to be available, keep your clients/team informed and give your 100%, therefore It's not the project deliveries that we were concerned about but ensuring support for our members who rely on the office for the project and social interactions.

We shut down our offices (across 3 locations) one week before the official 21-day lockdown in India on 24th March. One week before the office shut down we had started surveying for any issues that we might face to be safe and productive.

Since the beginning of the month, we shared information about physical safety and necessary precautions about COVID-19. We ensured that all our people have stable internet connectivity and are well equipped to work at home. People living alone were suggested to be where they feel most safe and keep everything indispensable close to avoid stepping out at all.

A change like this is not easy to adapt, but thanks to the incredible collective empathy and camaraderie between people the tea breaks turned into zoom chitchats, we celebrated birthdays on video calls, had a new member join the team and sadly also bid farewell to one of our colleagues in an emotional zoom call. The most amazing part about all of this is that these are mostly people led initiatives.

To Wellbeing and Mindfulness

As the home becomes the main site for professional and personal fulfilment, it has also created a space for moments of connection and compassion in our daily virtual activities to encourage the creation of achievable goals and create a sense of purpose. The emphasis has been on reducing mental stress and being accessible to each other during the lockdown and ahead. Our people practices team is also working on organising mental health sessions over zoom and safe one-on-one counsel to go with it. As isolation forcibly shifts us from physical to digital, our tech talks and training have gone fully remote and core practice musing sessions are seeing more attendance.

Healthy food is the basis of our functionality and not all of us could cook so, to engage through play we created “Cafe zero” to solemnise cooking over the outcome and inspire our people to share their results, even when they don't come out 'Instagram perfect'.

And came the pictures

We are also seeking ways to make kids participate through Zoom calls as they are often left wondering with the sudden urge to "stay at home" with schools shut down and parents working from home all the time. Through the virtual "Time Travel" challenge we re-lived our memories together. Since memories have taken a deeper meaning in our lives our efforts are to help people make the best of present circumstances while respecting the broader global situation.

Community

QED42 and the Drupal Association have had a very long relationship of contribution and support. Drupal Association is the fulcrum for our amazing and diverse community and does an incredible job of promoting Drupal. Amid COVID-19 the Drupal Association had to put DrupalCon North America, May 2020 on hold considering everyone's health and welfare, due to which they are facing negative financial effects.

We have offered to keep our support in place and have pledged our sponsorship no matter the outcome of the event. 

Gratitude

We are deeply grateful to the selfless sacrifices made by the healthcare workers including doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other ward staff at the front lines for risking their lives to treat COVID-19 patients, keeping their duty above their fear and attachments can't be articulated into words. We would like to extend our gratitude to Cleaning Staffs, Delivery executives, Grocers, Police, Journalists and all essential workers who are risking their lives for public safety.

Be Safe! Empathy will take us through this crisis. 

After a successful DrupalCamp Pune 2019 last September, the Pune Drupal community did not hold any meetups. Global Contribution Weekend was scheduled in January 2020, and I thought this would be a great opportunity for the Drupal Pune community to have a meetup as well. 

Core members of the Pune community had a meeting, where we decided the event format and location. QED42 which always volunteers and encourages people to participate in the opensource events decided to host the Drupal Global Contribution Weekend.

Drupal communities began uniting in India

Drupal Delhi community had already planned for GCW on the 25th January. Jaideep, Senior Engineer at QED42, who is one of the active members of the Drupal Community in India connected with us and shared the idea of collaborating with the Pune community. We had an initial meeting about the type of issues that should be targeted in the GCW 2020. Later it came to our knowledge that other communities are also planning to have the GCW 2020 event. We contacted other communities and proposed the idea of carrying out the GCW 2020  unitedly all over India.

The following Indian Local Drupal communities were planning to host the Global Contribution Weekend: 

1. Pune
2. Delhi 
3. Bangalore
4. Kolkata 
5. Chennai 
6. Kochi 
7. Mumbai 

Sprint Planning

We decided to focus on the Drupal 9 readiness, Olivero theme and contrib modules issue queue. Olivero, one of the Drupal core initiatives, seeks to create a new default front-end theme for Drupal with a modern look and feel. The Community started triaging the issues. Hardik Patel shared a large number of issues which he had prepared for the Global Contribution Weekend and needed to be review. Sonal Sangale triaged several frontend issues from the Drupal issue queue. Similarly, the other communities were triaging the issue queue.

Event Day 

The code sprint in India started at 10 AM. Prasad Shirgaonkar presented a session about Drupal India Association and its vision. This was the first time we saw different local communities from India collaborating at a global event. Approximately 150+ people from different Indian Drupal communities were connected via video conferencing. 

Following Prasad’s session, VijayaChandran Mani delivered a session on the State of Drupal 9 from London. He spoke about various tools which can be used to check  Drupal 9 compatibility. Vijaya presented tools like drupal-cheker, drupalstan, etc. which make upgrading the existing Drupal 8 modules to Drupal 9 a super easy task. This fueled our determination on contributing to the forthcoming Drupal 9. VijayaChandran Mani incorporated Gabor Hojtsy slides on State of Drupal 9 in his session.

We then had a lightning session presented by Rangaswini Khandare on ‘Automatic Updates in Drupal core’. This is a recent Drupal initiative which is gaining traction and was featured in DrupalCon Amsterdam as well. Rangaswini introduced us to the goals & objectives of Automatic Updates and explained the amount of work done in Phase 1 and the progress of phase 2. She also encouraged people to join this initiative and contribute to the core.

Code Sprint

After Rangaswini’s session, the Global Contribution Weekend participants at QED42’s Pune office geared up to begin the code sprint! Find the list of issues we worked on here - https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/search?projects=&project_issue_followers=&issue_tags_op=%3D&issue_tags=GCWIndia2020

Here are a few glimpses of Drupalers contributing toward making Drupal better.

QED42 also sponsored a scrumptious lunch for the contributors in Pune.

Pune Drupal Community Contribution Highlight

Total 38 issues were picked for the contribution.

Statistics for GCW 2020 all over India

Total 67 issues were picked for the contribution.

After 5+ hours of code sprint, we concluded the Drupal Global contribution weekend with a group photo and contentment in our hearts.

Major League Hacking’s Local Hack Day - Build is a global day-long hack day, which brings ideas to life with a worldwide community.

The Local Hack Day Build was scheduled from the 1st-7th December 2019 in different cities across the globe. A 12 hours hackathon known as BUILD was carried at more than 200+ locations during this period. Facebook and MLH were the event sponsors! 

QED42’s Pune office hosted approximately 65+ bright and curious minds for the Local Hack Day - Build on the 7th December 2019! This included a considerable amount of college graduates.

I had the opportunity to engage with Facebook Developer Circle Pune. To my surprise, students possessed knowledge about technologies like Docker, Git, and presented innovative ideas. Within a span of 12 hours, groups had created both desktop and mobile applications, which was commendable.

Let me walk you through the Local Hack Day at QED42. 

Introduction

We kickstarted the event started with the MLH Local Hack Day introduction by Sangeeta Gupta (Facebook Developer Circle Pune Lead). Post this, Sayak Sarkar conducted a brief session on Git and Github. 

Some groups came up with innovative ideas, while others received ideas from the organizers. And finally, the event began! 

Event Kick-Off

Groups of curious and innovative minds started working on their prototypes. In the middle of the prototype creation process, the organizers had arranged scrumptious lunch for everybody. Post lunch the groups resumed work on their respective prototypes.

Interaction with FDC, Hyderabad

We also had the opportunity to interact with our sister community Facebook Developer Circle from Hyderabad. They were also hosting the MLH Hack Day!  Sharing updates and stories with them was an absolute pleasure. We played a fun game between Pune and Hyderabad folks, where each team has to mention a programming language name until other team runs out of known language names.

Among several innovative ideas and demos, here are a few of my favourites:

1. An application that enables children with down syndrome identify wet and dry waste by looking at the images. The app guides and communicates via text to speech functionality, whether or not the choice made by the individual is right. This helps improve the performance of special children. Team Members:        

1. Amar Nagargoje                                
2. Atharva Barve                
3. Tejas Bhadane                
4. Nirav Madariya
       

2. An Online Judge System which also is one of the world's first Self Learning Ladder - based judge system, along with developing their own indigenous IDE. To make this project more of a Capstone Project, the team developed a Web interface and an Android App interface too. Link: https://github.com/pratikdaigavane/Son-Of-Anton. Team Members:        

1. Ayush Shah                                
2. Kunal Raut                
3. Prathamesh Shiralkar
4. Pratik Daigavane
5. Saarth Deshpande
6. Tejas Joshi
7. Utkarsh Atre                    

3. Built an internet bot to buy and sell digital gold on Paytm Gold at the best possible buying and selling prices. Enabling users to earn money without doing anything. Link: https://github.com/PranshuTople/GoldDigger. Team Members:         

1. Pranshu Tople                                
2. Pallavi Saha                
3. Shubham Nandi                
4. Rishabh Agarwal                       

4. Women Safety App where the map will be segregated on the basis of the danger zones in the city based on the threat level. The areas will be colour-coded as grey, yellow, and red. The mobile will be connected with the GPS for live tracking if a person goes into the threat zone a prompt will be sent to the emergency contacts. If the person stays too long in the danger zone without any activity, the alert will be sent to the police department. Areas are segregated by the threat level determined by crowdsourcing the information about any particular area. Link: https://github.com/Knightfire1998/DotDashDot3.git. Team Members:        

1. Reshikesh Umakant Dhanrale                                
2. Akshit Abhay Keoliya                
3. Shweta Singh                
 

5. Learning to use Azure Cloud Cognitive services and GitHub integration. Mood Detector - Captures your face and detects the mood like Happy or Sad. Link: https://github.com/AJV009/mooddetector/Hacker name: Alphons Jaimon        

6. Millions of saplings are planted every year, and millions die too. Because they are not taken care of. This is a humble attempt to track all such saplings around a volunteer's vicinity keeping the external factors like weather into account. Link: https://github.com/Devendrabhat/angry-buddha. Team Members:        

1. Aniruddha Kibey                                
2. Devendra Bhat                
3. Shagun Kaushik                
4. Shreyas Kalmegh                    

You may also read about the other projects here: https://github.com/devcpune/solid-doodle/

Here are a few more highlights from the Local Hack day: 

       
1.        FDC Pune members launched the official Facebook Developer Circle: Pune organisation on GitHub and made the first solid-doodle repo. Currently, it has 102 commits and 23 contributors in the repo. Link: https://github.com/devcpune/solid-doodle/        
       
2.        We discussed the DevC Training courses and how they can prove to be extremely beneficial for the community.        

At the end of the local hack day, we collected the participant’s feedback in a rather innovative way! Participants drew emoji’s on colourful sticky notes to express their feedback about the event. 

We had a wonderful time collaborating with participants from different domains. Hacking, brainstorming, and innovating collectively at the Local Hack Day - Build! 

Autumn is here! One of the things we’re looking forward to this month is DrupalCon Amsterdam from the 28th - 31st Oct 2019. Autumn is the most magical time to visit Amsterdam! An opportunity to mingle with the Drupal community in Amsterdam, what else could a Drupaler wish for? 

QED42’s support for the Drupal Community around the world is unwavering. Be it sponsoring Drupal Camps, DrupalCons, organizing Drupal meetups, or contributing to Drupal.org. 

And we hope you will join us at DrupalCon Amsterdam, this month! 

Meet us!

QED42 is proud to be a Silver sponsor this year. If you are a Drupaler you wouldn’t miss visiting QED42’s booth. We are known for our exuberant booth vibes, designs, activities, and goodies. It is our tradition of unveiling a new Drupal t-shirt design at every DrupalCon. Check out the story behind our Hindi Drupal t-shirt series here - /insights/coe/design/story-behind-our-hindi-drupal-t-shirt. Our Drupal t-shirt design for #DCA is inspired by the vibrant and spirited culture of Amsterdam. Accompanied by a couple more goodies that you will absolutely adore! 

This year, QED42 will be showcasing a wide range of our capabilities including:

• Decoupled Drupal
• Gatsby e-commerce demos
• Use cases around Drupal, JavaScript, and Design!

Come say Hi to our team at DrupalCon Amsterdam Booth No - 16, we would love to discuss ideas around how Drupal meets the ever-changing needs of the digital world.

Sessions

Our Drupal experts are presenting at DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019. You can find us at these sessions:

Houdini - New Era of CSS 

• Date: 28th Oct 2019
• Time: 15:00 - 15:40
• Location: G 103
• Track: Drupal + Frontend
• Level: Intermediate 
• Speakers: Vidit Anjaria and Saket Kumar

Here’s a sneak peek of our session - /insights/coe/javascript/building-powerful-custom-properties-css-houdini

Designing the future of the Drupal Admin UI

• Date: 30 Oct 2019
• Time: 09:00 - 09:40
• Location: G 103
• Track: Drupal + Frontend
• Level: Beginner 
• Speakers: Archita Arora, Sacha Eggenberger, and Cristina Chumillas

Keynotes

There are some exciting keynotes lined up for you at DrupalCon Amsterdam! 

- Tuesday, October 29 at 9:00 AM | Talk: Driesnote

Speaker: Dries Buytaert - Founder

- Wednesday, October 30 at 1:30 PM | Talk: If I can do it, so can you

Speaker: Sue Black - Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist, UK Government Strategic Advisor, Women’s Equality Party candidate for London Mayor 2020, Professional Speaker, Author

- Tuesday, October 29 at 1:30 PM | Talk: Humanity in tech 

Speaker:  Boris Veldhuijzen Van Zanten - CEO and Co-founder of thenextweb.com

- Monday, October 28 at 1:30 PM | Talk: Drupal core initiative leads keynote

Conclusion

Attending DrupalCon Amsterdam? Don’t forget to flash your badge and spread the word - https://events.drupal.org/amsterdam2019/spread-word. Follow @DrupalConEur for recent updates around the event.

Drop by our Booth 16 and meet the QED42 team! We would love to share our exciting projects and learn more about your experiences and challenges with Drupal.

Recording my experiences of Drupal Camp Pune before they fade away. If you are connected with me on twitter, you must have seen a spike in my tweets over the weekend of 14th-15th September 2019. 

I was privileged to attend this 2-day event and want to admit that my experience of co-presenting a workshop, attending several amazing sessions, meeting old friends and new was great. Had the chance to meet a lot of people from the Drupal community, who were earlier only familiar to me via their usernames. The diversity of the sessions was really impressive. #DCP19 contained sessions for Backend, Frontend Devs, Quality Analysts, Managers, Students, Community, etc. ranging from Beginners to Experts levels.

Being a co-organizer of a Drupal event earlier, I knew how important it was to get the audience on the day of the event. The attendance was more than what was expected for both the days. This was a good sign for the event organizers.

Keynote

Undoubtedly, the star of the event was none other than Mr. Preston So. It was great to interact with him. I had initially expected his keynote to be around Gatsby. Instead, his topic was a broader one, he highlighted the transition from Content Management systems to Content Management Stack.

 He also showed how modern applications are being developed and the role of Drupal & Gatsby in it. His keynote sparked a thought in my head around how applications can be developed and what is the way forward. I would like to share a couple of non-technical highlights of his prenote:

• Preston started his keynote in Hindi and everyone in the auditorium was in awe. He truly is a master of languages.
• He gave references to the Bollywood movie “Sui Dhaaga” for explaining the challenges developers face in our day-to-day lives.
• He gave away 2 copies of his book “Decoupled Drupal in practice”.
• Preston also shared his love for India, especially Mumbai.

Post the Keynote, Preston was surrounded by people and he was busy answering dozens of questions (I was a part of that group). Questions ranged from technical aspects of Drupal, Gatsby, to him learning so many languages, etc.

Drupal India Association

 The Drupal India Association board members addressed the audience, where they showcased brand new the DIA logo designed by QED42’s design team! For more updates around DIA follow their twitter handle - @india_drupal

Drupal in a Day

A massive part of my role at #DCP19 was to co-present a 5 hour  “Drupal in a Day” workshop for the students. I co-presented with Nitesh Sethia & Meena Bisht, training and educating students who hadn’t heard of Drupal, around concepts like Opensource, Drupal, community, etc. Students gained hands-on experience with Drupal through:  

• Familiarization of Drupal concepts 
• Installing all prerequisites and Drupal itself
• Introduction to the basic building blocks of Drupal like Content Types, Fields, Blocks, Menus, Views, etc.

We also spoke about the Drupal Campus Ambassador Programme which aims to bridge the gap between students and the Industry.

 One of my favourite moments from the workshop was the attendee’s reactions when they witnessed the power of Views. They were amazed at how Views can be used to fetch data we want from the database and display it according to our needs. The responses and students eagerness to learn more new topics was a really satisfying experience.

Sponsors

Sponsors are one of the building blocks in making DrupalCamps successful! This year we had 6 sponsors. 

 QED42 was the platinum sponsor for DrupalCamp Pune 2019. We were not only the sponsors but were also the organizers for the event. QED42’s booth, vibrant standees, Quizzes around Drupal, JavaScript, Machine Learning, and Hackathon appealed to the students and event attendees. We also carried out an internship drive for students. QED42 is known in the Drupal community for its designs and goodies, this year we had T-shirts, stickers, notepads, and designed quiz cards as giveaways.  

After-Party!

Day one was tiring and about to get over, and we received an update regarding the After-party from the @drupalcamppune twitter handle!  

The after-party was one of the memorable moments of #DCP19 wherein I had numerous great conversations. I met a lot of people informally and got to know the jolly side of their life. I was so engaged in the conversations that I totally missed the dance floor. We reminisced memories from our past Drupal events, the current event and discussed future events too. Sharing a few snaps from the party at the end of this blog. Since I was caught up with “Drupal in a Day” workshop on the first day, I missed most of the sessions presented on that day. You can find out more about the sessions here - http://camp2019.drupalpune.com/accepted-sessions. However, I was lucky to attend sessions on the second day. Here are some sessions I loved: 

1. Multi-turn conversations with Alexa” — Anand Toshniwal

 The demo amazed the audience and received loud applause. Anand had set up a Drupal e-commerce store and he showcased how he could place an order with Alexa via a Multi-turn dialog. PS: Reach out to me for the recorded video of the demo! 

2. “Pixel Perfect Web” — Kiran Kadam

 Filled with Frontend enthusiasts, Kiran Kadam spoke passionately about what pixel-perfect web is and how to achieve it. 

3. “Effective storytelling with Clients and Teams” — Nikhil Anant

 Nikhil shared his experience of visiting Manali and the challenges it brought with it, describing how things can be explained in the form of stories for effective team communication.

4. “Making Front-end Testing Easier using Visual Regression” — Ambuj Gupta and Kanchan Patil

 Automation is my favorite part in Quality Assurance process, and these guys took it to the next level. 

5. Good UX = Accessible UI design - Nikita Aswani and Asmita Wagh

 The best thing about the session was the fact that not only QAs but also Developers who were equally interested in implementing A11Y and considered it to be an inseparable part of their web-development practices. 

DrupalCamp Pune Closing Session

Overall, it was a great event put up by the organizers of #DCP19. The closing session was hosted by Sushyl & Ajit, where we acknowledged the organizing team’s efforts and thanked them for making DrupalCamp Pune a huge success. Right from the swag-kits, keynotes, sessions, speakers, venue, food, after-party, and countless important items, the organizers deserve a huge round of applause. 

Next year, I am looking forward to being a part of the organizing team and experience the excitement of planning DrupalCamp Pune! 

I have collected some pictures from the event and would like to share them with you. 

Conclusion

I really appreciate and thank you for taking out time for reading this post. Hope we cross paths at the next Drupal event. #DrupalThanks

QED42 has always been an ardent participant in the Drupal community. We pride ourselves for contributing to the Drupal community via modules, code patches, Drupal initiatives, DrupalCons, DrupalCamps or hosting Meetups!

Drupal Meetups play an integral role in fostering community. Dries Buytaert was quoted on Drupal.org’s getting involved page:

It’s really the Drupal community and not so much the software that makes the Drupal project what it is. So fostering the Drupal community is actually more important than just managing the code base.

We hosted the Pune Drupal Group monthly meetup on 18th May 2019 at our office. The healthy turnout to the local meetup was a reflection of how connected the Pune Drupal Community was.

Packed with people, plenty of snacks, and laptops our Meetup commenced. After a brief introduction from all the attendees, the lights dimmed and Meena Bisht from QED42 started her session ‘ Be Ready for Drupal 9!’

It was a highly interactive session that pivoted around Drupal’s ever-evolving nature. She spoke about how long Drupal 7 will be supported, Drupal 8 end of life, and how it would impact businesses. Drupal 8.7 features - Layout Builder and Media Library and challenges faced while moving from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

We welcomed the newest member to the family, Drupal 9.

The session also covered the Drupal release cycle, which justified the difficulties faced while moving to Drupal 8. We were relieved to know that upgrading to Drupal 9 would be a lot easier thanks to the minor upgrades.

The session shed light on why an upgrade is required, and what to expect out of Drupal 9. We ended the session with useful tips on tools for checking our deprecated code while preparing for Drupal 9.

Post session, we discussed the hurdles faced during the earlier version releases, our inhibitions, and expectations from Drupal 9.

After a quick break with refreshments and offline chats, we gathered back for the BoF session on the configuration management system. We discussed the origin of configuration management, as a Drupal initiative, the different configuration issues faced by us and identified solutions.

Lastly, we chalked out a map for the DrupalCamp Pune. All the attendees brought helpful ideas to the table, location, sessions, sponsorships, etc.

After an informative and super lucrative agenda of sessions, BoF, and DrupalCamp Pune planning, we wrapped up our Meetup.

It was in 2009 we ventured into the open source community, Drupal.  As newcomers, we were excited to be a part of this dynamic community. All these years we have received immense amount of love from the community. In return, we wanted to create something that would show our dedication towards it. A design that would communicate our indigenous identity. An idea that would shout QED42. It is said that honest emotions are well presented in your mother tongue. And we chose Drupal illustrated in Devanagari script as our USP. That was the beginning of the glorious era of द्रुपल.

There are some ideas that you are not really sure about whether they would work out or not, well this was the exact opposite of that. Everyone in the team was immediately on board.

Version 1.0

The story behind this is interesting. This maiden attempt was inspired by unconventional truck art. Here are some images that served as an inspiration.

The final design featured simplified truck art aesthetics. Bold colors and graphic lines found in truck art were incorporated into our design. The overlapping colors and outlines highlighted our design.

We launched this T-shirt at Drupalcon Asia and the reaction we received, reaffirmed our faith in the design. People across different platforms were curious about our design and it was a huge hit!

Version 2.0

For the second edition, we had to come up with something grander. And what could be grander than our very own country;  welcome to India! The land of colors. This design boldly speaks about the country. We wanted to incorporate the vivid diversity of India. Playful forms and vivacious colors that reflect our Indian culture.

We chose different symbols that would clearly convey our identity. Lotus [National Flower] is an important part of our heritage and is used on multiple occasions..The peacock long considered as the magical bird of Orient was also featured in our design. Elephant the central figure of Indian mythology can also be seen in this version of our devnagari Drupal. We also explored different printing techniques this time. We experimented with gradients and embossing and the result turned out to be really great.

150 T-shirts were distributed and demanded like hotcakes on the very first day of Drupalcon Nashville. Everyone absolutely loved the design and it was all over the social media channels in no time!   This boosted our confidence.

Version 3.0

For our third version, we decided to go a little contemporary. These are a couple of images that we gathered to get us going.

The final design was the result of experimentation with 3D lettering and a range of textures. We explored how we could add complementary elements to make the graphic more appealing. This version was released in Drupalcon Seattle.  

We are as excited about version 4.0 as you are. Our designers are busy discussing the next big idea. Stay tuned for more updates!

Riddhi Juyal has been of great help in putting our story of Drupal Hindi T-shirt in words for this blog.

Last month, Pune Drupal community conducted a Global Training Day event. It was a successful event and saw huge participation from Pune Drupal community.
Pune GTD reminded us that community is what makes Drupal so special and that interaction between the community members was somewhat missing from our Drupal life.

With the hope that we can change this, we had planned to increase the community participation by bringing back our monthly Drupal meetups.
And we did deliver on our plan! We had our first Drupal meetup of the year on Saurday, 12th Jan at SISCR, Pune.

The day started with a session on 'Docksal for Drupal' by Sharique.

The session covered the basics of containers and the difference between virtualization and containarization followed by a detailed demo of setting up a Drupal instance using Docksal and managing various configurations for Docksal.
Overall, this was a great introduction for developers & teams trying to adopt Docksal for their development environment.

Highlight of the day was the next session on the topic of Accessibility presented by Nikita, Ambuj & Sonal.

Nikita started the session by explaning basic concepts of Accessibility and day-to-day programming tips & tricks developers/teams can follow to make their site accessible.

It was followed by Ambuj's explanation of QA's perspective on Accessibility and what should be expected by users & testers for an accessible site.

Sonal concluded the session by going into the implementation details, specially the easy ways a developer/team can make their site accessible.

We ended the day having by a general BoF on 'How to increase the community participation for Drupal meetups'.
This was a very productive discussion and the community identified the challenges of setting up a quality event and came up with action items for them.

• Attendees want to see a variety of topics instead of just having them limited to Drupal Backend and Custom Module development. The session on Accessibility was much liked by the community and they'd love to see more such topics.
• There's a need to streamline and improve the process of communicating Drupal events and their reporting.

We promise to work on the above and would love to see many of you join us in future meetups. Stay tuned to community updates for information on future events and topics!

Links to Session slides/resources:
1. Docksal: https://www.slideshare.net/safknw/local-drupal-development-using-docksal
2. Web Accessibility: https://bit.ly/2Dgw5P9

The calls for sessions for DrupalCon Vienna had just closed and all of us who had submitted their sessions were waiting, eager to find out about the result. It was just a usual day at the office and I get an email from the Drupal Association. I opened the mail and what I saw wanted to make me jump out of my chair! Yes, my selection for DrupalCon was confirmed and I was so excited! It was an unbelievable situation for me because it was quite unexpected, not that I was under confident about myself but to be a young member in the Drupal Community, and getting selected amongst so many talented and experienced people out there, is sure to make anyone feel surprised. With only an experience of 1.5 years of working with QED42 as a user experience designer, this seemed like a dream come true for me.

I’ve spoken publicly before, mostly in the context of design, but preparing for a Drupal conference was a whole new affair for me.

My excitement had not ceased but there was a slight fear building up, of talking in one of the biggest conferences. I had to prepare myself to speak in front of an audience that had a lot more experience in Drupal than I had.

Being a young designer, the whole idea of my talk was to put forward a fresh perspective on designing for Drupal.

I positively had a feeling that the selection of my session happened to get a fresh point of view from a person who was new to the Drupal community and as a designer could help contribute to bring a positive change to the Drupal world.

I wanted to put forward the smallest of the details of my experience - in a manner that could successfully communicate my opinions to the versatile audience - which could be anyone from a developer to a project manager.

I wrote down my thoughts and insights I encountered during the process of creating my slides. While preparing for the talk I realised that I had gained a good amount of information which would help me further in presenting my topic.    

Understanding the main themes of the conference helped me shape the focus of my talk. Speaking for the first time in front of a technical audience at a conference can be intimidating where some audience members may have more knowledge than you about your subject. Preparation is crucial. I was also getting a helpful feedback while preparing, particularly about expanding the content to make it more relevant.

I had prepared myself for the best and the worst. It was about time that I began my presentation. The first few minutes of the talk were the toughest but as I went on sharing my knowledge I became less anxious. I realised that speaking at a conference is a great way to share knowledge and experience and it is quite surprising to see how much we can learn when researching our talk topics. It’s also a great opportunity to network with other professionals in our field, and make some great new friends.

It was a great relief to know that I did not screw up as bad as I thought I might, and maybe my talk helped someone. It was also very rewarding to get feedback from the audience and hear their thoughts on what they had to say.

The entire presentation felt like an out of body experience to me. It took a lot of time and effort to prepare and speak at this conference but it was worth it. And it is good to know that I’m a part of Drupal and I’m being able to participate in whatever way I can, to add to this amazing community.

Travelling alone this far, for the first time, I was scared. But knowing that I am a part of the Drupal community and connected to everybody around me through Drupal gave me a sense of belonging and lifted up my spirits. To my surprise I wasn’t feeling out of place because it felt like a family, our own Drupal family where our collective aim is to work for the betterment and growth of this community. My excitement was at it’s peak till the closing ceremony. And I’m now looking forward to more such opportunities to speak and share stories.

Drupal India Community have been talking about Pan India code sprint and with effort and cooperation of regional communities we were finally able to organise a combined sprint, we had participation from Mumbai, Jaipur, Delhi and Pune. This is an account of Pune sprint which happened at QED42 Office in Viman Nagar. We had a total attendance of 10 Drupalers out of which 2 were first time sprinters ( Congratulations Dhruvesh and Shreyal on attending your first sprint :) ).

The focus of the sprint was porting modules from D7 to D8 and trying to reach stable releases of some of the modules that were started in previous sprints. One of those modules was auto_entitylabel the issues were triaged prior to the code sprint, so we had less trouble getting around the issues & fixing them up. EOD, we were able to get a basic version of the module, which included integration with tokens. 

Ajit mentored Dhruvesh on autologout tasks and Dhruvesh contributed a fix to an issue in D8 version of the module & then backported it to Drupal 7 version as well.

Sprint also included some code review work around heap_analytics module, which Nitesh  ported to Drupal 8 (https://github.com/nitesh11/heap_analytics). 

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Overall, it was a productive sprint & we plan to continue the same on Last Saturday of every Month. Keep an eye on auto_entitylabel, jquery_carousel, heap_analytics if you are interested to use them in Drupal 8, couple of sprints and help from community we should be able to release stable versions of these modules :) we specifically need help on testing of these modules and reporting issues.

The flavour of this month has been the Drupalcon New Orleans and we decided to keep the momentum going for this PDG meet-up held at the QED42 office.

The first session was given by Rakhi Mandhania on her experience at DrupalCon both as an attendee as well as a Keynote speaker for the Higher Ed Summit. She explained how everyone is concerned with the migration of a large number of websites to Drupal 8 and the lack of rich Drupal talent. DrupalCAP initiative was hailed as a solution to the jarring lack of Drupal literate work force and appreciated all around.

The second session was by Piyuesh Kumar on service workers, the same session both he and Saket kumar presented at New Orleans. He explained that functionalities such as, rich offline experiences, periodic background syncs, push notifications that traditionally require a native application are coming to the web and service workers provides the technical foundation all these features will rely on.

He ended the session with a demo of a working website for DrupalCamp.

The evening was concluded with us deciding the dates for DrupalCamp Pune 2016, which will tentatively take place sometime in late August.

Watch this space for details, coming shortly!
Good day and see you all soon.