Talking Drupal #546 - DrupalCon Chicago

Nic: This is Talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design and development from a group of people with one thing in common. We love Drupal. This is episode 546 Drupal Con Chicago. On today's show, we are live from DrupalCon, talking about the d dr. Note, exciting new features, and what's on the horizon with our panel.

Welcome to Talking Drupal. I'm Nick Laughlin, founder of Lane Development, and joining me today are Tim Plunkett, senior manager of engineering at Acquia. Also joining us for the final week. Steve Ward, thank you for joining us the last four weeks. Thanks for having

Steve: me.

Nic: And Martin Anderson includes senior product marketing manager for Drupal at Acquia.

And finally, John Zi, solution architect at epa.

John: Good morning everyone.

Nic: I, I don't know what it is, but doing it live adds just a little bit more pressure. It feels, it feels different

John: and, and Martin's title has gotten longer, so it's, it's, you know, it takes a couple weeks before we get, we get, you get used to the new title changes.

Nic: I think we're just going to start calling him the SPM MD for Acqui.

John: That's funny.

Nic: I think we actually lost Martin, so, um, I think we'll jump right in and wait for him to rejoin. So, uh, John, as we were getting ready for DrupalCon, um, leading up to this week, what kinds of things were you looking forward to the most this year?

John: Um, I, I think every year with DrupalCon, I look forward to, um, seeing people I haven't seen in, in maybe the course of a year, um, uh, meeting new people. Um, you know, I think that's, that's a big part of it too. There are people that I met over the course of this year that I have not met in person. Um, so being able to do that, um.

One thing I am actually, uh, pretty excited about, not related to DrupalCon specifically, but, um, I have a team member that, um, I've been working with for the past couple of months in Chicago. I've never met them in person. Um, oh, nice. So I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna venture out, uh, tomorrow, uh, evening and, um, meet them, um, in person, which is exciting.

Um, also excited to hear about Drupal Canvas and advances in that, um, advances in Drupal ai. Just, uh, it's a really exciting time to be in the Drupal community. And, you know, I, I'm just, I'm just excited to get that vibe going again. 'cause I feel like for, for a while and still a little under undertone of like, uncertainty, right?

But like, just, just getting the excitement back, getting, getting ener re-energized, if you will, for, for the next year of Drupal.

Nic: And Tim, how, how about you? What were you looking forward to the most at DrupalCon this year?

Tim: Yeah, I think, um, so this is actually the 15th anniversary of the last time it was in Chicago.

And that was my first ever DrupalCon. Um, and I like slept on a couch, you know, in a friend's like, like it's a very different, uh, Drupal con for me this time around. Um, working at and the fact that

John: you have a hotel room or

Tim: I have the, having a hotel room is great. Um, yeah, didn't know it was also gonna be a podcast studio, but, you know, we, we roll with it.

John: Yeah.

Tim: Um, but no, yeah, and just as you said, like there's people I haven't seen since before COVID, um, who are here, um, more than a few. And I met my boss for the first time. Um, he's here as well. So yeah, just those connections are the important part and, uh, it's it, but it, it being a milestone on top of that, it just makes it even more special.

Nic: Awesome and welcome back. Martin. How about you? Uh, were there anything, wa was there anything in particular that you were looking forward to the most this year? Uh, this triple con?

Martin: Yeah. I would say probably primarily I would echo what Tim just said. It's, it's probably mostly about the people, the community, um, being able to reconnect with people in a similar way.

I actually met, um, my boss in person for that first time yesterday, so, um, so it's been great. And, um, you know, I did also go to the AI summit. I was excited about that because, um, definitely an area where there's a lot of momentum for Drupal right now and definitely feels like a real opportunity for Drupal to, to, um, I think meet the moment.

You know, there's, there's definitely a broader kind of societal trend that we're seeing there. And so, um, kind of the, the advantages that Drupal has in that space. I, I think, I think a real opportunity. And so it was exciting to be part of that conversation on Monday as well.

John: Just outta curiosity. Uh, Martin and Tim, do you guys have the same boss?

Martin: No. No.

John: Okay. Okay. I was just curious. I was just curious.

Steve: Actually,

Nic: Aqua just has a policy. You can only meet your boss at DrupalCon, so whenever you get a promotion,

Martin: you have

Nic: to

Martin: wait.

Steve: Nice. So I wonder, we can start round Robin on just a, you know, do you have any specific sessions or topics you're hoping to focus on at DrupalCon?

We can start with Tim.

Tim: Yeah, I've been really good going to a lot of the Drupal Canvas sessions. Um, I'm one of the. On the Drupal Canvas team. And so, you know, both supporting my coworkers, um, by going to their talks, but also getting to see all the things they've done, like in proper polished form instead of just looking at Mrs.

All day. Uh, it's really great to see it kind of come all together and just feel the enthusiasm in the room as they get to present the things that we've been working on for so many, for two years now. Almost.

Nic: Yeah. Been a big initiative.

John: It's really, it's really impressive stuff. I mean, Tim, you, you and the, the Canvas team should feel real, real, real good about what you're, what you're putting out.

'cause it's, you know, I was talking to somebody the other day, I'm like, it's a game changer for Drupal. Like it is, it is a game changer. Um, and, and makes us way, way, way, way, way, way more competitive with those other, won't be named platforms that, that allow you to kind of drag and drop stuff into place and build your website with a, with a cool ui.

So yeah, that's definitely awesome. Um. Admittedly for me, uh, I've only gone to two sessions so far. I've been pretty, pretty busy this week.

Nic: You're, you're one of those, go to the conference then. See it after all you two. Well,

John: not, not necessarily intentionally, but that's kind of how the first part of my first part of my schedule has, uh, has, uh, worked out.

Um, I will say that, um, this afternoon actually, 'cause today is Wednesday. Um. Uh, I'll have the whole afternoon free, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna look through, look through some sessions and see what, see what seems good. But, you know, I think the topics that I'm, I'm looking at are, um, again, uh, anything to do with Drupal Canvas.

I'm, I'm working on a project right now where we're, we'll be implementing, um, canvas for our client, um, specifically with the design system. So that's something of interest and, um, just figuring out how I can better use AI in Drupal. I think, um, trying not to maybe get too, too technical on it, but more of a, I don't know, base basic, like, here's how you get started.

Dummy

Steve: Martin.

Nic: Yeah. Uh, uh, go ahead, sorry.

Martin: Yeah, so I'm in a similar boat to John. I ended up being at the Acquia booth for all afternoon yesterday. So got to, you know, catch up with a whole bunch of folks and that was amazing. But, uh, as a result, didn't get to too many sessions yesterday, but, uh, today hoping to get to a lot of sessions.

Probably what I'm looking forward to is the initiatives update, just because you sort of like, in a short timeframe, get a lot of different information around how progress being made in a bunch of different areas. So that's definitely one that, uh, I'm looking forward to today.

Nic: What, what has your, uh, impression of the event and tone been so far, Martin?

'cause I, I know in the past couple of years there's been a lot of focus on like star shot and ways to kind of get Drupal back on the map. Uh, do you. You know, are you seeing new faces? Are you feeling like the trend is turning around or, um, or is it really just about the 25th anniversary? What, what's kind of the vibe, I guess?

Martin: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, I definitely feel like Starshot came at a time when there was a lot of, I think, I think it's fair to say fear in the community. It was the people were seeing, you know, lots of people who were spending a lot of time looking for work, and there was a lot of uncertainty about, you know, where we were trending kind of as a project and, and some of those kinds of things.

So it felt like a rallying cry, and I think a lot of people were kind of energized by that. Um, I think the vibe that I'm getting is, you know, it feels like things are starting to turn around, you know, like there's more job openings that people are seeing, um, some of those kinds of things. So I, I feel like there's, um, definitely some optimism on that front.

And, and I think also the. You know, the fact that we're coming back to Chicago for the 25th anniversary, I don't know, uh, how many times I've people heard people mention the Field museum this week. So that's interesting that that's become sort of, um, a bit of a lightning rod in terms of, you know, nostalgia for the community.

But, um, um, yeah, I think there's, there,

Nic: I think, I think we just lost Martin again. So I think

John: there's what Martin? I think there's what,

Nic: yeah, there's a cliffhanger. So maybe I will say I've gotten hotel

Steve: across the street.

John: I will say, I don't know if I was talking to Martin about this, but I might've been one of those people that mentioned the Fielding Museum, um, because I had like a little bit of fomo, uh, from last DrupalCon Chicago because I was not here.

And, um, heard there was a heard there was a great after party there and I was like, oh, that feels like it would've been real, real, real cool. But, um, I think overall, like there, there is this. There's this feeling of, of excitement. There's this feeling of nostalgia for sure with the 25th, uh, anniversary of Drupal.

Um, a lot of kind of looking back at, at what has been accomplished over those 25 years and the fact that a student, um, you know, uh, built this free software and gave it, gave it to the world, and now it's, uh, you know, a major CMS contender. Um, you know, I think things feel a little subdued to me as far as like ener, like super energizing.

I think Martin was right, like Star shot was like a rally cry and super energizing. It doesn't feel maybe that that energetic, but it does. Um. It, it does feel like there's an excitement, an excitement about all of the new features of Drupal, excitement, about what Drupal can do, excitement about site templates.

So there's a lot of great new features and, and excitement around around those things.

Nic: So, uh, Tim, we have a, a question from, uh, our listeners on the live stream, Stephen Cross. Uh, how about attendance? How does attendance seem in the different sessions or, you know, in the hallway? Is, is attendance up over past DrupalCon or,

Tim: it's, it's always impossible to say with the different venues.

Like they, they did a really good job of finding the right venue for the amount of people who are gonna be here, so it feels full. Um, and that's been true most of the recent triple cons post COVID, where it's just, we filled the space. Um, I think there was only one, I think it was Portland, which would've been what, 2024, where it was.

In the same venue that we'd been in in 2013. And it was a stark reminder of how much smaller DrupalCon had become, um, post COVID. But with this, I mean, this building is, it's a very old hotel. It's from 1927 and it's, it feels, the basement feels like Labyrinth and there's just, there's people everywhere. So it's like very, very hard to say.

John: I've actually say like likened it to, um, Harry Potter and the moving staircases because like, you get to one place and you're like, how did I get here? And then you don't feel like you get there the same way, but

Tim: yeah. Yeah. There's, there's at least the, one of the lobby bars, there's like four entrances and I don't think I've used the same one twice.

Nic: So are we gonna lose community members in the labyrinth below the hotel? I haven't seen that person since Chicago.

Um, so Tim, just to kind of round out the previous question, um. Can you maybe fill in what the rest of the impression has been for, for this DrupalCon, uh, compared to past ones?

Tim: Yeah. It's, it's hard to say for me being on the Canvas team and like one of the leaders of Drupal CMS and everything. So everything I'm hearing is great because everyone comes and talks to me about the great things that are happening.

So I'm not, and being re relatively far from the agency side of things, like, I don't hear firsthand as many of the, the trials and tribulations of, of agency life these days. Um, so yeah, I mean I'm, I I get to enjoy a lot of the hype and the, the, you know, the, the, the positivity of everything. Um, but I will say, going back to the, the party aspect, the field museum was a pretty epic, you know, community party.

Um, I would also say that this is the first time we've had an actual community party in, in, you know, 12, 12 years or so. Like that used to be the norm at DrupalCon, um, where there was one party and everyone went to it. I think it was either 2014 or 2015 that they started having, uh, you know, individual major company parties at the same, on the same night.

And you had to pick and choose between them and not having a single company party. So it was actually really nice to just get everyone together in one big room. Tim, do you think, or as many people as we could, you know,

John: Tim, do you think that last night's event will, um, continue to future DrupalCon somebody?

Somebody had mentioned that to me, uh, last night and I was like, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if we'll go to like a single unified event as opposed to those disparate things.

Tim: I think there are two, what, you know, platinum diamond, whatever the tier is sponsor and it's up to those sponsors to work together to make it happen.

And I think last night was, shows the enthusiasm for it. I think there's ways to do it a little bit more affordably, um, a little more, more economically inclusively. Um, 'cause it wasn't, you know, uh. You know, you couldn't, you couldn't buy a ticket at the door. You had to buy them up front. And the, the price points were a little challenging for some.

So I think that was a major miss, um, for, for many in the community. Um, but I think the, yeah, the sort of like, oh, you don't have to pick sides between any of the, the major sponsors. Um, they're not competing for, who knows who's gonna show up, you know, um, that, that, that I think they can band together and make these kind of parties the norm again, would be fantastic.

Nic: Uh, Martin, can you, before we move on, do you remember the cliffhanger you left this on? And can

Martin: you, I kind of wondered

Nic: thread.

Martin: I don't really know at what point I froze, but at a certain point I noticed that you guys were all frozen, which I assume meant that, uh, that I had dropped midstream. So, um, where was I?

Nic: You were, you were talking about the general vibe, uh, and I think you said I think that, or something like that.

Martin: Did I, did I already mention the field museum?

Nic: Yes.

Martin: Okay.

Nic: Right after that.

Martin: Yeah. Yeah. So I think it was just sort of a, a renewed sense of community, I guess is, is sort of the, the overall vibe. A lot, lot of optimism and, um, I think, yeah, just a, a really good, strong feeling here.

Steve: My next que question is about the trees note and how that was received. Um, and, you know, I have, I have thoughts to share on that too, uh, watching it at home, but, uh, you know, what was, what was the reception or what was your reaction? I, I think the, the perspectives are gonna be different 'cause, uh, like Martin was in the DRE note, uh, nice, nice audio Deving Martin.

Uh, but you know what, e either what was your reaction or what was your, your perception of how it was received with everybody there?

John: My, my reaction was, hey, I, I know that guy's voice and man, does he do a good demo? Um. I, I, I think it was, it was interesting. I, I always love how Drees takes the city that we're in and finds an inspirational, um, parable about how it applies to Drupal.

Um, so that's one thing. Um, I think the other thing is that, you know. I think his, his point of view on the use of AI and where, where AI is useful and powerful, um, versus potentially dangerous, um, is, is absolutely, you know, spot on. I mean, I think one thing that I talked to a couple of people about yesterday, and, and this was, um, kind of a a from the, the ideas in the Dre's note was that, you know, I, I think that, you know, AI great for doing, doing prototypes great for, great for quick, you know, vibe coded things that like, you're like, look, it can be done.

Right. Um, and then relying on, you know, folks like us and, and other developers and community members to like really fine tune those, really pinpoint those to, to be, you know, optimal. I, I worry though that. You know, C-Suite folks are gonna see something and go, okay, great. You already have it. It's right there.

Let's just, let's go to production with it. Um, and, and we're gonna spend a lot of time trying to like explain like, oh, hey, this is not a good idea and here's why. Right. Um, so that could be a little, uh, a little, um, dangerous, I think. And, and I think, I think Dre's kind of highlighted that like, eh, not the best approach.

Like, let's not be those, those guys, but like, let's be people that, you know, use AI as a tool to, to accelerate our, our abilities as opposed to replace them.

Nic: Tim, how about you?

Tim: Yeah, I'll say first, uh, shout out to Ash Sullivan who has been doing Dre's slide decks for over a decade. Um, she's an incredible job and you know, really, because I've seen early drafts of the deck where it's just the thoughts and, uh, lemme tell you it's a big difference to see them, you know, in full production form.

Um. Although this year is one of the years, I haven't had as much behind the scenes, you know, involvement with the Dres note. Um, so it was nice to sit there and watch it really for the first time. Um, you know, I think it met the moment, I think it addressed a lot of things we, we need to be talking about.

Um, it could been, it would've been easy to kind of skirt around some of those harder topics. And I think they were, you know, they're, it addressed both the, the AI enthusiasts and the AI skeptics in the audience. Um, I think I heard, you know, I heard, I heard, uh, endorsements from, from both sides, different parts of the keynote.

Uh,

Nic: yeah.

Tim: And I think that that was really, really good, you know, balance to find,

Nic: I, I, so I don't, I don't want to derail the show too much, but I, I do think we, it, we, it should be mentioned that the community, right now, there's several issues floating around, talking about whether or not AI should be embraced or banned or in some way gated.

And I will say, um. I've not seen from, from the AI proponents. The, the one thing that I really haven't seen that I think they would need to solve is a proposal that helps mitigate the kind of burnout or like by coded request type thing that doesn't involve just including more AI on top. Right? If, um, I mean, we can all agree that vibe coded slop is a burden on maintainers.

It's causing huge problems across the internet. But the only solution I see is more ai if the problem is too much AI in certain circumstances, I don't see how a solution can be more ai. Um, but that's the, you know, setting aside all the other. Like there's multivariate concerns about AI from the people that have concerns.

Um, if you set those aside, if you're just talking about pure, uh, community and contribution burnout and that kind of thing, that's the urgent problem we have to solve immediately. Um, and I don't, I don't have the answer, but you know, I, you know, I would appreciate, you know, people as they're talking about it, if they continue to focus on like, how do we solve that?

The answer can't just be more ai.

John: So I will say, I will say that, um, so at the community summit, I ran the community summit on Monday, and, um, Tim Lenon was there and did a, a fireside chat and Okay. One of the audience questions was around like the ai, uh, the AI man, I can't believe I just said that, but, um, around AI and exactly that Nick with like, you know, vibe coded stuff and like people just using AI to like, you know, batch issues and how, um, how that's being, uh, combated and, um, you know.

Tim was like, well, we could, we could spend a whole day just talking about that. But he is aware of it, his team's aware of it. They are working to like, introduce, um, processes and um, features that can try to help to mitigate those sorts of things. But I mean, I think you're right. And bring it back to the DRE note.

I I, I, I liked Dre's. Um, Dre is trying to, trying to coin the phrase, uh, can contribution versus contribution, which is, you know, the idea of like, you know, just 'cause you can like, use AI to do something and, and just like send it, um, doesn't necessarily mean you should. And, um, you know, the idea of, um, you know, understanding the code that you're, you're contributing before, you're just kinda like, Hey, look what I did with, with my AI coding partner of choice.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I like that it, that it did address both sides, like Tim said. Uh, and that, like, I, I see that kind of daily in that we've got some federal agencies that require that they're, you know, all of their people, contractors, employees, whatever, are, are setting a goal of like, you know, 20% AI use throughout their job or, or so, and they've set that as kind of a target.

And then we've got other government agencies that are, uh, completely like, afraid of it and kind of, kind of afraid of their own shadow. And they're making people go through all kinds of, you know, you've gotta fill out this paperwork to describe how you're gonna use the ai. And, you know, the, the hoops to jump through there are so big that, you know, most people don't, don't even get approval to use the ai.

And, you know, really I think that that kind of thing is misguided, because whatever, I'm gonna describe that I'm gonna use AI for this week. Had better not be the same thing I'm using it for next week or next month, because that means, you know, skills still aren't changing, growing, uh, you know, keeping up.

And so it, you know, it also comes back to all the people that are working for those agencies that are, you know, basically banning or making it so difficult to use AI that like their skills are rusting at, well, the other agency's skills are not. And so like, there's definitely di definitely a dichotomy there.

Nic: I'll, I'll take issue with the description that your skills are rusting if you're not using ai. I mean, I would say

Steve: if so, like use the, the example of jergen ha, right? Like he's like, I did this in, in a week and something that would've taken me months. Right? He

Nic: But is that your skill?

Steve: Well, if, if, if his skill, if he didn't, like, what did he learn in that experience?

I imagine it was significant. Um, and you know about, even, even about making the choices of when is this appropriate, when is it not appropriate? Like, if you don't get to play in the pond, you don't get to learn how to swim, kind of thing, right? Like,

Martin: I would almost be inclined to, to make it use the analogy of like using hand tools versus power tools, right?

Like a craftsman can do beautiful work using just hand tools and you know, in some cases might actually turn out higher quality work, um, but can get a lot more done in a day by using power tools, uh, for the same tasks. I mean, obviously it'll depend on the tasks and the, the similar kinds of things, but I think in a similar way, you know, having trained professionals who can use, uh, you know, these, um, you know, incredibly powerful tools, particularly in the last few months to get more done in a day is, is good for the community.

It's good.

Steve: Oh no, we're left than a cliffhanger. Again,

John: man, it's good for who? It's good for who. Um. Tim, I actually have a question. No, maybe I don't have a question for Tim.

Nic: That's an even worse cliffhanger or did we lose Tim as well?

Steve: We

John: lose Chicago

Steve: all.

John: I think it might just be the, you know, maybe they're at the same hotel and maybe the hotel internet is not, uh, not keeping up.

Nic: Well, Martin's on the, his phone I think. But anyway, um, while we wait for them to come back, um,

I, I'm curious if there was anything, uh, John in the Drew note that kind of surprised you. 'cause usually he tries to come up with, you know, one thing for the future or one thing that's happening in the community that maybe not a lot of people have heard about. Was there anything that kinda stood out to you this year from that perspective?

John: Um. You know, I'm gonna, actually, let me really quick pull up my notes from the Dres note because, um, there was one slide that I took a picture of, um, lemme see if I can find 'em here real quick. And there were, um, it was, it was basically just like a roadmap of, um, kind of how, how they think, um, kind of new features in Drupal are gonna be released.

And I don't know, this is necessarily surprising, but it kind of did show me, you know, kind of the rapid, the rapid pace at, at which we're, we're kind of getting these things going. So like, um, so for site templates in the marketplace in specific, right. So DrupalCon, Vienna, there was one site template, right?

DrupalCon Chicago. They now have 11 site templates that are all supported by, um, or all, all built by, um, Drupal agencies. So that's, that's awesome. And then for, um. DrupalCon Rotterdam, they want to have a release candidate for that, right? So that's pretty, pretty quick. Um, you know, development and, and getting something that was, you know, an idea at a few DrupalCon ago to like, oh, okay, now we're at a release candidate.

Um, the other thing that was interesting to me was something called content performance, um, which is basically like integrated analytics. Um, so they have, like, they're, they're in the process of prototyping it. Um, I think the goal here is to kind of have some sort of alpha release, or maybe it is Alpha right now, um, at DrupalCon Chicago and then, you know, beta at Rotterdam.

But just looking at this and the fact that like. And Nick, you know, 'cause you're, you know, you've been, you've been in the Drupal community and working on issues, some issues for like, years of your life. Like to see some of these features be, um, I won't say fast tracked, but like, have this accelerated development process around them and be able to get, you know, between, you know, Drupal cons.

Like, what's that, like three to six months, something like that. To be able to see like that type of improvement in development is, is super exciting.

Nic: Yeah. I think, I think one of the, my understanding is one of the reasons why we're getting so many site templates now is because Adam, you know, ner Proxima built the site export tool, which is one of the, one of the things that recipes are really like the biggest gap in recipes.

And admittedly I don't work too closely on that particular initiative, but the biggest gap in recipes is that there's no. UI builder for recipes that allow like features. Like there's no way to just be like this, I have this website, I have this feature. Let me check these boxes. This is what I want. And it exports it to a recipe that does not exist, that if that existed three years ago, we would have thousands of recipes on drupal.org.

We, we might have 20,000 recipes in triple.org because everybody wants it, but building recipes by hand, like, and that wouldn't, that wouldn't even solve like the config action problem that you have to still do. Right? But. It solves like the most tedious part of recipes. I, um,

John: I agree a hundred percent.

Like when I, I, I don't know, this is probably maybe a year ago, but like recipes were, were pretty new and I was like, oh, like, let me see if I can build a recipe for this. Maybe it was actually more than like two years ago. But anyway, um, I was like, let me see if I can build a recipe for like this, this site install that we do all the time and like see if, if I can build a recipe that'll help support that.

And like, you're not wrong. Like there was a lot of like digging through config to be like, oh, do I need this? Oh, I need this one.

Nic: And, and it's so easy. Forget something like

John: absolutely. Form displays

Nic: or display, like, and, and site templates might, again, I haven't used it yet, but I'm, I have a client that used it is using it this week or last week to, to test a feature.

My understanding is you just run, you know, Dr. Site export or whatever the command is and it export your site and then you import it to another, you know, you do a draw site install, you. If there's stuff you have to delete, you delete it all, and then you export it again and you're done, like you have it.

Um, and you don't have to do all of like the UID juggling and database cleanup and all that kinda stuff. So, um, the, just the development experience I think of site templates already is, is way, way cleaner. Um, so yeah, I, I, I think, uh, Adam deserves a lot of, I, I think he worked on that issue primarily. If other people did, um, I apologize, but I know that he's been pushing that.

So, um, yeah, I think, I think that's a, a big one. Um, so

Tim: I have one thought on that though, is that I'm almost glad that it, it was a little hard for a little while because now we have a, as you said, a very small library of examples, but they're extremely high quality and I think it sets the bar high. And I think that if the anyone could have exported it back at the very beginning, I think we would be overwhelmed with examples and.

It would be overwhelming for the, the end user who wants to pick between the side templates.

John: Yeah.

Tim: And that right now it's gonna, you know, the, the, the best ones are there first. And I'm not saying there aren't gonna be more, and I, I want everyone to feel empowered to create side templates, but I'm just, I'm glad that the, the bar was set high.

That's all.

John: Yeah, I do agree. I do agree with that. Um, I mean, I think a lot of times our, our great power is sometimes our, our great disservice because everybody, everybody has the ability to con, to contribute and to contribute either a little or a lot. But sometimes you get in, you get in, you go, Hey, I built this thing.

It's really cool. And you, you kind of drop it and, and then, you know, time, one of the, one of the themes I'm, I'm hearing here is that. Uh, a lot of folks just don't have time to keep, keep doing the things they're doing or to do more things and to, to push initiatives forward. So like, yeah, I mean, I, I agree.

I think, you know, having 11 that are, are high quality, uh, site templates is gonna be a great kind of, uh, springboard for other folks. Um, I actually wanted to go back a little bit, um, and ask Tim a question about, um, the drees notes and AI and, you know, obviously. Uh, Steve was talking about Juergen and how Juergen, you know, kind of used AI to accelerate his development and, and do a whole bunch of stuff in a a shorter period of time.

I'm wondering, um, are you or are, is your team, your, your engineering team at Acquia kind of using some of those, those practices to accelerate your development?

Tim: Absolutely. I mean, there's, you know, there's some people who use it like fancy Google or like, you know, better stack exchange where they're just, wait, how do I do that thing again?

And, and then there's other people who have like entire teams of agents where they can feed it a, a, a well-written user story and come back a couple hours later to a finished thing. Um, with like our team, we have a very large team right now, and the, the individual preferences of the developers kind of runs the gamut of it.

Um, but I don't think there's anyone that's not using anything anymore. Um

John: mm-hmm.

Tim: It's funny you mentioned, someone mentioned, uh, Nick. I think it was either like juggling UIDs and whatnot and there's like. These, uh, unit tests or kernel tests like in Canvas that uh, were were, you know, matching specific UIDs that changed whenever the component version was updated within Canvas.

And to re manually replace those would take, you know, a couple hours, uh, to do it by hand. And, you know, someone used the prompted it and it took two minutes. Um, it just said, run this unit test and replace all these strings with the new ones and it did it in like two minutes. Um, and so there's just little things like that where it's like, not only would you spend two hours doing it, you'd probably make a lot of mistakes and you'd probably want to quit your job real quick.

You know, like, I

Nic: mean, that tells me that that's a poorly written test. And why?

Tim: Well, checking

Nic: it

Tim: specific,

Nic: you

Tim: can go script, argue about the, uh, the version component. Checking system in Canvas, but that's a separate problem. Um, but either way, like, and then as I said, there's other people who are using it to prototype and then rebuilding it, you know, better from scratch later 'cause

John: So I would, I would say Tim as a, as a, uh, engineering manager, it would be great if you could, um, motivate those people that are using all of those agents to do a DrupalCon talk about like, I'm an engineer at Acquia and I use a bunch of AI agents and here's how, and here's how I got started.

And like, you know, this is what I use them for. 'cause I think that would be super interesting to see.

Tim: So there was one, uh, yesterday by, uh, agent experience, uh, ax, uh, by Scott Falconer, um, that I went to that was, and he's a, I don't think he necessarily identified as an engineer right now, but he is doing engineering work and he uses a lot of ai.

Um, and he's been kind of setting, you know, best practices, um, for, for agent based things. So I was at the talk, everyone should go watch the recording. Um, it was pretty good. We'll put a link in

John: the show notes.

Martin: Yeah, I mean, Scott, uh, Scott has actually written a book, literally written a book about ai. I guess we talked about that when he was on the show.

Uh, the other thing that I, I heard I had wanted to see his talk, but again, missed it yesterday, but, uh, I heard that it, uh, he got a standing ovation at the end. So again, you know, if you want another reason to go watch that talk once the recordings are released. There you go.

Nic: So Steve, um, you mentioned that you had already listened to the Drees note.

Was there anything that kind of surprised you in the Drees note? Um, wanna give you a chance to respond as well?

Steve: I think the thing that sort of like stood out was that like, uh, the. Several of the previous brief notes were like, really high, you know, high arc value, high, you know, and this was like, just very simple.

Like, it was almost gear, it felt to me like it was geared toward developers, right? All the text was like just straight text, you know, with some, with some pixelated text on it. Like, it was like very clear, uh, in it, it spoke to me as a developer of like, this is written for me, not written for, uh, some kind of marketing executive kind of person.

Uh,

John: um, maybe I was missing something, but was there a video game vibe going on there?

Steve: Oh, maybe that was it. I'm not a video game person, but yeah, maybe that was it and I missed it completely.

John: No. Okay. Maybe I just made that up. 'cause I was, wa I'm, I'm looking at it, I'm like, okay, like I see the Chicago, you know, the Chicago vibe here, but I'm also feeling like there's a little bit of a video game, like eight bit vibe, gum, but maybe, I don't know, maybe I was just making that up.

Steve: That might have been it. You might be on it.

Tim: I mean, vibes are in the eye of the beholder, so it's okay.

John: Oh, well then my, then I was, I was a hundred percent right. Perfect.

Steve: And, but seeing, seeing the templates roll out like, like displayed, that was, that was like, uh, you know, that that was a, a cool experience to see sort of come out.

'cause that, that gives me excitement for the future. Not that, you know, most of the time I'm not gonna be using a template, but it gives me hope that lots of other people will.

Nic: Yeah. And Martin, how about you? Was there anything, uh, was there, were, were there any big takeaways from the Drees note this year that you'd like to share?

Anything that surprised you?

Martin: Uh, I mean, you know, I worked on a number of pieces that went into the Dres notes, so there weren't a ton of surprises. Um, I'll say for, for me, I would've liked to have maybe seen a little bit more detail about the, the actual site templates that are, that are now available as part of the MVP of the marketplace.

Um, but, you know, maybe there's a session I can catch that'll dig into more of that, or I'm sure there'll be more information in the coming weeks. Um, I'll, I'll say in terms of the reaction that I heard, the thing that I heard multiple times yesterday that kind of surprised me was how many people said they didn't realize the voiceover was me until I had some Canadian Canadians in kinda my intonation.

And that was sort of the tip off for them. So, no, I thought that was funny.

John: I'm also gonna, I'm also gonna go back and, and re-listen to the, the videos that Martin did in the Drees note. 'cause I, I was telling him last night there are, there are a few like. They're not necessarily one-liners, but there are just a few phrases in there that I'm like, oh, if we just get this, that's gonna be hilarious.

So I think I'm gonna go back and, and, and, and clip a couple of those like, you know, marketing iss. Um, I actually have a, a question for Tim, 'cause he's on the, the Canvas team and I just thought of this. So one session that I did go to, uh, yesterday morning, I think it was, um, they were talking about, uh, Drupal CMS and they were mentioning Canvas and they said something about, um, and I don't know if this is current canvas or a future iteration, but um.

Being able to potentially use it on other entity types or being able to link it to some sort of node by like selecting the field you want to populate your, your component with Is that, did I misunderstand? Is that a real thing?

Tim: That is a real thing. I know the session was, uh, the Pam and Christina from the triple CMS team were, were demoing and there was a demo in there.

Yes. Uh, it was like a looping GIF of linking, basically using Canvas to lay out, uh, the, the node template. So like. Like you would using layup holder or Space Suite or anything else. Um, and doing it in a really intuitive way of like, here's your component and you design it the way you want, and at the end you can link it to whatever the data source is.

Um, and that's live, that's in, at least in 1.3 Canvas. It might've been at 1.2, but, um, the, yeah, so the content templates aspect of, of Canvas is, is fantastic. Um, the next thing that they're talking about beyond that, that really opens the door to a lot of power is, um, entity references. And once you start to go that path, then you can access all of Drupal's data model.

Um, and it gets really, really powerful very quickly.

John: I mean, so how does, does that still work in its own entity? Like is it at the Canvas entity and then you're, you're just, you're just kind of like selecting those field, like I guess I'm trying to understand like, how does that work? Is it at the node level or is it at or at the entity level, or is it at the, it's still in like Canvas.

Mode.

Tim: Well, so I mean, even if you, if you're just using the standard field ui, right? Like the config entity that stores the managed display page is separate from the bundle type, you know, the, the article, basic page, whatever. Um, it's an entity display config entity. Um, and so this just following the same pattern, um, of like, there's a rendering pipeline for when you're rendering a note and this just jumps in the middle and takes over the same way that layup builder's done for years and, and, um, supplanting Field ui.

John: Got it. Well, now I, now I have something to try on the plane ride home. So

Tim: yeah, it's really, I mean, that was the big thing, you know, when Canvas, the 1.0 came out, it was for one-off pages, landing pages, you know, marketing pages. But now that you can actually use it for Drupal nodes themselves, it's, it's, it's really fun.

Nic: So is it gonna become like a field type and widget? So you can all, 'cause that's the thing that I look long term. Really what I would want is to be able to say, Hey, this is a canvas field type. And then maybe I have some other field type that goes between, and then another canvas field type that you can put on.

So you can have like a canvas for heroes and a canvas for, uh, the content in a canvas for teasers, maybe. 'cause that gives you, and then some way to have it be a unified editorial experience when you're editing the page. It's not a mess.

Tim: Yeah.

Nic: But

Tim: so I will say that, um, using Canvas for different view modes, which are what those are, you know, teasers, heroes, full content, those are view modes and Drupal, um, that's on the roadmap.

Um, it's, it's, right now it's just used for the full, full render. Um, which is, you know, it's always the easiest thing you do first and that it's definitely gonna be coming. Um, and if you've used. Canvas recently, you know, it used to be that every time you jumped to a different part of what you were trying to use, it kind of refreshed the whole UI and it, it felt a little jumpy and now it's very seamless, like single page app style and you can kind of jump in and out.

Um, I, I don't know what the plans are for view modes in terms of, um, you know, like right now there's, there's a, a, a selector where you can change, like, I wanna see this when it's on a tablet. I can see it when I wanna see it when it's on full screen. You can adjust the viewport within the canvas ey. Um, I don't know if any any plans of tying that to the view mode, but, you know, it could be, that could be really cool too.

Um,

Nic: I mean, and Oh, go ahead Martin.

Martin: Oh, I was just gonna say, I Nick, I, I dunno if this was what you were getting at, but I think the other question that I've heard that, uh, maybe is what you were sort of getting towards is not so much based on view mode, but like, as an example, if you think about the layout for.

Event nodes, you might wanna have sort of like a, a standard sort of like footer that includes the, you know, na uh, date and time and location. And then have kind of a freeform space where people could sort of almost assemble like a, a landing page. And so that combination within a single view mode of having both structured and un or like freeform, um, display could be enabled if people could basically have like a canvas field type that could be used as part of the like content architecture.

Tim: Yep. Yeah, I think that's sort of like an inside out way of thinking of it, um, in that like, canvas wants to take over everything, um, right now, and I think you could still accomplish some of the things you're talking about with like global regions or, um, there's other approaches you could take, but I don't know 'cause what, what you're describing feels to me more like.

The, almost like the Acquia site studio module used to be, um, where you had these, and they literally called them canvases where you could have multiple, um, and that's sort of the other way of doing it. Um,

Nic: yeah,

Tim: but I think there's a way to accomplish what you're talking about.

Nic: Yeah. That, that, that'd be, yeah, that's what I was talking about.

The, the other, the other big ca at the risk of making this a canvas show, the other big canvas question I have is when is translation coming? Because I literally can't use it with most clients until translation is available.

Tim: So I'll say that there are. Within aqui F five, four and a half teams working full-time on Canvas.

And, um, one of them is mine and my team is the one that's gonna be working on transl symmetric translations starting in Q2, which is like six days from now. So will

Nic: it be better than builder translation?

Tim: Well, it depends. Did you like layout builder translations or not?

Nic: No. Uh, no.

Tim: And which, and so this is something I wanna clear up.

Um, there are two major approaches to translations, symmetric translations and asymmetric translations. And the, the way I like to think of it is, if you have a, a newspaper in Europe that, or anywhere that you know, might have different languages, you might not wanna feature different content on your, your homepage for different languages.

So having those different layouts per language, that is asymmetric translation. And if you wanna just, every single time you go to the page, you see the same layout, but the words are in a different language that is symmetric translations and each of them. Present very different problems. And layout builder had two separate contr contr modules, asymmetric translation and symmetric translation.

Nic: And they're both terrible.

Tim: And they're both written by volunteers with a lot of love. Nick.

Nic: No, no, no. Not, not. The modules themselves. Symmetric and asymmetric, like both, like you said, both approaches have, uh, unique problems. And, well,

John: I, I have feelings about this, but I'll let you finish first.

Nic: Okay. Yeah. So yeah, this isn't, this isn't about the modules themselves because obviously I, I couldn't translate it without them.

But, um, I, I think the problem to solve is, 'cause you have the same thing with nodes, right? You can have asymmetric or symmetric translations and nodes. This is,

Tim: yeah. This is a new concept. Correct. This is the, just the standard way of thinking about translations. Yeah.

Nic: The, the problem with layout builder is that you're locked in.

To the choice in the beginning. You can't, you can't have symmetric translations and they go, you know what? This page is special. We need something unique for each, or vice versa. Right? Yeah. So the, the problem to solve with Canvas is that like the translation able to mix

Tim: them within a

Nic: single

Tim: site. Yeah, yeah.

Nic: With a single site within a single content type, with a single whatever presentation. That's the problem. The problem isn't that you have asymmetric, asymmetric 'cause they're solving different problems or they have unique issues with each, but the problem is that they're diverse. You make the, you have to have a long discussion with the client beforehand saying, these are the trade-offs, which one are we gonna choose?

And then inevitably, three months later, like, you know what? We want this one to be the opposite.

Tim: They

Nic: want the other one. Well,

Tim: yeah,

Nic: sorry, you can't,

Tim: so I will say, uh, that we specked out, but like what it would take to do asymmetric translations and we're currently finishing up the discovery of what it's gonna take to do symmetric translations and it was deemed that symmetric was a higher priority.

Um, and that's where we're start with, it's from

Nic: standard.

Tim: Um, where we, there was a, we were really close to doing asymmetric first, um, this past quarter, and, you know, things got reprioritized. Um, so I will say, I, I would hope that we build it in a way where it should be, you know, you, you should be able to, to mix and match.

Um, but right now we have nothing. And so, we'll, we'll see what we start with. I think the other thing is that it's going to be built into canvas as opposed to being a completely separate module. Um, at least that's the intention. So I think that's gonna help, uh, in some ways of keeping it sort of, you know, more tailored to the canvas experience than where the, with layout builder, the both systems of translations were bolted on.

Nic: I mean, as, as long as it works with the translate tab and like T-M-G-M-T type things,

Tim: yeah,

Nic: I'll be, I mean's maybe a contrib module, a separate contrib module with, or, or Submodule or something. It'll be a SubT module M gmt, um, integration or something. I'll, I'll be happy. But like I said, the, the real. I, I would say whenever you come to a crossroads and you're deciding symmetric or asymmetric, just make sure you like, leave the little path for like switching, even if you don't flush it out at the moment.

Because like I said, the, the only real pain point at the, well, there's a lot of pain points, like config. I have a client that uses config entities for their blocks instead of using, um, I saw, I saw that look. Um, it's very performing, but, uh, they use that within layout builder and it, uh, I had to write some code to make it work.

Um, but yeah, so, so as long as you have something on the roadmap and when, when do you think the first, uh, lease will be? Will it be next quarter, two quarter from now?

Tim: The, the, the goal is June 30th? Yeah. End of quarter.

Nic: Okay. Very cool.

Tim: For better or worse, we're working on a very quarter based system, um, just because of the engineering overhead at Acquia.

And that's just how we do things. And there are, you know, many contributors to, to canvas that aren't at Acquia, but the, you know, there, there are a lot of us. So yeah.

Steve: What stood out most from the Drupal 25th anniversary gala? I couldn't see that online, so I want more intel.

How

Nic: about you Martin? Uh, John. John, I think you're, you're the after Purdy guy.

Steve: Oh,

John: no, no. I'm gonna go to Martin on this one. Okay. Martin. Martin had a nice new suit and, uh, looked, looked fabulous, so,

Martin: so we, we have Air Canada and it's, um, mishandling of my bag to thank for that brand new suit, but, um

Nic: Oh really?

Martin: Yeah, I think, uh, for me it was kind of, that, that was definitely a fun element was the fact that they, they call it sort of Drupal formal and that people were free to interpret that in whichever way they wanted. So yeah, there were, um, definitely some people who use it as occasion to, you know, dress up in a pretty formal way and other people who kept it very casual and, and I think it just was sort of a fun mixture.

Lots of people who were kind of, um, you know, eclectic mixtures in between and, and those kinds of things. So that, that, that definitely was fun. Um, I had somebody say that, uh, that they had thought it was gonna be, I guess more like the field museum, um, thing where it was a little more structured, you know, in terms of, of what people were doing.

Whereas this just had like different food stations and people could roam around and, and sort of, uh, intermix. But, uh, but yeah, I would say for me was

Nic: there, was there,

Martin: go ahead.

Nic: Ballroom dancing because I feel like a gala has to have. Dancing. Dancing. There was dancing. Dancing or like,

Martin: yeah.

John: Not, not, not ballroom dance.

It wasn't like everybody got a partner and waltzed around.

Nic: I mean, to be clear, if I was there, I would, uh, it, you, it would be a tall order for me to participate in an impromptu ballroom dance. But, um, gala sounds like either that or the Met Gala. Right. Maybe, maybe artwork on the walls to look at or something.

But, uh, I, I feel like that's a requirement for something.

John: Yeah. Nobody, nobody wore like a plushy outfit. I, I do feel like we were missing some, some, some fashion, uh, fashion, um, uh, you know, big box items to check off. But, um, I think, you know, everybody looked great. Everybody was having a good time. Um. I, uh, got a lot of compliments on a tuxedo t-shirt, which was, was surprising to me.

'cause I felt like, um, I felt like the Drupal community, like the tuxedo t-shirt was gonna be a standard. Like, I thought there were gonna be a lot more. And I, I think it was maybe like me and one other guy. Um, but, um, I took some pictures with some folks that were wearing actual tuxedos. Um, uh, Larry and, uh, JD Leonard, um, were some of them.

And, uh, you know, I was like, um, you know, this, this is like the, the, you know, the AI coded version of a, of a tuxedo and then this is like the actual, like the developer built version. Um, you were the

Tim: prototype. You were the prototype.

John: Exactly. I was the, I was the prototype. Um, but I mean, I think overall I.

Again, just the, the nostalgia, the sense of community, the sense of what Drupal has has become versus where it started. Right. Um, you know, one thing that, that Dre's talked about in his Dre's note that I, I mean, I don't think we, I don't think we mentioned this, um, but was, you know, kind of the, the stress of, of going it alone and, and the stress of starting, you know, starting a a, a massive open source project.

I mean, there's a one slide where, um, I'm assuming, I'm assuming it was AI generated, because I don't, I don't think, um, as Drees was laying in the street with his dog, somebody took a picture. Um, but there was a, there was a, you know, a point in, in Dre's story where he, you know, he said, um, I passed out. In the street walking my dog, um, due to, you know, due to the stress of, um, you know, all of the things going on in my life.

Right. Um, and I think like that really highlighted that like, you know, it's, it started with one person, but now it's, it's much more than that. And it's, it's not the power of one person writing code, but the power of thousands of people globally writing code that, that got us here and will continue to continue to push us, push us forward.

Steve: Yeah, I like that he shared that. I, I mean that was, that was pretty powerful. But it also like gives the rest of us permission to watch out for our health.

Nic: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, burnout it, one of the episodes that we did, I don't know, a couple hundred episodes ago that still stands out to me was the episode on burnout.

Um, something that I, I try to keep in mind. So let's go around the room.

John: I meant well, I want to hear what Tim thought about the gala.

Nic: Oh, sorry, Tim. Yeah. What'd you think about the gala?

Tim: I, I mean, I had a good time. Um, no, I, it was as, as you said, there wasn't like a, many of the recent parties have been at a museum or a science center or something where there was like something to do if you didn't wanna stand around and talk and eat finger food.

Um, so I think that was the only, the only thing that was maybe lacking. But I think it was a, it was a great time and, um, I'd like to see it happen again.

John: Uh, it's a, it's funny that you say finger food because the, um, Chicago hotdog and the, and the um, hot, hot beef sandwiches were, uh, were delicious. But I was also kinda like, man, I really hope my tuxedo t-shirt makes it through this sandwich.

And

John: like, the guy's actually wearing tuxedos. I was nervous for them. I was like, oh god. Alright. Um. One thing I do wanna mention that I thought was, um, was great about the gala, um, was when you, when you went in, everybody got a little blue ticket and I feel bad 'cause some of those people thought they were drink tickets, but they weren't.

Um, so, uh, uh, you know, at the, kind of the midpoint of the gala or, or close to the beginning of the gala, they, um, they Dre gave a toast. And then at the end of the toast, uh, Tiffany Ferris, who's been been on the show, um, helped to organize the, the gala, um, came back and she talked about, um, the fact that, you know, there were, I don't know guys, how many people were in that room?

200, 300 people maybe, maybe more. Um, but she talked about the fact that like. These definitely were not all the people that worked on Drupal. Like Drupal is a, is a global phenomenon, right? And, um, everybody had a little ticket and they, um, gave it to certain community members, right? That were handing out these, um, these pouches.

I actually have one right here, oh, oh, oh, oh camera. Where's my camera there? It's, um, clearly I should not be like a, a on on air personality with the, with the camera placement. But in them there were these, um, commemorative tokens, right? And so ev everybody that was there got a commemorative token, but they also got an additional commemorative token.

And the idea behind it is that you were in the room, you get to keep one, but then you also get to, um, share one with a community member that couldn't be there. Um. That has, you know, helped, helped to support Drupal maybe, um, behind the scenes or just, you know, in the issue queue or whatever. Um, and I thought that was really, really an interesting idea.

Um, I will say that I was able to actually get an extra token and I have, uh, one token for Euch and one token for Steven, who's actually not on this call right now, but listening. Oh, thank you. Um, so I will, I will make sure that I, I mail those out to you guys when I get back to, uh, to the East Coast, but I just thought it was a, again, another great way to show that, like, yeah, where, you know, 300 people in a room or 1300 people at a conference, but like, there are so many more people that have over the 25 years that are still in the community, not in the community, in other communities, and have, you know, really just helped to support this thing and, and push it forward.

Nic: Thank you. Yeah, that's a pretty point. I didn't, I didn't know about that. I, I have a quick question Is, was web check at DrupalCon?

John: Yes.

Nic: This, was this her first DrupalCon back in a while?

John: No, she won the air in Windborn Award two years ago. Last year. When was that? No,

Nic: last year. Last year was Randy.

John: Okay. So two years ago then?

No, three years ago. That was the same. More like

Tim: five years ago. It was 2022. And that was DrupalCon Portland, the second of the three. Portlands.

John: So that was four.

Tim: Four years ago.

John: Four years ago. All right time. Am I right?

Nic: Oh, and ran Randy was two years ago too. So last year was Mike.

John: Oh, right. Mike and Ello. Oh geez.

No, don't tell him I forgot about

Nic: that. No, wait, no, no. Last year was Kristen Poll. Two years ago. It was Mike. Three years ago it was Randy. Oh geez. All, well, you know, lucky the Aaron Windborn award. And reading the list as incorrectly.

John: It's sad, but the only, and the only one, and definitely don't tell her this, but the only one that I always remember is Amy June, because she will not let anybody forget.

Tim: Yeah,

John: but don't, don't tell her 'cause that, just don't, it's

Tim: okay. No one listens to this anyway.

John: Well, not now. It's like eight o'clock in the morning. Everybody's still asleep.

Nic: Um, okay, so let's talk about the future a little bit before we close out. Um, we're, we're getting towards the end of the show, so maybe we can, we can keep these a little brief, but, um, Tim, what are you most excited about for the future?

Tim: I mean, yeah, seeing Drupal Canvas really getting people to get a chance to play with it and see what it can do for them. Um, I really, I'm excited about it and want everyone to play with it.

Nic: How about you, Martin?

Martin: I think in general, I would say just, you know, the fact that Drupal is so well positioned around, you know, this growing AI adoption that we're seeing kind of across the broader society really at this point, I think really positions Drupal well to, to kind of be, um, plugged into, you know, a lot of growing changes and, and hopefully can reverse some of the trends that we've been seeing in the last few years.

Nic: How about you, John?

John: Huh? Marketing. I know nobody expected me to say that, but, um, I, I, well, I am also very excited about Canvas. Um. I think that is a game changer. I've already said that, but I'm also excited to see how, uh, Ryan at the DA can push the Drupal marketing, um, out to the masses. You know, I think with Canvas and the features that Tim and the teams at Aqui are working on, um, like I think that we are now very competitive with a lot of other, uh, mainstream CMSs, a lot of other, you know, web, web platform tools, right.

And, but I, I still think we're absolutely horrific at like, telling people about the power of Drupal and telling people like, Hey, guess what? It's not a crusty old CMS, or it's not a bunch of developers coding things that, you know, the average person can't use. Right. It's, it's, it's a, it's going, it's a great tool to build websites.

It's a flexible tool. It can integrate into all of your existing systems. It can, it can do things that those other platforms can. Um, and I'm excited to see what the, you know, the DA or how the DA is able to help to market the Drupal platform itself as a, as, as just that, as a, you know, a CMS of the future, if you will.

Nic: How about you, Steve? What are you most excited about for Drupal's future?

Steve: Well, the thing that actually excites me is not the code, even though that's where I spend like all my time. But what's exciting to me is the, the community. And I enjoy seeing, you know, all the turnout for Drupal DrupalCon Chicago kind of thing.

And just the energy that that builds. And, uh, you know, the, the inclusion of yes, bring a coin to give to somebody else. Uh, I think like it's just a, a cool model that I hope just keeps the feed itself.

John: I will, I will say that at the, um, at the Dre's note, uh, yester yesterday, um, there, Dre asked if there were any like WordPress developers in the, in the audience.

I think like one person raised their hand and he was like, oh, you know, we're so happy to have you welcome. We're very friendly. And he's like, listen, bring your friends. So, I mean, I think one of the other things, uh, that I'm, I'm excited about or, and I'm hoping we can, we can gain steam on, is bringing new people into the community.

Um, you know, I ran the community summit on Monday and there were, you know, in a room of, of 30 to 40 people. There were, I don't know, four or five new folks. I'd love to see, you know, I'd love to see a 50 50 split of like, Hey, here are all the existing community members. Here are all the new community members.

Like mingle. Get along. Like,

Nic: yeah,

John: find out what's great.

Nic: I will say the, the thing I'm most excited about at the moment is kind of, I mean, I'm very excited about the community always. I'm a huge proponent, but it's kind of the opposite of Steve's answer, which is something very, very code and very, very developer.

My, my current, uh, obsession or passion you could say is eliminate, eliminating all the core dot module and do theme files. And I actually, we committed the last one, removing, uh, Claro and Olive Vero a couple days ago. Um, stable is still there, but that's deprecate, that's all like, uh, that's just the BC example and we have to introduce one back so we can test, uh, procedural pre process hooks.

Um, but yeah, I'm working on deprecating the dot theme file extension, which is, uh, the source of many, uh, headaches, uh, for people that. Are, are not aware of how kind of Drupal works, so hopefully this will make Drupal more stable. I

John: actually thought, thought about you during the DRE note, Nick, because DRIs was talking about, um, you know, the newer versions of Drupal 11 and how, um, they're a, you know, a lot more performant.

And I was like, I was like, oh yeah, Nick, Nick did some of that work. I was like, Hmm, all right. Good job.

Nic: Yeah, CA catch and birder also did, um, a lot of the high performance stuff too. So, um, yeah, I think, I think, uh, the cold cash startup for Drupal is like 30% of what it was in earlier versions of Drupal.

It's, it's pretty impressive how much they've managed to save.

Steve: Cool. Cool. While we're talking about excitement, who's excited about coming to Florida? Con Orlando coming up in 2027, coming to my state. I'll tell

John: you, Mike and Ello and, and Mike Kersch have been, have been, uh, have been working towards this as I'm sure many other, uh, Drupal Florida community folks have, have been working towards this for some time.

Um, you know, I don't know, Chicago's Chicago's cold. It's charming, but it's cold, although we've had really great weather. Um, so, you know, triple Con Orlando will be warm and uh, of course there is Disney, um, for those that might be interested. So

Nic: Disney and a apparent spring training.

John: Spring training. Yep. Uh, that's what I'm excited about.

I'm actually gonna turn it into, uh, a little bit of a, a family, family vacation to go see, uh, some spring training. So

Nic: thanks. Sounds

John: good. The planning

Nic: starts

John: now. Sounds good. So,

Nic: so thank you all for joining us for our, uh, this might be our first DrupalCon Live. May, maybe not. We might have done one on YouTube Hangouts on Air or something previously.

But our first modern. Uh, live stream for Live from DrupalCon. Thank you for joining us.

John: If you have questions or feedback, reach out to us on talking, Dr. Uh, on the, oh boy. I'm just gonna start that over, even though this is live, so just forget that happened. Okay. Um, do you have questions or feedback? Reach out to talking Drupal on the socials with the handle Talking Drupal or by email with [email protected].

You can connect with our hosts and other listeners on Drupal Slack in the Talking Drupal channel.

Nic: And if you would like to be a guest on Talking Drupal or a new show TD Cafe, click on the guest request button in the [email protected].

John: You can promote your community event on talking Drupal. Learn [email protected] slash td promo.

Nic: And you can get the Talking Drupal newsletter. To learn more about our guest host show news, upcoming show is much more set up for the newsletter, talking drupal.com/newsletter.

John: And thank you patrons for supporting talking Drupal. Your support is greatly appreciated. You can learn more about becoming a [email protected] and choosing the Become a Patron button in the sidebar.

Nic: Alright, Tim, if our listeners wanna get in touch with you, had any questions, what's the best way for them to do that?

Uh, I think you might be muted.

Tim: Sorry. You can reach me on Drupal Slack. That's Tim Plunkett.

Nic: Awesome. And Steve, how about you?

Steve: I'm swt on Drupal Slack and drupal.org and Steve WT at LinkedIn.

Nic: Awesome. And Martin, how about you

Martin: folks can find me as man clue on all the Drupal and social platforms.

Nic: John,

John: you can find me, uh, [email protected].

Uh, you can find me on the socials and triple.org at John Zi. You can find out about EPA [email protected].

Nic: And you can find me pretty much everywhere at Knicks van N-I-C-X-V-A-N.

John: And before I do the tagline, I'd just like to thank all of the listeners that have come out up to me at DrupalCon and said, Hey, thanks for doing the show.

Keep going. Uh, I love listening to you, which I always feel bad about 'cause you know, uh, voice and then things. But I appreciate you coming up. I appreciate you showing appreciation. And if you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking live from Dral Con.

Nic: See you guys next week.

John: I look forward to it.

Nic: Thanks everyone. I.