Northern Attended DrupalCon 2022 in Portland, Oregon

Need to Know

• Northerners attended DrupalCon 2022 in Portland, Oregon - the first in-person DrupalCon since the onset of the pandemic.
• As a donor, Northern attended the Scholars’ Breakfast and met with scholarship recipients and mentors.
• Northerners noticed an increase in the number of sessions focused on accessibility.
• There was plenty of excitement and enthusiasm for the upcoming Drupal 10 release.

Last week, a group of Northerners attended DrupalCon 2022 in Portland, Oregon - the first in-person DrupalCon since the onset of the pandemic. The Drupal Association was diligent in creating the safest possible environment, despite the situation with covid, with daily vaccination bracelets, testing facilities outside the convention center, and email updates provided if anyone tested positive. Despite smaller than usual attendance, the event was an exciting few days with lots to learn, see, and do. Portland trivia and several giveaways added to the fun, but the primary impression was that everyone was excited to be together again.

Attending DrupalCon is essential to us as an agency that builds digital experiences with Drupal.

This year, we’ve had the opportunity to officially re-introduce ourselves to the Drupal community as Northern Commerce. Northern was thrilled to share our new brand with attendees and forge new connections that we hope will lead to even more innovative projects and partnerships. Over the past several years, our company has significantly expanded its service offerings to provide integrated solutions for brands navigating digital transformation.

Northern has had a long-standing history of attending Drupal events (previously under the name Digital Echidna) — with DrupalCon being the most elaborate and anticipated event of the year. Northerners have contributed to the Drupal community through developer contributions to Drupal’s core code, updates to outdated modules, the creation of new modules, and participation in multiple expert presentations.  As a donor, Northern joined Drupal creator Dries Buytaert at a special Scholars’ Breakfast to meet with scholarship recipients and mentors.

What’s new in Drupal this year?

Initially targeted for release in June 2022, Drupal 10 has been pushed back until December 2022. We recommend brands upgrade their Drupal digital experiences to Drupal 9.5 now to ease the transition to Drupal 10.

Digital accessibility is a top concern. Northerners noticed an increase in the number of sessions focused on accessibility, specifically looking at how to make website development work for users. There were also several great sessions featuring people with cognitive disabilities speaking to challenges they face online daily, bringing attention that accessibility work involves more than just screen readers. 

One of our Northerners recalled that for people who are deaf and use sign language, English is generally not their first language - in this case, having a sign language interpreter is just as valuable as having captions.

What’s next for Drupal?

There was plenty of excitement and enthusiasm for the upcoming Drupal 10 release, particularly for automating version updates going forward using the no-code user interface rather than the current method involving the command line. Another new feature that our team is excited about is the addition of Google Docs-style collaboration and commenting features in the CKEditor module, which will give our Drupal clients even more control over their digital experience workflows. In this year’s DriesNote session, there was also a sneak peek of concepts that will focus on Drupal 11. 

Overall, there’s a lot to look forward to in the next few years of Drupal, and the Northern team is excited to bring increasingly innovative projects to our clients. Our Drupal community members have a lot of interest in the upcoming Drupal events (with the Asheville event speculated to be quite large and significant).