Frederik Wouters
Calibrate was also present at Drupaljam 2024 in Utrecht. If you want to know what an eye shower looks like or what Dries Buytaert is focusing on these days, you're in the right place.
Drupaljam 2024
Starshot?
Dries Buytaert was also in attendance. For him, it was the first Drupaljam. He presented a very interesting keynote, explaining the strengths of Drupal once again. In terms of features and capabilities, our old faithful Drupal can do an enormous amount. There are no Saas CMSs that come close. With an Eco system of 50 000 modules, a strong focus on accessibility and usability (relevant in these times of the European Acssibility Act) and a huge developer community (maybe even almost the largest in the world with more than 1 MIO developers) we really have a good tool on our hands. He also explained that he is going to focus more on Starshot to make the user experience/entry level for site builders more accessible.
1 in 8 enterprise sites run on Drupal
Apping is the new smoking.
The closing keynote was given by Rens Van Der Vorst. An incredibly passionate speaker (and writer) with some very cool stories. There was too much in the session to summarize here. Some cool projects of his:
- ceptcha.co.uk (how to prov that we're humans, not to prove that we're "not robots". Make captcha's fun again.
- technophilosophy.co.uk.
- digitalgremlins.co.uk
For example, he explains
- Why some men only see ugly women on tinder
- Why easier online systems are not always better
- How you can rebel against this (by being a digital gremlin)
- I noticed in a personal conversation with him after the session that the app addiction in youth, and the subsequent impact on everything (interactions, behavior) is really close to his heart anyway.
What touched me personally:
In the Netherlands, there is a bakfiets brand Stint, which made a model of which one broke on a railroad resulting in several deaths, the government takes action against this, this gets massive media coverage.
There are more and more child suicides where social media is suspected to be the cause. Little is being done about this.
Did you know that you can uniquely identify people through the unique photo of their anus?
After seeing the slide that followed (a slide full of all unique anuses), resulting in hilarity, it is best to wash your eyes. Therefore, check out the eye wash in the photo album.
Accessibility
Rolf Meijer gave a session on accessibility. He highlighted again that the legislation (obligation) is coming! Fortunately Drupal has the ambition to be WCAG 2.1 AA. Also Drupal is known with for good accessibility and usability (both for end users and administrators).
Artificial intelligence
We ourselves were also present again. Frederik presented his session "Apply RAG, OpenAI integrations and interpolation". 40 minutes was far too little to go deep, but the room was full and people were enthusiastic.
Venue
The Fabrique is an incredible venue. Be sure to check out the photos. People there bring delicious snacks (freshly baked cookies, smoked meat, vegan poke bowls, something for everyone), you mix your own drinks and all in an industrial setting. Also check out my photo of the eye shower (it was once a soap factory 😂).
Maybe until next year?
