Unsere Contribution-Erfahrungen an der DrupalCon in Amsterdam

This year, pretty much all of the Unic Drupal team attended DrupalCon Amsterdam. When I asked the team what we should highlight in a blog post, many mentioned their excitement about the contributions they were able to see and participate in. Join me in hearing some Unic voices about our first contribution at DrupalCon Amsterdam. Corinne Sager, Digital Analyst, Roy Voggenberger, Business Consultant, Mario Thiele, Senior Application Architect, Kai Hartung, Project Manager and me, Josef Daberning, report about our experiences.

Corinne Sager, Digital Analyst

How would you describe your experience of contributing at DrupalCon?

This was my first DrupalCon and one of my goals was to get started with contributing. So, first of all, I had to figure out how I could contribute without coding, and ended up translating different case studies for the Drupal Pitch Deck. But I wanted to go a step further and dig deeper into it. My colleague Kai supported me in setting up a Drupal Instance on my machine so that I can test patches, too. That’s what I finally did, together with Milos, backend developer, and got a credit for my first contribution. Hooray!

What is something new you learned while contributing?

I met Kevin – he is currently developing the integration module for Google Tag Manager and its Data Layer. This made me decide to look at various analytics integration modules to find out which one we can define as our default. I hope that this will make it even more efficient to set up basic tracking with Google Analytics for our customers.

Is there anything you’re unsure of about contribution?

I’m still not sure how non-coding contribution is credited. Testing a patch may be a lot of work but if the code review is missing, will I still get credited for my testing? I hope to find out soon.

Roy Voggenberger, Business Consultant

How would you describe your experience of contributing at DrupalCon?

I was holding a Birds of a Feather (BOF) session about responsive organizations. BOF sessions are informal gatherings of like-minded individuals who want to discuss a certain topic without a pre-planned agenda.

What is something new you learned while contributing?

I was amazed at the number of participants for this non-tech topic. Somehow it is a topic that people want to know more and are curious about – especially when it comes to sharing experience of pros and cons, ways to go, pitfalls, and the fact that curiosity and bravery help in this transformation.

Is there anything you’re unsure of about contribution?

It is still not so easy to get rewarded for non-tech contribution. This is something we want to change and contribute to by organizing an upcoming award event. This would be a step forward to help customers know more about Drupal’s capabilities.

Mario Thiele, Senior Application Architect

How would you describe your experience of contributing at DrupalCon?

This was my 6th DrupalCon and I have to say that it was by far my most productive Con ever. Together with my colleague Kai, I gave a presentation on “How we implemented a Drupal Commerce marketplace for safety equipment”. I also helped my apprentice Malte to ensure that his Drupal 8 port for “Search API Grouping” left the sandbox status and is now officially available as a module. I worked hard on the “Entity reference layout restriction” and the “Gin Admin Theme” modules to improve the backend editor experience as well. We also had some fascinating conversations with the maintainers of “Search API” and “GraphQL for twig”.

What is something new you learned while contributing?

The process of how to get co-maintainership for an existing module was new to me. Being a speaker at such a large and important conference was also a new and exciting experience. I found that you should approach other maintainers and talk directly to them to solve problems quickly.

Is there anything you’re unsure of about contribution?

Drupal code contribution is difficult in the beginning if you don’t have a mentor. There are some hurdles to overcome and the process is quite cumbersome. But the problems are well known and I’m looking forward to seeing what efforts are being made to improve it.

Kai Hartung and Mario Thiele present a case study on the Drupal commerce marketplace for security products at DrupalCon.

Kai Hartung, Project Manager

How would you describe your experience of contributing at DrupalCon?

This year was the first DrupalCon I actively contributed to in a session. Together with Mario, we presented a recent project as a Drupal Commerce case study. Sharing our work and experience was a great opportunity to contribute to the community and take pride in our work. On contribution day, I was able to assist a colleague with preparing the local environment for contributing and I also worked on a small task from the drupal.org issue queue.

What is something new you learned while contributing?

Compared to last-year’s Drupal Europe, I was more directly involved in contributing. Additionally, for me as a non-technical role, I realized a lot can be done like helping organize meetups, coordinating contributions or creating case studies of recent projects, which also helps the community.

Is there anything you’re unsure of about contribution?

There is no fair way to value different types of contribution. Some organizational tasks are important to the community and take a lot of effort but are not accurately reflected as contribution compared to coding contribution. Luckily, the Drupal community is actively trying to improve the options here.

The Unic Drupal team at DrupalCon 2019 in Amsterdam.

Josef Dabernig, Senior Consultant

How would you describe your experience of contributing at DrupalCon?

This year I was a track chair lead for the program team, which meant I was able to recruit and guide the team that consisted of 33 track chairs responsible for promoting and selecting the DrupalCon Amsterdam program. Especially with the new setup between Kuoni and the Drupal Association, this year’s work was a lot about figuring out a new process and constantly adapting. Working with limited time and resources available but with a very enthusiastic team was a great inspiration, especially when seeing it manifested in real life at the conference itself.

What is something new you learned while contributing?

I learned more about doing blind selection processes to ensure diversity of talks in the program. I learned that we need a better process of onboarding and guiding new tracks chairs as part of the track chair team.

Is there anything you’re unsure of about contribution?

I would love to work out better models of making contribution sustainable so that our clients better understand its value and we can integrate it even more into our daily work.

Further Links

As you can see, our team came away with a great deal of inspiration and some interesting new questions. Do you want to know on which projects we have worked on? See Unic’s company page at drupal.org/unic. If you would like to watch the recording, here are our session links:

• Open Source Contribution Panel
• The Future of the Drupal Admin UI
• How we implemented a Drupal Commerce marketplace for safety equipment

Finally, you can also see some photos on Flickr. We look forward to seeing you at DrupalCon Europe 2020 or another Drupal event!