There is only one camp I take BART to and it has taken place in Berzerkeley the last few years. The trip is about an hour door to door from my place in Union Square, but it is very rare that you will find me in the Athens of the West, but it is the first place in Northern California what gave me a place to sleep when I was moving from LA oh so many years ago. It gave me a lot of warm feelings that felt very familiar in not only geography but also in spirit of homecoming in the Drupal community since I had been spending a lot of time in the WordPress space recently. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of welcomeness and family I felt as I attended BADCamp 2019
Food and Fun
Wednesday
Wednesday morning was met with conference coffee which I would give a 5 out of 10 points for trying. Tea selection was really first rate though. Lunch time gave me my first of many excuses to go to arguably the best vegan deli in the world, The Butcher’s Son. Their plant based bacon is making my mouth water even as I write this days later. In fact, I ate there almost every day of the event. If I don’t mention lunch again, you can assume that is where I ate. Dinner time rolled around and some of us found our way to the plant based fast food establishment Veggie Grill which is always a bit greasy.
DrupalCrawl
This has become an awesome staple of this event and DrupalCon. Organized by the really great Jason Mickela, this event invites everyone from the community out for a drink. I realize that is not everyone’s thing, but for those of us who participate it is a great night of lifting glasses and cheers. We started at Pacific Standard Tap Room, but things got really going when we hit the weird little club bar/BBQ joint Spats which just happened to have Karaoke that night. We sang and sang and sang.
Thursday
I didn’t make it over to Berkeley until dinner time. I got there in time for DevOps After Dark by DDEV at Tupper and Reed. This is a place with super fancy, Alice in Wonderland inspired cocktails. I also made it the Amazee.io party over at Beta Lounge, where some of us had appetizers for dinner.
DrupalKaraoke:
From Beta Lounge a small party of us found our way to Nick’s Lounge a 7 day a week Karaoke dive. Really just some of the best people in the Berkeley and Oakland area come here for a round of drinks and singing together. It is a wonderful cross section of what good people in the bay sound like.
Friday
The first day of sessions brought more coffee and tea. Once again I jumped at the chance to return to The Butcher’s Son for lunch. I also went back there for dinner. Friday night brought the official BADCamp Party. We danced and danced. There was an after event for sure but no proof it happened.
Saturday
More coffee and more tea. Lunchtime took me to The Flying Falafel with it’s vegan fare and just super tasty fries. I took off before the end of day and slept through dinner plans. I did make it back for a few songs of Karaoke at Nicks for a final cap on the camp.
Summits
BADCamp has 2 days of summits and trainings and 2 days of regular sessions. The summits are industry specific conversations and workshops focused on helping non-profits and higher ed better adopt technology. I was just thrilled this year to be able to participate in the Non-Profit Summit as a panel moderator and general room volunteer. So many organizations turned up and participated. The main focus seemed to be how to think about adopting platforms and how to organize your processes for best success as an organization. I really liked the discussions I heard.
It was a really great day and many props need to be given to the head organizer this year Valerie Neumark Mickela who just worked so hard to make a smooth and meaningful event. Props to the other organizers, volunteers and panelists as well.
Sessions
You Gonna Build a Process for That Process?
Anthony Horn
shawndearmond
I love a methodical talk that unveils the ‘secret’ of proper process improvement. Namely, there is no magic formula aside from standardize and fine tune as you go. This was more a case study on how to get the process improvement mechanisms correct than a how to, although they shared openly all their templates they leverage for streamlining how they work with clients and ensure success. I missed the very first part, but luckily this and all other sessions are already online at the BADCamp Youtube channel
Raw Notes:
–15 minutes late–
Slide deck per meeting
ready mad
ready to go
more listening less talking
What are your project goals slide
Process builds logically
personas, user stories, anatomy of an issue
Trains the client to be the product owner
idea from 4Kitchens
some clients really into it
people wrote a lot of meaningless user stories
now has examples of actionable ones
no transitions or animations
ppt, pdf, key versions all with no issue
hosted in Box
Wireframes templates and libraries in Lucid Charts
with little work, model wireframe very quickly
sitefarm.ucdavis.edu/blog/sitefram-wire-frame-
UCLA example work they did
results
Duplicating success
UX Process (user experience)
hard to find things, firehose analytics consulting
looking forward want to have a UX process
old template didn’t fit the need
Reasons – popularly requested service
have provided bits and pieces in the past
team expertise
looking to repeat success
New Hurdles to creating UX
Missing expertises
No clear model for UX Process in higher ed
who going first?
one time or subscription
How much lifting will this take?
Another Process: Research Projects
Faculty are different than other groups
different tech needs
iterative, doing research, so not sure what they want
new ideas from the research emerges
Start with some knowledge, start there
iterate over and over again
just like Agile, LEAN, 6Sigma, all over the place
same thing
They are sharing the Client Engagement Process Materials
bit.ly/2mxBuuZ
please take off UCDavid logos if you want to reuse it
The State of Drupal 9
Amber Himes Matz
The state of the D9 is good! I am not sure why this message has not gotten out better. At the end of a very great presentation, specifically given to assuage fears that people have about Drupal 9 coming out, there was still an audience member who could not comprehend that he should not wait for the Drupal 9 release to migrate from Drupal 7. Given that this is the first time a major release should not break backwards compatibility I get the disbelief in general, but the proof of deprecations by examining the code and the track record of on time releases to date with D8 make it strange people are still apprehensive. More education is needed apparently and this talk is a great place to start.
Raw Notes:
Drupalize.me
content production manager
Innovation in Drupal
Drupal 8 brought in 3 concepts
1 Semantic Versioning
allows to release feature updates in minor releases with backwards compatability
2 Scheduled Releases
minor releases every six months make versions predictable. New features introduced at a regular pace
3 experimental module
When features need more time and feedback to be finalized.
Backwards compatability is still supported
8.6.0
experimental: media library, workspaces
stable: demo
8.7
experimental media library
Stable, layout builder, JSON API
Third Party Optional Twig 2 support
So goals of 9
Update 3rd party dependencies
clean up the code
Symfony, jQuery, CKEditor, Twig 1
these need updated/removed
drupal.org/core/dependencies
Symfony 3 end of life is 2021
year prior release
June 3 2020 is planned D9 release date
Drupal 8.9.0 is planned to be released same time as 8.9
2 minor releases a year are planned for D9
how long with D9 go forward
estimated EOL for D9 is
end of 2023
based on with CKEditor supported and Symfony 4 or 5 EOL
The Making of D9
Major versions were brand new code bases in the past
caused headaches and was expensive
Deprication process
backwards compatible APIs are included and slowly removed over time
new solution, old to be removed marked for deprecation
new code is in the code base, but old code there for backwards compatibility
same is true in Symfony 3
D9 is dropping the deprecated code and just new solution
D9 is 8.9 without deprecated code
Modules with no deprecations will all still work
D9 built in D8 step-by-step
same process planned for D9 too
Preparing for D9
Keep Drupal core and contrib projects up to date
code examples
tools
PHPStorm already suggests and strikethrough deprecations
mglaman/drupal-check
Drupal-scan
project overview
export project or subset of projects
issues are either warnings or errors
warnings are for ones that can’t be fixed, or identified
errors can be fixed now
drupal.org tools
drupalci.yml
enable static analysis with PHPstan
Project owners, update your plans on your page
Sprints are a great way to get work done
D8.8 is the last version to deprecate for D9
gives you a 6 month window to get up to date
should I create 9.x-1.x-dev branch?
NO, don’t do it
dgo.to/2807145
composer projects allows more granular control
compatibility with more than one major version
Already correct for everything past 8.3
issue with Contributes modules be compatible?
most deprecations are easy fixes
midcampers already opened issues based on reporting then
I got named dropped 🙂
not a tool for Twig template deprecation but see node 3054924
People should not expect new features for 9.0
just stable and non-event upgrade
Big deal is that it is not a big deal
D7 support got support expended to November 2021
contractual vendor support, until at least 2024
worked well for D6 support, til 2022 in fact
3 major versions at once for a year and a half
Upgrade to 8 NOW if you are not there
Contrib custom and Content
not trivial, once on D8 no migration again needed
Skipping D8 does not bring benefits
Waiting for 9 just shrinks the window for you with no benefit
Recap: Drupal innovated 2 times a year
D9 is built in D8
Keep up with D8 and you are ready for D9
D7 has no reason to wait to D9
Best Practices for Securing Your Site
mkduckhorn
I like going to security talks as I never feel I can know enough about this evolving subject. I also picked this talk since it was given by a speaker I did not know, who worked at Google. This talk was a little more beginner than I anticipated and a little more sales-y for using Search Console than I would have cared for otherwise, but some good nuggets in there for sure. There was a moment of group chuckle as she discouraged people from using software that could not auto-update. Still, I had not thought of using a mix of the first letters of the words ina passphrase mixe with numbers to make shorter but still random and secure passwords before. Some of my 30+ character passwords are going to shorten a little bit next reset.
Raw Notes:
Trust and safety team at Google in SF
1 ID hackers attacks n Websites
2 Recovering hacked sites
3 best practices
was text results at first
now it is much more media rich
+32% increase in hacked sites in last few years
- Gibberish hack
- Japanese keyword hack
auto creates new pages with Japanese text
Hacker add themselves as a property owner on Search Console - cloaked keyword hack
On user side, pay attention to phishing or malware warnings
safe browsing to push these warnings on Chrome
Addressing the hack
nohacked guide
build a support team
quarantine your site
use search console
access damage
ID the vulnerability
clean and maintain the site
You become a potential target based on technical issues
no HTTPS, out of date
Safer Login
Safer Website
Safer Connection
request a review on search console
Passwords, Strong unique passwords
updating passwords regularly
passphrases
Ihave2dogs,1catand3birds
Don’t use common, easy to find out things for you
only you would know phrases
passwhrae key
Ih2d1ca3b – OK password
2 step verification
something you know and something you have
Google Authenticator
Safer Login Security Check-up
Safer Website
Outdated software is like an open shoelace
might not be a problem but mught trip everything up
keep updates software
Enable automatic updates if possible
“iffy if software doesn’t allow it.” (??? Does she know what Drupal is?)
Postcard vs letter in sealed envelope
new tech requires HTTPS
progressive web apps
push notifications
ranking signal in google
will serve HTTPS first
Let’s Encrypt
search console
61% of webmaster who had been hacked could not be reached
84% of those reached has successfully cleaned up the hack
users and permissions
manual actions
security issues
Better Project Management Through Board Games
davidneedham
JQTNguyen
I have seen several talks in the last bit if my life that reference board games with project management. I even wrote a blog post about one of my favorites I have seen. This talk was less theory and more ‘if you want to learn X play Y game together.’ If there were a more practical approach to how to teach people some of these skills, I have not encountered it. Really amazing job from David and John and it exposed me to a number of games I have not heard of before. I look forward to playing all of them sooner than later.
Raw Notes:
Project management games
Write clear requirements
Dimension
a game where the thing you build in the middle gets changed per teun with the cards
Hanabi
5 different colors 1 – 5 in them, you can’t see your own cards
Close Feedback loops
Make sure changes along the way can be addressed
timelines and things not being static
Fluxx
an open ended game, 5 minutes up to 5 hours
draw one card, play one card
cards change rules all the time
goal to win game changes too with cards
Captain Sonar
Like battleships with teams
PLan and prioritize
thinking through risk mitigation
Ticket to Ride
you are the railroad mogul
building track and connecting destination
Seasons
game about spells in seasons, plot out a curriculum at wizard school
Concept: The Iron Triangle
Competing constraints on a prject
good/fast/cheap
magic unicorn lives in the middle
Lords of Xidit
be not the worst at the most category as leader
Between 2 cities
one card on each side of you
take lowest score of the two cities you built
Negotiation
Making the project succeed,
not being a people pleaser and promising everything to everyone
Buy the Rights
Movie pitching game
gotta sell it
Dragon’s Gold
Negotiation of how to split the treasure
poor at negotation there is no way to win
Budgeting
The Networks
juggling act running a TV network
balancing all
Power Grid
Extending your grid out to other cities
power plants and expand at rate balanced with customers
resource management
Look ahead
staying on track
make sure things are trending in the right direction
Race for the Galaxy
like a deck building game
common pile of cards
all cards are beneficial
paying playing a card by throwing away other cards
round broken up into phases
if no one choses the phase, in secret, that phase gets skipped
Suburbia
City building game
look ahead to see how others are building their city
all selecting from common pool of available building
Concept: Be Flexible
things will not always go according to plan
Carcassonne
tiling game, building a city
matching patterns on tiles
The Quiet Year
light RPG
Collaborative map making and storytelling game
flipping over a card and drama happens
Concept: Don’t Panic
Things change
people will follow your lead
Scythe
might be planning to do one thing
someone might steal resources or blow you up
Mechs vs. Minions
fighting on maps
set out actions you going to take
set it down and see what happens
programmable action games
Common Traits
Do some research
don’t ‘discover together’ with the team as a PM
Clear objective
trying to get points vs building railway tracks between cities
more detail
why do we care?
Delegate where you can
cooperative vs competitive games
Forbidden Islands
The Entire PM Experience
D&D
What is the ultimate goal?
Winning isn’t everyone
Les Lim
How to Enjoy Board Games
Objective of a game is to bring people together
to solve puzzles
to immerse yourself in the theme
and to be excited to play again
Success of a PM is not on time or on budget
it is successful if they want to work with you again
Finite and Infinite games
Start Using the Emerging Layout Builder Ecosystem
André Angelantoni
I, historically, am not really a front end person. A layout of black and white text in a single column looks good enough to me for the most part. But I get it, people want ways to layout content that looks better than that. Enter the Layout Builder, a Core module now that not everyone is as excited about as they could be from what I hear. This was less of a how to and more of a talk exposing what is possible and the current state of the tooling. If I was going to be building content out I would be digging into this more. As of now, I am just glad to know the conversation for layouts is ongoing.
Raw Notes:
lot of modules to be released
quality initiative
Intro to layout Builder (LB)
Key modules
Patches to watch
souped up panalizer
You can create rigid layours thatt content editors can’t change or layouts that —
Video example
8.7 site
not individualized, new layouts apply to all of that type of node
by default shows blocks available inside Drupal
that is how you edit the layout for all page types
use it by creating content
Allow checkbox, layout tab appears
change per node
once you make content like that, can’t turn off Layout Builder
can but have to revert back to default layout, then tun it off
example site
some have more than 40 components on a page
easy to hurt performance when adding that many components
Key Modules
this is the future
Layout builder Asymmetric translation
If you want translation of layout, need this module, going into core just not there yet
Layout Library
make a library of layouts for content editors
Layout Builder Kit
base component based
common logic for components
custom block – price example
extra fields to blocks, much more flexible now
custom blocks get their own areas
Layout Builder Modal
adding drag and drop
lots of space instead of just scrunched up side
Layout Builder Restrictions
restrict blocks throughout the site to stop rogue editors
Layer builder Styles
Dynamic Layouts
Entity Browser Block
allows you to select ny entity Drupal has and place it on a page
Mini Layout
Issues
Unsaved issues
Gridstack
CohesionDX just got bought by acquia
Glazed Builder – superthemes
Layout Builder, if more people start contributing
Gotchas
Translation needs that other module
Node revision table might blow up
Under the hood, Anatomy of a component
where is everything stored?
storing multiple revisions of the same page?
not very useful
be clear on decisions when going through it
Location of Component
serialized string
row for every section
Component Configuration
Stored int he layout_builder_layout field
or us the FieldAPI
Block or Component in D8 interchangeable terms
each option gets own field
MOre you share fields between components, you create rats nest of interdependencies
Also, as an entity
Entity API+Field API
Configuration vs Field API vs Entity API
see slides
one insert per entry
Layout Builder Gap Analysis
Anonymous Personalization Without Leaving Drupal
michaellander
I kinda think that most personalization is creepy, but I see the value of it in some cases. Especially if it is just data, like a geolocation or IP range which I don’t mind you having for most things I look up, I can appreciate automatic language swapping and regional special offerings. Contextual Conditions seems like the least creepy way to offer a catered experience without collecting and using data in disturbing ways. I also love the idea of an easier and free way to du A/B testing. There is a lot of promise to this tooling and this is for sure something to keep an eye on as it evolves from the alpha it lives in now.
Raw Notes:
Personalization helps people use the site
find what they need
Dynamic Content Recommendation
Individualized Tokenization – “hi MIKE, welcome from YOURLACATION’
Contextual Conditions – this is the focus of today
taking what we know about the user and curating the experience for them
Umami example
local storage
cookies
browser properties
device properties
visitor actions – what did they do
third party
and many more
Smart Content
at it’s core, an API and toolset for providing and provide reactions
it is not however an access control module
still need authenticated users to have access control
Smart COntent Block, Browser, all in smart_content module
View Mode, Segments and more to come
demo of module in action
bit of a widget system as well
conditionals
reactions are what are shown in this condition
Check cookies
default variation to show is possible
not a blank space filling void
demo demo demo
how it works
Page is rendered with a placeholder for each Smart Content segment
JS to pass associated data
additional libraries also attached
Decision.js searched page for placeholder
if statements in JS
merged common things in conditional handler
look it up once from queue approach
back to decision agent then process
can cache the returned values
Use cases?
Targeting segments
Content based on Scoring
per device/os content
gated resources
new vs returning user
time of day content
GDPR
A/B testing
Location based
Real world example
IP based, suggest content based on what they think that segment wants to see
project is in alpha, about to become Beta
hit some issues around storage
working through some issues
then 2.x into the future
because we can do better
2 year process so far
overusing plugin system
fewer APIs, tighter
make decision s and decide
reactions can depend on decisions without living within them
Further decouple storage from behavior
improve UX
Integrations Roundup: How to plug existing products and services into your site
jmickela
megclaypool
After a lot of up front warning this was going to be a high level overview and not a ‘how to’ for these integrations they got started. Meg and Jason delivered a wonderful, and well paced, discussion on how to think about using third party integration tooling off the shelf, versus when to roll your own or find lighter weight alternatives. They were right after lunch in a small, dark, warm room and did a great job of keeping our attention in the sleepy afternoon. Really great information for any site builders out there who have client demands for more functionality.
Raw Notes:
High level overview of what is possible
bit.ly/integrations_roundup
when to and when not too
Pros and Cons
Pros: Decrease technical debt
increase security
quickly deply complex features
use a solution the site users alread kow
create data one, use it everywhere
Cons
Specific knowledge of external system
reliance on 3rd party security
can slow dev for simple features
changes in TOS can bite you in the A$$
How to pick the right integrations for your site:
ID your needs
Try not to jump on any bandwagons
leave room for future growth
keep 3rd party requirements in mind
Degrees of integration
drupalintegration.com
Never lose sight of what you;re ultiplately trying to accomplish
importance of customizations
avoid the new hotness
might not be popular next year
consider community support over sexy code
leaving room for future growth
some integrations have a cost of API issue
down the line what might you want to do?
right for you in 3-5 years?
Third Party Requirements
review the format of the data being stored and how it is exported
Avoid adding elements with disprportonate page load times
embeds, iframes, and or scripts
ensure your data is with a trusted source
make sure it is not getting sold, exploited, etc
loading other people’s scripts may not be good scripts
ultimately comes down to custom work, no matter who you pay for code
API usage
Degree f integration
API takes a lot of client-side code )Hardest)
iFrame
JS Library
Link to external site
Why would you even want to do this?
if looking at site and want to increase functionality but have limited budget
single out specific things to look closer at
Donations, shopping carts, CRM, Analytics
Payment Gateways
square/Paypal,/Amazon Pay – D8 module
Authorize.net, yes module, hard to use though
not in active dev
Stripe, D module in alpha, no being developed
Social Sharing
no integration is an option as well
email
email sevice provider
transactional email service provider’
Mandrill
Heavy Hitters Swiss Army Knife
Salesforce
SalsaLabs/SalsaEngage
Don’t paint yourself into a corner
all your eggs are in one basket
It’s dangerous to go alone
Work with people that know what you do
experts an bring new ideas and solutions to the table
‘development and programming’ mean a specific thing for Non-profit
standing on the shoulders of giants
My Talks
I was fortunate to give two talks this time around. My new talk Follow that data! Letting your users tell you what works. and one of my favorite talks I have ever given Making A Tour: Leveraging The Tour Module For A Better User Experience
For the first one, I gotta admit, I learned a lot in my research but I felt the talk itself, especially in this alpha release, was a little scattered. I realized half way through I had written 2 talks in all reality and didn’t really do either one of them proper service by combining them. The old saying is true though, you never really know what a talk is saying until you give it. I can fine tune from here, but this is likely the last time I will submit this particular title.
The Tour module talk on the other hand is one I am extremely proud of and one I wrote an article about earlier this year. It is always well received and some people always have the same ‘mind blown’ reaction when they realize it is in core, and has been since the 8.0 release. If I can help one dev or site builder explain one less thing in person for the 100th time, it will all have been worth it.
Wrapping Up
The thing I can’t really capture completely accurately in this post and in my notes in general is the sense of community I felt here. I know I say that a lot, but this time it really did feel like a homecoming. I am not trying to diminish the lovely and wonderful people in WordPress or elsewhere, but as far as tech communities go, Drupal is very special. No, it is not a utopia and there are some major hurdles we need to overcome, especially around diversity, but it does revolve around the central codebase that is technically great and captures the best sense of what open source code can be I believe.
As I wind down this part of my life as a traveling tech evangelist going to so many dang events all over the place, I am so, so glad my last Drupal event of the year was in the back yard of the town I have called home for a decade and a half. So close but so far across the bay at any given time I never visit there too often. I hope to visit next year, even if I have to travel quite a bit further for BADCamp 2020.