Have you submitted your session proposal to DrupalCon LA 2015?

Every year, thousands of open-source developers and business professionals travel great distances to share news, experience and knowledge. Oh, and consume fantastic food and drink with friends that we only see a few times a year. And explore new places and do goofy stuff that becomes the talk of legends. Is it all fun and games? Nope, it’s all fluorescent lights, droning overhead projectors, vinyl seats with tepid instant coffee in some moldy hotel basement, and increasing return on investment. No fun at all! It’s DrupalCon North America 2015, and session proposals are due in a week.

This year, I’m honored to be the Coding and Development Track Lead of DrupalCon Los Angeles. We’re trying a new approach this year; focusing on preparing developers for the future of Drupal and the expanding web software universe. How is this different?

Well, Drupal 8 is in beta, so it’s actually really close to being ready to launch. Therefore, now’s the time to learn how to build D8 sites and pitch them to clients. Also, Drupal isn’t the only web technology we use. Yup, heresy! We use the best tools for the job, and Drupal is only one of them. The focus is still Drupal, but JavaScript frameworks and headless Drupal are changing the landscape.

Technical excellence is a major factor, so coding for performance (caching, code and query optimizations, performance analysis and best practices) along with case studies will all help grow our communal knowledge.

We’re also introducing a new potential focus; the cultural component to Coding & Development, which highlights collaboration over going it alone. This includes industry recognized best practices & standards (includes testing), mentoring & multiplication (how to grow your dev team and get more done), and disruptive open source — the business politics for opening proprietary projects up and replacing commercial with open source. Case studies would be ideal here as well.

Session proposals are due on February 27th — and that’s a week away. If have an idea that you want to share, please submit it sooner rather than later! 2015 is massively exciting, and I hope you’ll join us in LA!