Drupal Ruhr 2023 an unperfect experience

UnperfectHotel

On arrival at the hotel, the staff was super friendly and accommodating. I also was changed (upgraded) to a business suite, which was amazing. If you visit the unperfecthotel, the business suite is excellent. The bidet was also a pleasant surprise (like the stream pleasantly surprises you :)).

Since I was very hungry and like local food, time for a currywurst (in the resto downstairs).

UnperfectHaus

As a Hotel guest you also have access to the UPH, UnPerfectHaus, where the drupal Ruhr conference also is happening. Hotel guests enjoy free alcholfree drinks on the upper floors.

So you can sightsee the artists or builders at work with a drink in hand. People were playing boardgames, artists were being arty, all in all really cool. I was particlularly impressed with the castle they're making and the 2 meter large Eiffel tower built from 3d printed chunks.

There is also plenty room for coworking and personally I feel that this concept would work in many cities.

The RUHR Drupal Camp conference

Chaotic start

The start of the Barcamp was somewhat chaotic. I first couldn't enter because speakers don't automatically receive a ticket and I had never experienced this before. Germans being good germans obviously stopped me right there and then. But after finding the right people and promising I would pay, i could enter the venue. Halas, no booking, no Tshirt (and they look very cool!).

Creating the schema was also new for me. A sort of collaborative group session. Interesting at least.

On to the sessions!

Lego Serious Play

The conference started with Michael (A great guy) and his session on Serious Play with Lego's. This immediately got us laughing and interacting. Who does not like to put bricks together.

The day after this session my youngest son had a crisis moment at home and I practiced this technique with him and it was INCREDIBLE. Not only does a 8 year old immediately understand the question, but they also understand the message below the surface. Eye opening session.

Building of the Drupalcon Reviewer portal in less then 48 hours

This session by Rvolk was pretty inspiring. It tells the story of how a bunch of people with a need and some fancy tooling (gitpod FTW) in minimal time make a tool that tackles the problem. And it probably will for the coming years.

It really shows how you can with a minimum of code have a fully functioning product built on Drupal.

One Drupal Platform to Run Them All

Another session by ADM was about governmental sites. What struck me about this was that how the Russian invasion on Ukraine has an impact on the everyday lives on some Drupal people (in other countries).
They have a (not an actual) button to put the sites in a degraded static mode to prevent russian hacking attempts (which seemingly happen after important political events in the country).

In this slide they mapped the attacks to the events in the country.

Running Drupal on Kubernetes on Production

This was the second version of a presentation I already did in Lisbon. There I went home with the feeling the presentation still needed some work. This time it was better though. I had a much more structured approach and much better interaction with the audience. I like to believe the audience was really following along and understood everything I brought to the table. For me the presentation was a success.

Some people came to me requesting the slides. You can find them here too: (looking at them without my explanation might need some clarification however).

• Drupal + Kubernetes Introduction slides
• Drupal + Kubernetes, Containers slides
• Drupal + Kubernetes, Terminology slides
• Drupal + Kubernetes, CICD slides

Personalisation with Drupal, Mautic and apache unomi

Finally i was asked to also do the slides on personalisation. I had a very nice Live demo ready and a room full of people with hot questions so that was great too. GDPR having an impact on personalisation really hits a nerve with some people (and it's only for the better). I loved the interaction there. Since the personalisation demo was an hour full of Demo an Q&A, there were no slides. These slides here are containing the content how to set this up yourself tho:

Dropsolid Personalisation With Drupal, Mautic Umomi on Umami. (discovering the anonymous vegans or chocolate lovers on your site).

Going Home

I got to know some new and very interesting people. If next year I'm still in the Drupal ecosystem, I will certainly try to attend it.

Thanks to the organisers for this cool camp in a cool location.

Thanks to Dropsolid for letting me represent them there and learning so much about things other than Drupal (like kubernetes and public speaking).

15/05/2023