DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 Day 1: Awards, Driesnote, and Community

Drupalcon Barcelona 2024 opened its doors yesterday to all the Drupal developers who traveled from all parts of the world to the largest European Drupal convention—as usual, the first day started with contribution workshops, and the opening ceremony, which also featured the Women in Drupal award.

 In the Define category, Esmeralda Braad-Tijhoff was honored for her trailblazing efforts in conceptualizing and leading innovative Drupal projects. Pamela Barone won the Build award, recognized for her crucial role in developing cutting-edge Drupal solutions and strengthening the community. The Scale award went to Alla Petrovska, celebrating her expertise in growing businesses and platforms through the use of Drupal, highlighting its transformative impact.

After the introduction, it was time for the long-awaited Driesnote, Dries Buytaert’s 40th State of Drupal address highlighted several key developments for the Drupal ecosystem. Drupal CMS 1.0 is set to launch on January 15, 2025, with a release candidate expected by December 11, 2024. The Starshot project, focused on creating a no-code solution for non-developers, aims to be the gold standard in this field. 

Besides that, the Experience Builder (XB), which uses React, promises to transform how Drupal works but will be completed post-Drupal CMS release. Dries emphasized Drupal's embrace of AI with a Responsible AI Policy and demonstrated AI’s potential for automating tasks like content creation and migration. He also introduced Drupal Recipes, and bundles of reusable solutions, and announced that fresh documentation for Drupal will be created through a partnership with Drupalize.me, funded by the new “Adopt a Document” initiative. 

Post State of Drupal keynote, the audience was enthusiastic about the new updates and started gathering in the convention center’s entrance, for the annual group photo.

Many interesting talks and BoFs took place throughout the day. Some of them were of particular interest, like the IXP initiative which is an(other) attempt to find a way to attract new developers to join the Drupal community, by giving companies accreditation for training new blood. Another one was the Experience Builder initiative, a react-written SDC-based interactive layout builder, which attempts to make Drupal more attractive to non-developers.

The day closed with some drinks at the opening reception, and Drupaleers were scattered to Barcelona’s joyful streets, while waiting for the next, exciting DrupalCon day to begin!