Non-Code Contributions Shine at DrupalCon Barcelona 2024

If you are one of the many non-code contributors for Drupal, DrupalCon 2024 has a lot to offer you. On Tuesday, Niklas Franke started the discussion with his session ‘The future of DrupalCamps - Hosting in-person events in the post-COVID era’. On Wednesday, the topic of non-code contributions dominated the Open web & community track.

Attendances started early with a session on Bridging the Gap: Unlocking Non-Code Contributions by Surabhi Gokte. In this session, Baddy Sonja Breidert, Shawn Perritt, and Lenny Moskalyk shared their experience as non-code contributors. It might be reassuring for new contributors to hear that the panel stressed that they grew into their role from working with Drupal to becoming contributors and volunteers at events, organizing small events, all the way up to organizing DrupalCon Europa and becoming active within or for the DA. 

“You grow into the community and start to see opportunities to give back”. - Lenny Moskalyk

Baddy also reviewed that a newbie should not let a 'no' from veterans ruin their fresh energy and activities. 

“You will hear 'no' at one point or another”, Baddy said. “Don’t let them stop you. Your ideas and energy are valuable, you can push through.” 

In this light, the panel acknowledged that starting to contribute often does not just happen. 

“A barrier we have is that new people don’t just start organizing,” Baddy said. “There needs to be a person to show it’s a possibility.”

With this, the panel agreed Drupal needs more mentors and role models.

“We have mentors for coding, but we need to also have mentors for non-coding.”

The mentors could be found during the session 'Revisiting how to organize a Drupal event in your city or country: curiosities, tips, and lessons learned' where Niklas Franke, Pedro Cambra,  Anne-Sophie Picot, Esmeralda Tijhoff, Ricardo Amaro and Cristina Chumillas delved into the joy and challenges of organizing Drupal events. The panel urged people to ‘get out there and start organizing’. 

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The panel recognized the local differences in community needs. In a small country like the Netherlands, it makes sense to keep returning to the same venue. But in larger countries where the targeted audience is more spread out, it makes sense to change the city of the event annually.

As noted in the earlier session about non-code contributions, it is important to be able to give credit to the hard work of marketers, translators, designers, event organizers, and the like. This can be accomplished by creating a Community Project on drupal.org. Tasks can then be added as an issue, and credits can be claimed or given. This is an important part of recognizing the work being done in the community. On an individual level, these credits and tasks can build up your resume and portfolio. All the more reason to delve into the wonderous world of contributions.

Re-design of Drupal

Additionally, multiple talks and BoF discussed Drupal's rebranding, often asking contributors to comment on the design or help design the pages on drupal.org.

Shawn Perritt explained that marketers usually try to create a link between the brand and the community. And in doing so, a culture around the brand comes to life. But with Drupal, it was the other way around. Here, the community culture came first, and the marketing team needed to find a way to express the brand in line with the culture. 

In the talk, 'How to Promote Drupal: The Ultimate Toolkit' by Paul Johnson, Rosie Gladden, and Emma Horrell, the new design of drupal.org was explained in more detail. Paul introduced the term 'coopetition,' to signify strengthening each other as opposed to competing with one another. Making Drupal easier to enter for marketers, decision-makers, content creators et cetera, will generate more Drupal clients and users. Drupal CMS will function as an open and welcoming door toward the exciting world of Drupal core.

To bring Drupal to the forefront, drupal.org will showcase interesting examples of web applications using Drupal. With this case, the merits of Drupal will come to life for people in need of a CMS. Thus, we need lots of different types of examples of websites using Drupal. For this to work, the case needs to be unbranded. 

“Make Drupal the hero of the story,”

Rosie Gladden said. It’s not about the company behind the case, even though you can mention the company or include a quote from the company. The case needs to communicate all the benefits of Drupal and show the framework's possibilities. Drupal.org still has room for cases, so make sure your project becomes an example of exceptional Drupal results. You can upload your case at https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/docs/content/case-studies

Looking for ways to contribute and become part of the vibrant contributor’s community? Watch this video by Paul Johnson of his talk at DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019, "How to start contributing to Drupal without Code."

Check the Drupal Contributor Guide to see what fits your ambitions, and join the conversations on Drupal Slack.