Networking, Discussion and Drupal's Future: A Report of the October 2024 DrupalACT Meetup

A small group of Canberra Drupal users gathered at Hide and Seek Digital for the last DrupalACT meetup of the year.

While the attendance in person was lower than normal—about 15 people in the end—we had around 5 people join in online for the evening as well.

Networking was done before the event, with Hide and Seek providing food and drinks for everyone before the evening got underway.

I opened the evening with Drupal community updates including:

• The DrupalSouth Community day
• The DrupalSouth committee elections
• DrupalCon Singapore, and
• DrupalSouth Melbourne 2025

Although Brendan T was scheduled to open the presentations this evening, he wasn’t able to attend.

I quickly put together a session about some current challenges I was having with my Drupal work, then opened up a discussion for other people at the event to share back with others—What’s the most difficult challenges they’re facing as a Drupal developer in Canberra at the moment?

Whilst older technology that hadn’t been updated was a hot topic (Cake PHP2.0, Drupal on IIS, and so on), a strong theme of this discussion was a frustration with non-technical managers not understanding the pressures on developers.

Moving on from the past, the second session from Mel Stubbings was looking to the future with Drupal Starshot: Reaching for the Stars, Building the Future

Mel’s session covered all the new and exciting things Drupal will be releasing now and into the near future.

It looks like a bright and successful future ahead for Drupal, as long as you don’t let too many people configure your website!