Drupal DC/Maryland: Lightning Talks & Networking (October edition)

We’re thrilled to announce the fall edition of the Drupal Maryland and Drupal DC Meetups, alternating monthly between DC and Maryland!

Our format includes a series of lightning round talks, featuring two or three short presentations (10-15 minutes each) designed to spark ideas and discussions among Drupal enthusiasts of all skill levels.

Enjoy complimentary snacks and beer/wine while you mingle with peers and engage in lively discussions about the latest in Drupal.

Co-working space (and coffee) is available from 1:00 PM for those arriving early to avoid traffic courtesy of Launch Workplaces Gaithersburg!
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Lightning Talks:

SEO Essentials for Drupal: Drupal CMS SEO Recipes - John Doyle, Digital Polygon, CEO
A look at what’s in the Drupal Starshot SEO recipe and how you can leverage these tools on your websites. In this talk we will take a look at a few key SEO tools and techniques in Drupal, focusing on making your website more discoverable with better URLs, metadata, and site structure.

Building with Drupal in 2025: Reap the benefits of Drupal’s long-term architecture & modern features - Ashraf Abed, Debug Academy, CEO
Drupal has tread its own path from its early days. There was always a focus on a high-quality, maintainable architecture. This was often placed ahead of user experience and design.

Consider the history of innovation: Hooks, field API, entity API, migration to Symfony and Composer, layout builder in core, JSON API in core, and more.
These ideas - and the implementation behind them - were ahead of their time. We’ve reached an inflection point where we can now reap the benefits of long-term architectural decisions. Specifically, it is easier to build advanced websites with Drupal in 2025 than ever before.

We’ll discuss how to build a Drupal website in 2025 by leveraging new features, such as:
- Layout builder
- Component-based architecture with Twig & beyond
- Bundle-specific classes
- Better core theme
- Better admin theme
- And more!

Using the latest features Drupal has to offer will not only make your projects run more smoothly, but also enable more junior developers to participate with less training.