News Roundup

Drupal Colorado announces J. Matthew Saunders as the second keynote speaker for this year's DrupalCamp. Saunders will present "Thinking Outside the Synapse: Universal Design for Neurodiverse Minds" on July 26, Friday. As a founding member and key organizer, Saunders brings extensive project management experience to the event.

Drupal Camp Asheville 2024 kicks off today, July 12, and runs through July 14. It features workshops, talks, and networking for both novice and seasoned developers. Day one highlights include training sessions by industry experts and an afternoon unconference for dynamic discussions. The event continues with a packed Saturday agenda and concludes with Community Day on Sunday, fostering collaboration and camaraderie among attendees.

Drupal.org will end support for Composer 1 on Packages.Drupal.org, effective October 1, 2024, to facilitate infrastructure updates for automatic Drupal updates. New packages for Composer 1 will cease on August 12, 2024. This transition aligns with Packagist.org's deprecation of Composer 1.x and impacts less than 1% of Drupal’s Composer traffic, making it essential for the upcoming features.

Drupal Starshot has announced the formation of its Advisory Council, which aims to expand Drupal's reach and impact. The council, comprising members from diverse sectors of the Drupal community, will provide strategic input to align the initiative with stakeholder needs. Dries Buytaert emphasized the innovative leadership model, highlighting the council's role in guiding the project's direction and fostering communication within the community.

The Drupal Association has named HeroDevs the first partner in the new Drupal 7 Extended Security Support Provider Program. This initiative helps organizations unable to migrate from Drupal 7 by January 5, 2025, ensuring security and compliance. HeroDevs will provide a secure drop-in replacement for Drupal 7, reinforcing the Association's commitment to qualified security support.

The Women in Drupal Award will be presented at DrupalCon Barcelona, recognizing the significant contributions of women in the Drupal ecosystem. This award celebrates exceptional work, leadership, and commitment and promotes diversity within the tech community. Attendees can nominate deserving candidates, and the ceremony will take place during the conference.

The "Revolutionizing Performance Testing in Drupal with Gander" webinar is now available on the Drupal Association YouTube channel. Hosted by Drupal CTO Tim Lehnen, experts from Google and Tag1 Consulting discuss integrating Gander into Drupal development for automated performance testing. This session offers insights into Gander’s benefits, usage, and future directions.

Matt Glaman hosts an interactive Zoom session for Drupal Starshot today at 18:00 UTC. The event, titled "Drupal on the Edge," will cover running Drupal in the browser with WebAssembly, featuring project updates, a live demo, and future plans. Recordings will be available for those unable to attend live, encouraging community engagement and support for Drupal Starshot.

Justin Winter and Christoph Weber will present an exclusive webinar on developing a private LLM chatbot for Ansys Developer Documentation on July 11, 2024, at 3:00 PM EDT. The session will cover the project's lifecycle, emphasizing data ownership, privacy, and technical integration using DPF C++ Client Library and Drupal. Highlights include a live demonstration of the chatbot and practical insights from AI and integration experts.

Tomasz Rogalski wins the Merce Drawing Contest for DrupalCon Europe with his design of Mercè. His artwork will be featured on official event stickers at DrupalCon Barcelona, taking place from September 24 to 27, 2024. Rogalski's creative depiction of Mercè highlights his role as Principal Web Developer at Pegasystems and adds a unique artistic touch to the international Drupal event.

Roderik Muit and Alexandru Ieremia of Drunomics unveiled the new Custom Elements module at Drupal Developer Days in Burgas in June 2024. This session introduced a user-friendly UI for the module, allowing developers to easily modify entity properties and output formats without coding. The updated module, part of Drunomics' headless Drupal solutions, is now available as a development version, with a beta release planned.

Drupal Pupils will host an online event on July 12, 2024, featuring web developer Irina Zaks. Zaks, co-founder of Fibonacci Web Studio, will discuss migrating from Drupal 7 to Backdrop for organizations with limited budgets. The event will include a project history and a live migration demonstration.

Drupal Camp Asheville 2024 will feature a Friday Afternoon Unconference on July 12 from 1 PM to 4 PM EDT. Attendees can pitch and vote on discussion topics, covering areas like accessibility, DevOps, project management, and security. Facilitators Bayo Fodeke of Red Hat and Mark Shropshire of Mediacurrent will guide the event, fostering spontaneous and dynamic discussions.