Mediacurrent team members will be heading to the mountains in North Carolina for a two day Drupal-filled event for all levels of Drupal skills. Asheville Drupal User Group is a small but dedicated community of Drupalers who will host their 8th annual Asheville Drupal Camp on July 13-15th at UNC Asheville. Mediacurrent will be sponsoring the event and will have 9 team members presenting 6 sessions. We even have Mediacurrent Lead Drupal Architect, April Sides as one of the organizers of the event. From technical Drupal developing to making friends in a remote workplace, check out what Mediacurrent has in store for Asheville Drupal Camp 2018:
Demystifying Decoupled Drupal with Contenta CMS
Speakers: Mark Shropshire, Open Source Security Lead at Mediacurrent and Bayo Fodeke, Senior Drupal Developer at Mediacurrent
Contenta is an open source API-first Drupal distribution that makes out of the box decoupled Drupal accessible. This session will demonstrate installing Contenta, working with included features, using demo content and consumers, and working with the Contenta community.
Takeaways:
- Install Contenta
- Know how to contribute back to Contenta
- Know how to connect a frontend application to a Contenta backend
Pivoting in a Project: Strategies for adjusting to scope changes
Speakers: Brian Manning, Project Manager at Mediacurrent and Kelly Dassing, Senior Project Manager at Mediacurrent
Pivots come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can be a minor change that’s quickly integrated into scope, or a major departure that alters the entire course of the project. When you encounter these shifts, it’s vital you strategize, communicate, and continue to capture the vision of the client so the final product is a solid foundation for your client’s goals and KPIs—not a point of resentment.
Key points:
- Kicking off the project with an organized team and plan of attack
- Communicating with your whole team and the client
- Being ready to PIVOT
- Keeping your team grounded in the delivery
- Conducting a retrospective and additional planning—not a postmortem
GatsbyJS: A Powerful FE Tool for Decoupled Devs
Speaker: Grayson Hicks, Front End Developer at Mediacurrent
GatsbyJS is an exciting way of thinking about building sites for the modern web. Is it a framework? Is it a static site generator? This session will cover the benefits of using GatsbyJS and will include the best and not so best use cases.
Key points:
- What Gatsby's GraphQL data layer is and how and why to embrace it
- Gatsby's internal API for building a Gatsby starter to fit your team
- Looking at Gatsby's plugin/source/transformer system for taking Gatsby from a a blog-generator to a site-generator
Common Accessibility Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Speaker: Ben Robertson, Front End Developer at Mediacurrent
Accessible web design really boils down to a few basic principles and when you have these as your first principles when starting a project, you can save your self, your team, and your clients hours of headaches around accessibility testing.
This presentation will describe a few basic principles to keep in mind when building accessible web experiences, provide explanations and examples of these principles in code, and identify common accessibility pitfalls and how to avoid them.
Topics covered:
- Simple JavaScript techniques for ensuring accessible components
- CSS properties that affect accessibility
- How to use modern CSS (flexbox, grid) without compromising accessibility
Only load what you need with Drupal 8 Libraries
Speaker: Zack Hawkins, Director of Front End Development at Mediacurrent
Gone are the days of having one massive JavaScript or CSS file. his session will explore the use of libraries to conditionally load assets and resolve dependencies.
Key topics:
- Introduction to libraries in Drupal 8.
- Library options and configuration.
- What a component based workflow looks like with libraries.
- Code splitting with Webpack and libraries.
- Library gotchas and things to be aware of.
Friends Inside My Computer: Making Connections in a Remote Workplace
Speaker: Kelly Dassing, Senior Project Manager at Mediacurrent, Chris Manning, Director of QA at Mediacurrent, and Sam Seide, Drupal Developer at Mediacurrent
Hear the story of the real-life friendship that blossomed between these three Mediacurrent team members from different departments and how it helps them in their day-to-day work.
This session will be best appreciated by anyone who is a remote worker, whether employed by a small company or larger corporation.
Additional Resources
"Shrop" Talk at Drupal Camp Asheville 2016
Drupal Camp Asheville 2016
Mediacurrent to Present 7 Sessions at Drupalcon Nashville