Drupal Business & Community Days Heidelberg 2017

For the second time, around 100 people gathered in Heidelberg, Germany, for the 2-day Drupal Business & Community Days Heidelberg 2017 conference. Its unique concept combined two session tracks focusing on community and business topics.  Apart from sprints and BoFs, the two session tracks allowed attendees to switch between community and business focused sessions. The community track focused on sessions in English for a more international crowd, while the business track sessions were held in German and attracted more attendees from the DACH (Germany Austria Switzerland) region. Here are some of my highlights from the conference:

Die Firma sind wir! by Dietmar „dietmarg“ Giegler and Luca Curella was a talk about how Reinblau switched to holocracy. The cooperative of roughly 18 freelancers is using bi-weekly governance meetings moderated by a facilitator to allow for the improvement of the organisational structure by everyone involved.

Dr. Julia Schönborn (karmajob) in "Der ehrbare Kaufmann“ CSR: Verantwortungsvoll handeln und richtig darüber sprechen shared insights about how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be used as a holistic approach to focus all efforts of a company with regards to social responsibility. I found it interesting that this approach has been mostly associated with big corporations in the past while smaller Drupal agencies, for example, also see their social responsibility extended to the contribution of open source code and providing a good working environment.

A look into a possible Future for all of us: React, GraphQL and Drupal by Michael "schnitzel" Schmid from Amazee.io shared all the findings we gained from creating multiple decoupled websites based on React, GraphQL and Drupal.

If you are keen to find out more about the topic, the Decoupled Developer Days conference is taking place in New York August 19-20, 2017.

Die TrauMINTfrau – vom Traum zur Umsetzung by Renate Welkenbach allowed the attendees to collectively work on the challenging task of bringing more diversity into tech. 

Along with these highlights, there were also some other inspiring presentations, and during the 2 days, Drupal Business & Community Days Heidelberg 2017 provided a great way to connect with the German and international Drupal community.

Together with regional experts and enthusiasts for digital and open source we were able to connect and have in-depth collaborations and exchanges in a relaxed environment. I was also glad to be able to attend the Drupal e.V. meeting where Stefan Auditor (sanduhrs) and Marc Dinse (dernetzjaeger) were elected as new chairman of the German Drupal Association. More pictures can be found in our Flickr album, and be sure to check out the #DrupalBCDays hashtag for further updates. See you again at DrupalCon Vienna or another regional camp in the near future!