Drupal Community

We are very excited to announce our 2015 keynote speaker, Paul M. Jones!

One definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results." In his talk, How to Train Your Manager, Paul will discuss how organizations keep treating developers poorly, especially by demanding overtime, and why it is crazy for developers to expect their organizations to change. Paul will show how you can change the way your organization treats you, to your own benefit and (hopefully) the benefit of the organization.

In this session, we'll discuss mental health in the workplace, explaining the challenges and experiences of working in technology while also suffering from a mental illness. While we are doing a better job of addressing physical health and fitness in the workplace, with gym memberships and fitness months becoming more standard for workplaces, mental health remains woefully neglected.

We'll be covering:

There is no greater game changer then technology. While most see technology as a tool to accomplish a task or a trivial decision point, I view it quite differently. Technology can be a weapon or a gift, a blessing or a curse. Those that utilize information technology to accomplish tasks have their entire lives transformed by the way at which they command it. Poor user experience leads to poor quality of life that can be seen in hospitals, government, and other institutions where technology can either hinder or enhance processes involving large groups of people.

There are many ways to contribute to Drupal. The most obvious thing people think of is contributing patches to Drupal core, but there are many ways to help. This session will go over how developers and themers can help contribute to Drupal core and contributed projects. It will also go over the non-technical work people can do to contribute to the Drupal project and the Drupal community.

This session will go over the following:

Summary

This session will focus on addressing a growing trend of losing Drupal developers, or at least their interest, because of the cool factor of up and coming competing technologies.

Why Drupal seems un-cool