Most of the year my six hats take turns. At DrupalCon they all show up at once, and I end up wearing a "hat tower". Rotterdam last month was an absolute whirlwind again, and I came home tired but buzzing with energy. Here is the view from under each hat.
Hat 1: The Acquian
I am one of many Acquians at DrupalCon. The best part is meeting colleagues I rarely, if ever, see in person. People from emails and video calls are so great to see live and even play trivia with! That said, our trivia team was far from all Acquians; it was a great mix. Acquia is also the one making the hat tower possible, giving me space and funds to allow me to work in all these areas.
Hat 2: DrupalCon Europe advisory board
This hat comes with a microphone. With my co-advisors Baddý Sonja Breidert and Imre Gmelig Meijling, I get to open and close the event, which never stops being a thrill. (Although the fire alarms mid-session were a first!) There is a lot of work behind the scenes too to prepare for these with Kuoni and the community so they cover everything and still feel exciting.
Onsite, I had lots of fruitful conversations with the Kuoni team about shared challenges and where we take our collaboration next. Some things are just easier to figure out around the same table than over email. Kuoni is great: they live and breathe Drupal with us, always thinking about how we can go further together.
Hat 3: Drupal CMS multilingual lead
This hat got the most wear in the weeks before Rotterdam. The goal for Drupal CMS 2.2 was multilingual features that are complete and easy to use. Sometimes that meant working really hard to bring recipes and Canvas up to speed with core's multilingual capabilities. Other times it meant leaping ahead of what core provides.
I also made the demo video for the Driesnote, featuring the new Dashi food magazine. Watching it play on the big screen, and hearing the room react, was a real highlight.
Hat 4: Lightning talk host
This hat is about giving the stage to exciting people and efforts. One piece I do at DrupalCon is to organize a series of PechaKucha lightning talks with leaders in the community in various areas. This is to showcase both where the tech is headed but also to make sure the audience understands that these leaders are just as human as the rest of us.
This time I had Fons Vandamme on Canvas, Mateu Aguiló Bosch on MCP and LLM assisted development, Angie Byron on getting off the island (again), Martin Anderson-Clutz on building site templates for Drupal CMS and Jamie Abrahams on LLM tooling for migrations and more.
The format is often hard to master for the speakers, but it brings out the key messages and keeps the pace and energy up.
Hat 5: Projects with the Drupal Association
Moving localize.drupal.org to a modern Drupal version has been a long road. Felip Manyer i Ballester from the French community has led the effort for a long time, with contributors from all over Europe. I jumped in to help speed up some parts in the month before the event.
So Rotterdam was our chance to finally plan the last steps in person. We sat down with the Drupal Association engineering team, mapped out the blockers and agreed on what comes next. The finish line is in sight!
Hat 6: Drupal core leadership
We had lots of great discussions about core performance (even more amazing stuff is in the works, I'm in awe!) and about configuration translation management and storage. But the star of the show under this hat was Drupal 12, and that was a race against the clock.
In the weeks before DrupalCon I kept chipping away at the remaining blockers for the Drupal 12 beta along with many folks in the community. We got so close that only minor things were left by the time we arrived at the event.
Onsite, I sat down with the release managers in attendance to go through what was still open. We closed the gaps and got Drupal 12.0.0-beta1 out in time for the closing ceremony. You can't ask for better timing than that!
None of this happens alone
While each of these are in a way a win I'm personally proud of, none of them would be nearly possible to achieve alone. It takes the amazing Drupal community, and the special magic of DrupalCon putting all of us in one place. So, hats off to you! See you in Orlando!
