DrupalSouth Canberra 2018 is seeking session submissions from people connected to the Drupal ecosystem to share experiences across diverse backgrounds, topic areas and disciplines. Selected speakers will receive a complimentary ticket to the event but will be required to fund their own travel expenses to Canberra. Consideration for subsidised travel may be considered for people with limited financial means.

Session submissions can be a full 40 minutes, half session 20 minutes or 10 minute lightning talk, and more than one speaker may co-present a session.

Session Track topics include:

• Back-end Development
• Front-end Development
• DevOps and Security
• User Experience & Content
• Project Management
• Drupal in Government
• Showcase & Horizons

Full Session Track descriptions are provided below. Submissions will be evaluated by a volunteer team of Track Chairs with experience in each topic area and will be chosen based on completeness of description, relevance to topic and speaker experience.

You can submit more than one session submission before 11:59pm on Sunday August 26th 2018 with selected speakers notified in September 2018. The conference will be held on Monday 3 & Tuesday 4 December 2018 in Canberra, Australia.

BACK END DEVELOPMENT

Back End development is at the core of any Drupal implementation. It not only drives much of your application, it has to bring all the other pieces together. In your personal and/or organisation projects, we want to hear:

• How are you improving the efficiency in which you develop Drupal applications?
• How are you using Back End development to deliver more value to your clients?
• How are you integrating Drupal with other systems?
• How are you utilising modern development techniques in your Drupal projects?
• How are you developing and contributing to Drupal modules and Core?

FRONT END DEVELOPMENT

Front end development is so much more than HTML, JavaScript and CSS, it’s making your users feel welcome and making their experience delightful. We’d like you to share happy (and less happy!) stories and knowledge with your Drupal peers about:

• How do you efficiently translate designs into theme implementation?
• How do you optimise your web application for user experience, SEO, accessibility and performance?
• How do you test, profile, diagnose and debug your front end implementation?
• How do you keep up with all the new front end things?

DEVOPS & SECURITY

With high profile organisations embracing Drupal and open-source it’s more important than ever to guard against the worst happening, whether that’s a security vulnerability, a failure in deployment or an over-reliance on manual processes and human intervention.

In the DevOps & Security track, we will share success stories, tools and best practices in order to safeguard digital experiences and the processes behind them, including:

• Establishing a DevOps Culture
• CI/CD tools, integrated workflows, and testing frameworks
• Performance benchmark tools (xdebug, kcachegrind, etc)
• Security tooling
• Vulnerability and penetration testing
• Static code analysis
• Risk
• OWASP, WAF, and DDoS mitigation
• Monitoring and logging

USER EXPERIENCE & CONTENT

Organisations frequently fall into the habit of taking a technology-first approach without consideration on the impact to the end user. However, by taking a user-centric approach to information architecture, interface design and content strategy, organisations can establish a significant competitive advantage. We invite speakers to share their stories, strategies and tactics across themes including:

• User Research, Strategy and Experience
• Balancing Business Goals and User Needs
• Design Systems
• Content Strategy
• Style Guides and Content Workflows

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Good project management hinges on the constant improvement of processes which enable the best quality of deliverables and human interactions in a technical world.

This track aims to focus on the practices and principles that make projects run better and faster. We want to encourage sessions that will speak to business leaders, project & product managers, scrum masters and implementation roles in order to share our skills and learn from one another, including:

• Project management methodologies and experiences
• Project estimation and planning techniques
• Scope, risk, and change management strategies
• Importance of Creating and following processes
• Reporting
• Leadership and coordination approaches
• Human interaction and communication

DRUPAL IN GOVERNMENT

Government is improving the way it delivers services online so that we can all access information and services. Drupal has been widely adopted by the public sector to communicate and interact with citizens in a modern and effective way. This track is focusing on how Drupal is helping improve digital transformation in Government.

In the form of case studies, panel discussions and sessions, we invite topics which discuss:

• Evaluating Drupal and other open source technologies for Government platforms
• Government vendor services panels
• Digital service standards
• Building digital products
• Change management and Machinery of Government
• Cross-agency collaboration and community
• govCMS and related Whole Of Government initiatives

SHOWCASE & HORIZONS

Learning from real world success (or disaster!) stories and understanding emerging trends helps us all make better decisions when using Drupal. This is backed by strengthening how we work together as a Drupal Community.

Topics we are looking for this track include:

• Digital transformation case studies
• Best practices for Drupal businesses
• Emerging technologies and trends
• Research projects
• Drupal community leadership and initiatives