DrupalCamp Mumbai 2018: A Recap

DrupalCamp Mumbai was held on 28th-29th April at IIT Bombay, bringing developers, students, managers, and organizations together and providing them the opportunity to interact, share knowledge, and help the community grow. 

The unofficial group photo from #DCM18. I beat @parth_gohil in posting this first. pic.twitter.com/8BPsuSIeky

— hussainweb (@hussainweb) April 28, 2018

Shyamala Rajaram was the keynote speaker at this edition of the camp, which was focused on developers, business users and students. Hands-on Drupal training and workshops covering beginner, intermediate, and advanced Drupal topics offered developers the opportunity to learn, and the birds-of-a-feather (BoF) sessions gave them the chance to participate in some interesting conversations.

Business users had the opportunity to meet talented Drupalers as well as representatives from leading Indian companies. Students had several opportunities to learn from more experienced attendees, attend training sessions, and discover mentoring or internship opportunities.

The #DCM18 #keynote by @shyam_raj begins. India to lead #Drupal in 2018. pic.twitter.com/GWk3x9wZKW

Axelerant was a Gold Sponsor at the event; 11 members of our team attended, flying in from different cities across India, including New Delhi, Jaipur, Surat, Bangalore, and Rajkot.

Since we’re a remote team, the camp was an excellent opportunity for us to hang out, exchange ideas, present and lead BoFs together, have many interesting conversations with other attendees—and of course, to just have fun together.

We'd like to thank the volunteers—without you this event wouldn't have been possible. We’re glad to have had the opportunity to meet with so many people who are also really passionate about technology, to share our knowledge with them, to be inspired by them, and to spread the love for Drupal. It was also really exciting to see the diversity at the camp—people came to attend from different cities with different kinds of expectations from the camp: Dev Engineers, QAs, Project Managers, Program Managers, CEOs, etc. 

I'm bringing stickers, badges, and patches from @DrupalConNA and various DrupalCamps to @DrupalMumbai camp tomorrow. Come pick them up from the @axelerant booth and also stop by to say hi. #DCM18 pic.twitter.com/JRxrGLkaL1

— hussainweb (@hussainweb) April 27, 2018

This was our booth!

We had intentionally chosen to engage with attendees in person at the BoFs and sessions rather than at the booth. So our team members were mostly out on the floor, interacting with individuals, attending and leading sessions, and participating in meet and greets on the floor.

Our team members led three sessions.

In the Back End Development track, Mohit Aghera and Mitesh Patel led a session titled How to Write Dynamic Migrations. The session covered how migration works in Drupal 8, migration plugins, how to write Derivers for migration use cases, and how to execute migrations which are derived from Derivers.

The session was received well by an almost packed house, with a lot of questions being asked and good feedback all round! We’re looking forward to preparing more sessions for different camps in future.   

Very well explained dynamic migration @mohit_rocks @miteshmap #DCM18 @DrupalMumbai pic.twitter.com/TXMXPUP6Tx

— Siddhant Chopra (@MyDJ17) April 28, 2018

 
Check out their speaker deck here:

As part of the Front End Development track, Taher Jodhpurwala of Axelerant and Sparshi Dhiman of Srijan led a session together. It was titled Develop And Test Accessible Web Experiences. The session detailed the need for accessibility, creating WCAG compliant web experiences, testing for and fixing accessibility issues, and available tools for accessibility testing. 

@devtaher and @dsparshi explaining about developing accessible web experience. #DCM18 pic.twitter.com/GtHUpAmYSZ

— Mitesh Patel (@miteshmap) April 28, 2018

Here's their speaker deck.

Finally, in the DevOps track, Hussain Abbas led a session titled Static Analysis For Your Drupal Modules With CI, in which he covered automating static analysis to ensure that code is clean and follows coding standards.

We led two BoF sessions. 

See you tomorrow, @DrupalMumbai! Time for some open discussions. #DCM18 #Drupal pic.twitter.com/KoSWxQdox5

— Axelerant (@axelerant) April 27, 2018

Our CEO, Ankur Gupta, led these—talking about his own experience starting Axelerant and developing its culture over the years. Attendees opened up about their career concerns and got into interesting conversations. 

Thanks Ankur for a very interactive session on 'will you have a successful career in drupal' @axelerant @DrupalMumbai #DCM18 pic.twitter.com/m5WHYTKeST

— Gaurav Agrawal (@ga_agrawal) April 28, 2018

Thanks Ankur for a very interactive session on 'will you have a successful career in drupal' @axelerant @DrupalMumbai #DCM18 pic.twitter.com/m5WHYTKeST

— Gaurav Agrawal (@ga_agrawal) April 28, 2018

Our team also seized the chance to go out to dinner at Mirchi and Mime, to unwind, catch up with each other, and have some fun!

We had a great time.

For some of us, it was our first time attending a DrupalCamp, so it was really special. Axelerant team members were able to connect with many developers and step out of their comfort zones, gain an understanding of what is happening in the community, and find ways to contribute.

We were also part of some impactful conversations with several community members and leaders. These were centered around shaping the future of the Drupal community in India and identifying the next steps in that direction. 

Day spent well with great conversations around #OpenSource, #FOSS, #Drupal, #Mozilla, #life & awesome people @siva_epari @RanjithRajV @ga_agrawal & @Kishanraval. pic.twitter.com/gPH3YELZXo

— Parth Gohil (@parth_gohil) April 29, 2018

We see what we need to improve. #Openness

There were also some challenges and some miscommunication that occurred at the event. Due to coordination issues faced by the DCM team, our BoF leaflets didn't make into attendees' kits, and many didn't know about the BoF. We’ve learned from these experiences that BoF coordination needs to be handled more prudently. 

We also realized later that it was important to have someone at our booth to guide the visitors who wanted to engage but weren't able to connect at our intended forums. And these are things we’d like to do differently next time, at the next event we’re attending. We hope to meet you there! 

Thank you @axelerant for all your support. #DCM18 pic.twitter.com/J9UmWPpBJM

— hussainweb (@hussainweb) April 28, 2018