My final thoughts on Drupalcon Barcelona. What came up?
👉Both sessions went well. Wish I had more time to engage with the audience afterwards. The packaging Drupal as a DXP is an option for many Drupal service providers to differentiate themselves from just selling Drupal services. That model seems to be under pressure because it has become commodity. Customers are looking for more value.
Dropsolid seems to be leading the pack by packaging Drupal to bring the most value through its products and services. Providing operational efficiency through Drupal, more time on site, more engagement and conversion is key. Drupal CMS is also aiming to this.
👉The ambitious timeline of Drupal CMS aims to launch the V1 January 2025 and th V2 end of 2025. It seems long but it will be there quickly. I'm excited to tell the customers about it. With Dropsolid we are in the team building Drupal CMS so we'll get it out there as soon as it is production ready, maybe even earlier because we'll know the ins and outs.
👉Impressed by the capabilities Drupal CMS will be bringing to market early next year. I’m excited to go out and tell all our customers about all the AI in Drupal and the experience builder. Having these capabilities and own them as open source is unique.
Here I'm very impressed because this will make for such a great user experience we have all been waiting for. Although not mentioned I believe it will be just another jump to make Drupal come headless with a build in javascript frontend out of the box in the next iteration.
And it looks great:
And then ofcourse the AI 😊
Drupal is famous for its no code, low code capabilities. And now with AI it goes a step further. Watch the whole demo here at minute 25: https://youtu.be/nhPiL4g972A?si=dKiJ4TqG9tFhi7dc&t=1540
The TLDR:
Drupal will be able to provide a framework around using AI in content management and thus later also in DXP context. It will be possible to assign AI models to help with any task. Building content types, views, taxonomies, layouts, ... Anything. The AI will be able to split the commands in to subcommands to do all the different tasks associated with the prompt.
Dries shows: Changing the name of a content type, setting up fields, config image fields, setting up taxonomies, setting up pages, ... Even doing SEO and migrating content. Operational efficiency through the roof with Drupal CMS.
Although not mentioned but we know. You'll be able to configure and program in Drupal how the AI is behaving. You'll be able to prompt engineer. You'll be able to control how all the AI is behaving. Which model is used to do what. Fully transparent.
Here is a summary of all that is coming:
Check the whole presentation here: https://dri.es/files/state-of-drupal-september-2024.pdf
👉Also proud we are delivering a track lead as Dropsolid to build the Drupal CMS. It gives us valuable knowledge on the inner workings and how to put it into your ecosystem. How to leverage it in a DXP context and how to get the most out of Drupal for our customers. It has also put us in the top of the EU ecosystem https://dropsolid.com/en/knowledge-hub/dropsolid-becomes-platinum-drupa…
👉After lots of meetings with potential partners for the Drupal/Mautic devops & hosting platform optimised for DXP https://dropsolid.io/knowledge-hub/dropsolid-experience-platform-optimi… I’m positive. It just might be a great niche for Dropsolid experience platform.
👉I didn't make it in the elections https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/the-drupal-association-announces-2024-board-election-winner-and-2-additional-new-board-members%C2%A0 However I'm happy with third place and I thank everyone who voted for me and the vision. I will try again 😊 Let's support my friend Alex who got the top spot in his mission to innovate.
👉Was able to talk about the long term potential of drupal as an open DXP and asked if it was a good idea > https://dominiquedecooman.com/dreaming-about-drupal-its-long-term-potential > I got mostly positive feedback. Now the dream needs to become real.
To end:
I wrote this article for fun 😊, elaborating on the comparison about Drupal and the Sagrada Familia made by Dries: https://dominiquedecooman.com/drupal-and-sagrada-fam%C3%ADlia