Day 3 wrapup - DrupalCon Paris 2009

Its been a big day at DrupalCon Paris 2009 and all the delegates are slowly trickling out of the venue, seeking restaurants and bars to refuel themselves for tomorrow’s geekery. The die hards are being asked to leave some of the coding rooms, as they finish patches and code sprints for the core Drupal functionality.

Excellent presentations were delivered all around with a great mix of content for front-end, back-end, newcomers, die-hards and those with a real business emphasis. There are a number of the usual suspects from the key consultancies like 4 Kitchens and Lullabot, as well as a solid offering of commercial enterprises who are leveraging Drupal in the Enterprise.

The team from Economist.com carry a rock-star reputation here at DrupalCon, being held as a flagship adopter in almost every presentation. The use of Drupal, and Agile practices, from such a highly respected and technically savvy organisation has legitimised Drupal as an Enterprise-ready technology. The presentation by the Economist.com team itself was a brilliant case study on how to effect significant change in a commercial organisation while delivering real business value at the same time. The site will be one to watch as the Drupal migration continues through the latter half of 2009.

Lullabot consultant, Jeff Eaton gave an entertaining and candid presentation about the need for an Architectural focus when delivering Drupal sites. He turned the microscope inward at points, challenging the community to bring more clarity and direction to the work that we all do, through examining the goals and objectives of the work we do on Drupal itself.

David Strauss, of 4 Kitchens, gave a comprehensive look at the performance improvements that Drupal 7 has to offer and highlighted the other technologies that can lend a hand. For those of us working on Enterprise sites, it was a roll call of applications that we should or already are using to keep our Drupal sites running under pressure.

Today’s quotes:

If you can only find one solution to a problem, you’re doing it wrong. There should always be additional ways to do things, even if they’re bad solutions. Jeff Eaton

Silos are good if they are planned and allow people to specialise. But are BAD if they emerge on their own. Jeff Eaton

Offloading page cache duties to a pre-drupal infrastructure layer is ideal David Strauss, 4 Kitchens