Bringing Drupal to Academics

Dear readers,

As the use of Drupal expands across industries, the need for well-trained developers who can leverage the platform’s flexibility and scalability has never been greater. However, traditional academic programs often fail to provide the hands-on, practical experience needed to excel in Drupal development. This has created a gap between theoretical knowledge and the practical skills required by the open-source community and industry alike.

In response to this challenge, the 'Drupal Open University' initiative was introduced at DrupalCon Barcelona 2024. This community-driven effort is dedicated to bringing Drupal into academic environments, offering comprehensive, open-source courses designed to train the next generation of Drupal developers. The initiative is aimed at students, educators, and professionals, ensuring they gain a deep understanding of Drupal through real-world applications. From site building and theming to module development, the curriculum is structured to provide a wide range of skills, with a strong focus on open-source principles.

What sets Drupal Open University apart is its collaborative approach. Universities and companies are encouraged to work together, with businesses providing students with guest lectures, internships, and real-world project opportunities. The initiative fosters a direct connection between academic training and industry needs by allowing students to work on real Drupal issues and projects from the community. This not only benefits students but also contributes to the Drupal ecosystem, ensuring the platform continues to thrive with fresh talent and innovative solutions. 

With that, let's move on to the stories from the past week.

At DrupalCon Barcelona 2024, non-code contributions were highlighted, with experts urging more mentorship and recognition for roles like event organizers and designers. Discussions also focused on Drupal's rebranding, with a call for unbranded case studies to showcase its capabilities on drupal.org. Read the report by Esmeralda Braad-Tijhoff here.

Human-centred design (HCD) made waves at DrupalCon Barcelona 2024, as Elise West, Head of Product at SystemSeed, led a virtuous session titled "Human-Centered Design: An Introduction for Drupal People (and How to Make it Work for You)." The talk explored how HCD, a problem-solving approach that prioritizes people in the design process, is reshaping the development of digital products, particularly in the Drupal ecosystem. Anthony Fox-Davies provides insights to The DropTimes.

CKEditor is excited to invite users to the upcoming webinar, "Level Up Your Drupal Content Editing with CKEditor Features." In this webinar, attendees will learn how to take full advantage of CKEditor’s most advanced plugins and productivity tools, including the CKEditor 5 Drupal Plugin Pack, a collection of 13 free plugins available for immediate use, with no sign-up needed. Dan Wilson writes.

Drupal Architect, Vincenzo Gambino shares his work on integrating Drupal with Astro, developing a starter kit and demo to streamline projects. His contributions include a React-based contact form and a pull request for Astro’s official documentation, offering clear steps for Drupal-Astro integration.

On the events front, The DropTimes has compiled and published a list of events happening this week. Meanwhile, the 2024 DrupalSouth Steering Committee has announced a call for candidates ahead of its upcoming elections. Community members from Australia and New Zealand are encouraged to self-nominate for the five available seats, to ensure gender and geographic equality.

The jury for the 2024 Dutch Splash Awards includes Stella Power, Bostjan Kovac, Anja Schirwinski, Bas Boot, Bram Driesen, Julia Topliss, Marine Gandy, and Paul Johnson. The awards will be held on November 27, 2024, with the extended submission deadline ending today (By the time, this newsletter reaches your inboxes, it might be well over).

DrupalCon Atlanta 2025 is set to foster greater inclusivity with its expanded Scholarships and Community Grants programs, offering full financial support to individuals from historically oppressed communities.

Dries Buytaert, founder and Project Lead of Drupal, recently weighed in on a growing issue in the open-source community: the imbalance between contributors ("Makers") and those who profit without giving back ("Takers").

Droptica has introduced a new Drupal 7 Audit Tool designed to help companies quickly estimate the costs and effort required to migrate from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 or 11. The tool extracts detailed metadata from Drupal 7 sites, generating an audit file that provides crucial insights into various aspects of the site, such as content types, taxonomies, users, fields, modules, themes, and file types.

The Pinto module, developed by Daniel Phin and adopted by digital agency PreviousNext, is poised to revolutionize theming in Drupal projects. Pinto introduces a new architecture by encapsulating all theming logic into reusable Theme Objects—PHP classes that manage templates, CSS, and JavaScript in a more structured and maintainable way. 

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You can also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you, 
Sincerely 
Alka Elizabeth 
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.