2021 Webinars

December 16, 2021

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Introduction to Layout Paragraphs

Presenter:  Justin Toupin

Layout Paragraphs was designed to empower marketing and editorial teams everywhere, Layout Paragraphs offers a WYSIWYG interface for publishing highly visual, long-form content - no developer needed.

In this session, we'll demo the capabilities of Layout Paragraphs, explain how it differs from core's Layout Builder, and show participants how to implement Layout Paragraphs in their own Drupal websites.

Objectives:

• Download and install Layout Paragraphs, along with its dependencies.
• Configure Layout Paragraphs to support the specific types of highly visual, long-form content your organization publishes online.
• Publish dynamic, long-form pages using Layout Paragraphs – without requiring developers or an outside vendor/agency.

September 16, 2021

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Dealing with unprecedented scale during COVID-19 and how to prepare for the next high-traffic event!

Presenter:  Michael Schmid

It’s not just a website—it’s an important communication channel. When your website is down, citizens are left without critical information. There are many reasons why a website might go down, but an unexpected spike in traffic is one of the most common.

In this webinar, Michael Schmid, Head of Technology and Founder at amazee.io, will walk attendees through the processes and architecture used to achieve 100% uptime for the Australian Government during COVID-19 related high-traffic events, including a single day high of 103 million hits.

Some of the points that will be covered include:

• Different ways of scaling Drupal
• CDN best practices
• Database tuning
• Minimizing origin hits
• Most importantly: Building a culture of continuous improvement

August 26, 2021

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Preparing for Drupal 10

Presenter:  Mike Madison

OK OK I get it, we're right in the middle of talking about updating from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 because Drupal 8 is going End of Life. So why the heck are we talking about Drupal 10 when it's not out yet?!

Keeping your platform up to date and "constantly" being prepared for updates is an operational best practice. The new Drupal release cadence can be a little overwhelming, particularly for organizations who don't have the bandwidth to keep up.

This talk is all about making sure you have the basics in place to stay on top of Drupal updates from the community (both security and feature), planning for Drupal 10 (or any other Drupal update), and some of the involved technologies and tools. We'll also talk about non-technical strategies and best practices to keep the rest of your organization in the loop and inline.

July 15, 2021

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Tensorflow.js and Drupal 9

Presenter:  Rick Torzynski

Machine Learning and AI jobs have jumped by almost 75% over the past four years and are poised to keep growing. Investing in your education by learning more about these high-growth technologies is a solid strategy. But if you're not familiar with the tech, where should you start? Drupal developer Rick Torzynski has the answer for you.

In this webinar, you'll learn more about:

And a DEMO: Rick's newest development "TensorFlow.js", an ML-enabled Drupal Component module designed to facilitate ML-processing directly in Drupal. He'll also demonstrate the future of the module, demonstrating how it can play a strong role in Drupal Commerce, Chatbots, and image-and-video tag

• Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning as a discipline
• How Drupal uses ML
• Current ML modules in Drupal;
• The role of Python and Jupyter Notebooks in ML

June 17, 2021

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

The Magic of Development Workflows

Presenter:  Fatima Sarah Khalid

Join Fatima Sarah Khalid for a journey through a magical development workflow powered by Terminus Build Tools to setup a Drupal 9 site using composer, managing code on Github and deploying to Pantheon with CircleCI.

Attendees will also learn about the technical components in automated workflows.

***this webinar is open to all users, regardless of hosting environments.

May 20, 2021

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Behind the Curtain: How We Run the DGC Website

Presenter:  Mike Madison

This webinar is all about how we (a small team of volunteers) build and maintain the Drupal GovCon website using tools and modules like:

• Acquia's Build and Launch Tools (BLT)
• Lando
• Behat
• Drush
• Webform
• Config Split

And more!

In this webinar we'll have a look at the code in the repository, walk through our development methodology, review our deployment process, and answer questions.

April 15th

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Migrations Can Be Complicated!

Presenter:  David Cameron

Migrations in Drupal 8 and 9 are a complicated topic. The Internet is littered with blog posts containing outdated or unnecessary information. It can be difficult to know exactly what to do and which modules you should be using. What's even worse is all the conflicting methods of implementing migrations , just add confusion. My goal during this webinar is to give you clarity about the landscape of Drupal 8/9 migrations. I will share the lessons that I have learned from doing various types of data migrations in Drupal 8. Migrations can be a very technical topic, but I hope to provide valuable insight for non-developers as well. This presentation is intended for anyone who is interested in getting data into Drupal, whether it's from a Drupal 7 website, an XML data feed, or some other source. My plan is for some of you to come away from this experience with ideas for how you can use migrations to improve your Drupal experience.

March 18th

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Journey into Kubernetes

Presenter:  Salim Lakhani & Joel Lehman

Running Kubernetes on your laptop is one thing, but running it in production requires a lot of considerations for planning and execution of the project. 

Voice of America runs multiple news sites around the world and in multiple languages.  These are very large, highly performant sites that are designed to handle millions of hits a day. 

Topics we will cover include:

• Getting started with Kubernetes
• Tooling up for production - things to watch out for.
• Learning Curve - skills required for management, support, etc.
• Dev, Test, Live Environments - what’s involved
• Deployments - application and Kubernetes deployments
• Technical considerations - for scaling, logging, monitoring, etc.
• Cost Management - track and limit costs per site and per project
• Security, Support, and SLA - what’s expected and how to address it
• Contingency Planning - for loss of data center / access / Fail-over / Fallback

At the end of the session, attendees will be able to:

1. Avoid the traps and pitfalls during the migration process

2. Plan for post migration issues they are likely to face.

February 18th 

Time: 

2:30PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Configuration Management & Config Split

Presenter:  John Picozzi

This webinar will provide an overview to Drupal's Configurations Management System and the Config Split Module.

Session will begin with Configuration Management basics and common configurations. We will then move into live demo's that will show attendees how to setup Configuration Management and the Config Split Module.

Attendees are encouraged to have a laptop configured to work locally (a couple of options for this are Lando or DDEV). However, just following along is perfectly acceptable as well.

January 16th

Time:  

3:00PM - 4:00PM (EST)

Securing Coding Patterns in Drupal

Presenter:  Sam Mortenson

While many view security as a moving target, with Drupal there are some concrete coding patterns you should be aware of when writing modules and themes. I'll be sharing lessons learned from researching Drupal security, including some obscure bugs that are more common than you'd think.