Getting “Way Off the Island” at Drupalcon 2017
Last year, Drupalcon added a new “Horizons” track to discuss Drupal “at the edge”, where it’s expanding beyond its comfort zone as a popular CMS framework. I think it’s great that they’ve specifically included a forward-facing track like this. Drupal has grown significantly in the last 10 years that I’ve been a part of the community, but so has the rest of the tech space.
Right before the iPhone launched in 2007, I started developing with Drupal while still in college. I was working on a tool for clubs to organize their members and manage their events and Drupal ended up being a perfect fit. Since then, we’ve seen Mobile become the dominant platform and social networks like Facebook and Twitter connect the world. In the last 5 years, sci-fi technologies like AI, Robotics, IoT, and VR have become common in many products of the products we use daily.
Looking at the last year alone, the pace of change is staggering. Over 1 Million VR Headsets have been sold (not even including MobileVR). Driverless cars essentially exist already as the auto industry rolls out new autonomous features each year, and (legally approved) full-autonomy is expected in just a few more. AI has recently beaten* very difficult problems like image recognition, speech recognition, and language translation. It’s even beating us at our own games like Go, Poker, and just this week, Super Smash Brothers.. ahh remember Gamecube? If you aren’t paying almost daily attention to the latest news and research, it can be easy to miss how fast things are advancing.
For platforms to stay relevant, they need to move as fast as the market and Drupal is no exception. The release of Drupal 8 took longer than many hoped, but it provides a much more modern and robust footing to build on. Adopting an object oriented design, semantic versioning, 6 month release cycles, and embracing a “Get off the Island” philosophy have allowed Drupal to incorporate exciting new capabilities in the last 14 months. Drupal 8 adoption is picking up, but much of the Drupal developer community and their organizations are still stuck in the past.
Tracks like “Horizons” should help expand their minds to these new possibilities, but not just within Drupal or the even the web. The community should be exploring these fascinating new technologies when Drupal “Gets WAY off the Island.”
