Drupal GovCon: The Clip Show

Brian Skowron: For November 2nd, 2023. It's the Lullabot podcast.

Matt Kleve: Hey everybody, it's the Lullabot podcast episode 266. I'm Matt Kleve, a senior developer at Lullabot. Today, some might consider kind of a cop out episode, a clip show of sorts. We're live at Drupal Govcon happening in Bethesda, Maryland outside of Washington, DC, where hundreds of Drupalers got together and talked about what they have going on. Was a really great time. Lots of new friends and familiar faces, and I just kind of captured some of the conversations that I had with some of them. We're back with Ogor?

Nina Ogor: Yes. Nina Ogor.

Matt Kleve: Nina Ogor, you're one of the organizers of Govcon.

Nina Ogor: Yep.

Matt Kleve: And how are we doing? We're here.

Nina Ogor: We're here.

Matt Kleve: How big are we?

Nina Ogor: So we had 700 registered. Currently, last time I looked, we had around 400 physically here. That being said, people don't get badges.

Matt Kleve: Yeah.

Nina Ogor: Like that's a problem.

Matt Kleve: Yeah.

Nina Ogor: So if you do want to attend, please get your badge. So we'll do surveys. You know, we'll have more data coming out, but we're looking pretty good. Still the biggest Drupal camp we have in North America, which is amazing, which we always love to say. And really great respondents for next year. So people are excited to be back in person and see their friends and then do it again in 12 months.

Matt Kleve: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of us here. We're split between the hotel here and the hotel across the street. It's working. I mean, people are flexible at times and there are a lot of full rooms, but we're we're back in person, and that's something to be said, right?

Nina Ogor: It is, it is. And it's been wonderful seeing everyone. I forgot how many people I knew and knew and people knew me. And I'm like you. Hugs, hugs, hugs, hugs, hugs or handshakes or elbows because Covid and all the things.

Matt Kleve: Yeah, yeah. So we're all here learning Drupal. Is there anything you have as a takeaway this year or anything you're thinking that was interesting or novel or.

Nina Ogor: Well, it's just it's been really awesome to see how many new people are here. There has been a huge resurgence of just like people interested in Drupal that have never done it before, that have never been to Drupal Govcon. It's just been awesome to see the community really come together with these new people.

Matt Kleve: I've noticed that too. Like, there are a lot of people giving a lot of sessions and there are plenty, I don't know. There was a time when I could go to a Drupal event, and I knew who it was, and I knew pretty much what they were going to say. Yep, there's a lot of new blood, I guess, and excitement in the Drupal community. I know that sounds kind of like evil or violent, and that's not what I'm trying to say. But it's good, right?

Nina Ogor: It is.

Matt Kleve: It is a breath of fresh air.

Nina Ogor: And the sponsors, we've had a lot of new sponsors this year. 28 sponsors coming back this year, which is overwhelming in a survey, but like amazing to see in person and like ones I've never heard of, ones who just were like, I know you let me sponsor you. And I'm like, yes, please.

Matt Kleve: Perfect.

Nina Ogor: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: Doing it again next year.

Nina Ogor: Doing it again next year. That's our hope. That's our plan. We just have to find the space.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.

Nina Ogor: Yeah. Thanks.

Matt Kleve: Chris. Chris, what's your name?

Chris Lewis: Chris Lewis.

Matt Kleve: Chris Lewis and I, we just met. We were we were sitting in a conference and, you know, learning about Drupal migrations. So, Chris, what kind of Drupal do you do?

Chris Lewis: So I I support several clients under the NIH group. They're all Drupal seven websites. I do the front end development. I'm on a two person team. It's just myself and the project manager. So I'm first and last line of defense whenever anything goes wrong or needs to be done. I have to do it or I have to figure it out.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. So what brings you to Govcon? Like.

Chris Lewis: So this is probably, I think, my third or fourth Gov Con. I stopped during Covid when it went virtual. Yeah. But we're back here. It's nice and convenient. I actually don't live here anymore. I moved to Georgia a couple of years ago, but when I did live here, it's, it was too convenient to pass up. I mean, it's you just take the metro, come here, and you're surrounded by

Matt Kleve: The price is right.

Chris Lewis: The price is right, the price is right. But there's so many cool, you know, idealistic people in the Drupal community and, and, you know, coming here, even getting my answers, getting answers to my questions are not is not the is not the big takeaway. It's just rubbing elbows. I'm hearing ideas go by and I'm absorbing it through osmosis a little bit. So it's just good to be, you know, to be mingling around with the, with with such great people in the community.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. That's that's really the power of these events. Right? The hallway track. Right. They say it's the who are you going to. Who are you going to run into, you know.

Chris Lewis: Right.

Matt Kleve: Everybody's solving similar problems and they have different solutions. And it's great that, you know, the minds can get together and and share. And the Drupal community is really good at sharing.

Chris Lewis: Yep. Yep. And it goes it even goes beyond Drupal. Like I want to talk with you about some ChatGPT things and that's, you know, it impacts Drupal, but it's also, you know, it's also separate. There are so many things. And like we're going to, you know, hopefully have a great conversation about ChatGPT. Sure. Outside of Drupal and as it applies Drupal and all kinds of different things, you know, just swelling together and mixing together. It's great. I love it.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. We're just going to talk about. Okay, so I'm with AmyJune Hineline. Hey, you keynoted Gov Con.

AmyJune Hineline: I did.

Matt Kleve: Day one.

AmyJune Hineline: I did.

Matt Kleve: How'd that go?

AmyJune Hineline: Well, it was scary because when I first started my keynote a few weeks ago, it started with a Hobbit theme, and I named my talk pitching my tent in Drupal, not knowing that was a euphemism.

Matt Kleve: Oh.

AmyJune Hineline: And so I worried about that the whole time. Other than that, I think it went splendidly.

Matt Kleve: Good. Good. Great to be back in person. Gov Con is a great event.

AmyJune Hineline: It is.

Matt Kleve: A good number of people here. Do you have any big takeaways or anything you were interested in seeing or learning about?

AmyJune Hineline: I do. One of the things that I thought was really great about this camp was the size, because I've been to several Drupal camps since the pandemic. Or the shelter in place opened up, and it was really nice to see a lot of people gathered again at a non Drupal con event. So my takeaway was the community part of it, and I don't do a whole lot of East Coast events, so I met a whole bunch of new people. So for me it was like the networking I found someone to like maybe help me with mentoring. So that's pretty exciting.

Matt Kleve: Fun. You also had another talk too, right? You gave a workshop.

AmyJune Hineline: I did a technical writers workshop where I talked about how to write technical articles for publications on sites like opensource.net or Drupal camp Asheville. We have a neurodiversity initiative where we understand that people don't always like to speak their knowledge. So you can write an article. So I like, like to teach people how to write technically, even if they're not technical. And then we talked a little bit about markdown.

Matt Kleve: You've been in the Drupal community for a while. What are you doing these days?

AmyJune Hineline: I am a certification community architect at the Linux Foundation, and I help build exams for emerging open source technologies.

Matt Kleve: So as a as a part of that, you'd like to stay involved in Drupal as a technology that is out there, right?

AmyJune Hineline: Well, I Drupal are my people. So no matter where I go outside of outside of Drupal, I'm still going to bring Drupal back to whatever I'm doing. So.

Matt Kleve: Perfect.

AmyJune Hineline: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: Thanks.

AmyJune Hineline: You're welcome.

Matt Kleve: Sometimes you end up at someplace like Gov con and you run into somebody you've known for a long time. Gregg, I'm with Gregg Marshall. What are you doing these days?

Gregg Marshall: I'm a contractor working for independently. So right now I'm in between projects. But that's okay, because theoretically, I'm retired.

Matt Kleve: And that's what you've been doing for a while. Like, I've known you from the Colorado Drupal community for quite some time. You're still in Colorado?

Gregg Marshall: Still in Colorado. I can remember when you and Preston were in high school and presented at Drupal camp, Colorado.

Matt Kleve: I wasn't in high school. Preston was. And probably that shoot who who Preston worked with in Colorado Springs.

Gregg Marshall: It was a long time ago.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Yeah, it was a long time ago. We've been doing this a while, I guess. So what brings you to Gov con?

Gregg Marshall: I started coming to Gov con probably about eight years ago, nine years ago, when I was a contractor to the state of New York. And I believe very strongly in seeing what other people were doing similar to what we were doing. And it's always been a really good conference. So when it started again after Covid, it seemed like a great opportunity.

Matt Kleve: What have you seen here this week that kind of surprised you or anything interesting?

Gregg Marshall: In terms of the conference itself? I love the conference and I can't wait until we go back to NIH. Even though I hate their security process.

Matt Kleve: Yeah, I heard the other where it was where the conference used to be was really nice.

Gregg Marshall: Yeah, it's gorgeous and it's big. Yeah. It's like, you know, you know, demand here. A lot of the camps I've gone to at post-Covid would have never come back. So if you remember, in the old days, Drupal camp Colorado might be three or four hundred people. Now it's seventy, eighty people? So it's significantly smaller. Same about Bad camp and, you know, all the major, major ones.

Matt Kleve: Bad camp has even had a camp yet.

Gregg Marshall: They had one last year. This year they're going to do a hackathon.

Matt Kleve: Okay.

Gregg Marshall: They're not even doing a formal camp.

Matt Kleve: But it's good to be back in person.

Gregg Marshall: Kind of great to be back in person. Get to meet and see people that I mean. Rob Martin from OS training, and I've been interacting since I was at the state of New York, and we're just now meeting face to face for the first time. So that was that's great. And it's shocking to me, especially since I don't remember people very well that how many people recognize me. I guess it's the Hawaiian shirt thing, but.

Matt Kleve: Well, that's how that works. I mean, you get back together with the folks that you've known for a long time, you know, doing Drupal work. I mean, it's a small community, but I think it's different. I think there's more people here. I don't know when I, when I sit down in a, in a session and learn something new from unexpected and it's it's great.

Gregg Marshall: You know, couple projects. I got drifting a little bit towards the DevOps side of Drupal and building CI, CD pipelines. So it's just fun to see how different people do. A lot of the struggles you go through to to get a CI, CD pipeline really running, you know, so it's doing what you're trying to accomplish.

Matt Kleve: Cool.

Gregg Marshall: That was you know, those sessions have been really good.

Matt Kleve: Awesome.

Gregg Marshall: Just, you know, mostly it's about the people. So I think I've missed three sessions already that I got talking to someone in the. And I looked down at my watch and go, okay, that session's halfway gone. I've skipped it.

Matt Kleve: That's the hallway track.

Gregg Marshall: That's the hallway track. That's that's by far. If you're going to go to a camp and you or a con and not not participate in the hallway track, you might as well stay at home and watch the YouTube videos a week later when they come out. I mean, you're not going to you're not going to get that.

Matt Kleve: Yep. Thanks, Greg.

Gregg Marshall: Thanks. Take care.

Matt Kleve: I ran into Dave Look, CEO of chromatic. Is that what we call you these days?

Dave Look: That is what you call me these days. Yeah.

Matt Kleve: How long have you been with chromatic?

Dave Look: Well, chromatic was founded in 2007. I came on in 2010.

Matt Kleve: Okay.

Dave Look: Chris and I bought out our founder in 2013, and then we joined forces with Mark Dorison in 2014. So we're coming up on our ten. We call that kind of like the real ten year anniversary of chromatic is coming up.

Matt Kleve: So I mean, coming back to Gov con, I mean, this kind of feels like the way Drupal events were in that era, like.

Dave Look: Yeah, for sure.

Matt Kleve: Things are definitely lively and there's lots going on here.

Dave Look: Yeah, yeah. It feels a lot more like a camp. Not like a true Drupal con, but it is nice to just be around the community and around the people and seeing the same faces that we've known for years. I haven't been at a I mean, when was the last time Gov con was in person? 

Matt Kleve: In a while. Yeah. '19 maybe.

Dave Look: Yeah, that was the last one I was at. And it was. I stayed at this hotel, but the conference was somewhere else that I had to take the subway to get to. So. But it was it was good.

Matt Kleve: Yeah.

Dave Look: It's been great.

Matt Kleve: Anything. Any takeaways so far? Anything you're excited to see here this week?

Dave Look: Well, I'm super excited for this session at 3:00.

Matt Kleve: Okay.

Dave Look: A migration is a terrible thing to waste by Mark Dorison and Dave look from chromatic. I'm super excited for that session. Actually, the thing that actually stood out to me was the amount of migration sessions that are here. And I think that has a lot to do with the Drupal seven end of life, which, as you know, we've been talking about quite a bit. So I'm interested to see that thread. Yeah. I'm gonna leave it there. Yeah, I'm interested in that thread.

Matt Kleve: Well, I gave I gave the migration session. Like, it's something that a lot of people are doing at this point. And you're right, it is. It is the end of life. And, you know, it's kind of where Drupal is at this point.

Dave Look: Yeah. It is. And I think migrations are a unique aspect of really the development that we do. Because no matter what, at some point you're going to experience a migration. There's no way to avoid hitting a migration if you're in doing this work long enough.

Matt Kleve: Well, sure, because your website probably isn't new, right?

Dave Look: Exactly.

Matt Kleve: Or things change. And, you know, data needs to go from here to there. Exactly.

Dave Look: Yeah. Yeah. We love solving migration issues.

Matt Kleve: So awesome.

Dave Look: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: Thanks, Dave.

Dave Look: You're welcome.

Matt Kleve: Senior user experience strategist Marissa Epstein.

Marissa Epstein: Yeah, it's a mouthful.

Matt Kleve: Glad you're here. You know, my favorite part of Marissa, though, is on that other podcast where you say user experience design.

Marissa Epstein: Yep. I'm really glad that that was repeated so many times.

Matt Kleve: I smile every time I hear it. I'm too. It's too bad we don't. We don't do that podcast anymore.

Marissa Epstein: Yeah, it's too bad.

Matt Kleve: What brings you to Gov con?

Marissa Epstein: What doesn't? No, i'm very excited to hang with some of my Lulla-fam here. There were a lot of good sessions I was interested in. Haven't been to DC in a while, and I had heard just amazing things about the, the venue and the the whole event.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. So any any takeaways, anything you've you've seen or learned or heard, heard about since you've been here?

Marissa Epstein: Yeah, yeah. I saw a lot of great case studies and kind of start to finish some best practices baked in. I'm interested to play around actually with Aten designs Mercury layout, which just seems like an interesting drag and drop for the less savvy editors and a lot of accessibility pointers and things that I want to come back and play with things that can improve the content authoring experience, but also the quality of that authored content. So a couple little takeaways, little plug ins here and there. But mostly some kind of big picture blue skies thinking.

Matt Kleve: Right on.

Marissa Epstein: Will that do?

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Thanks, Marissa.

Marissa Epstein: You're so welcome. Have a good one.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Hey, I'm with Greg Dunlap, director of strategy at Lullabot. Hey, Greg.

Greg Dunlap: Hey. How's it going?

Matt Kleve: Gov con!

Greg Dunlap: Yeah, here we are.

Matt Kleve: What do you think?

Greg Dunlap: It's been a really great event. Like there seems to be a lot of energy in Drupal in the government space right now. Both like federal government and state government and even local government. And so there's, you know, a lot of energy here. There's been a lot of great conversations, and I've seen a lot of great sessions, and it's really cool to see.

Matt Kleve: Is Lullabot one of those government contractors these days? What are we doing at Gov con?

Greg Dunlap: We have been doing a lot of work with state governments specifically recently, starting with our experience with the Georgia re-platforming and their platform Gov Hub 5 or 6 years ago, it must have been now. And then since then, we've also done work for the state of Massachusetts, and now we're doing a similar re-platforming project for the state of Iowa. And, you know, government's a great space for us that's been very successful. And I think a lot of people at Lullabot really appreciate the ability to do some civic tech work, you know, as opposed to more, you know, not that there's anything wrong with corporate work or anything, but, you know, I think a lot of us feel that there's a sense of, you know, giving back and helping a little more in this kind of work.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. So we're at Gov con, but this isn't specifically government. I mean, this feels like a Drupal con. There's all kinds of talks going on that have nothing to do with government at times. And that's that's been a whole lot of fun. And, you know, there are clients here of Lullabot that are not government clients because there's a whole lot you can you can get just coming to, just coming to a Drupal event.

Greg Dunlap: Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of developers here too. You know, I think you know, it's an, it's an, it's it's a regional event for sure. I think a lot of the developers and agencies in sort of the New England northeast area are here. And so it's like a it's like a regional camp in some ways too.

Matt Kleve: Yeah.

Greg Dunlap: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: It's kind of cool to be back, we're in person.

Greg Dunlap: Yeah. Definitely.

Matt Kleve: Anything more that you've you've seen this week that has been interesting or different, or.

Greg Dunlap: I think there's a lot of energy going into things like accessibility now that I think is really good. And that's not surprising given the new federal mandates around accessibility for websites and especially for state governments if they want to receive funding. And so I saw a session earlier from I'm blanking on the name right now, but someone from Princeton who had developed an accessibility checker that sits on the front end of your website, if you're logged in and it's like a little bug in the corner of the screen that tells accessibility problems with that page. And the nice thing about it is that if you're a site author or editor, it can act on a fully assembled page as opposed to like if you do it in ckeditor, it's only able to act on the bit of text that you've got there. And if you've got a bunch or components and things, it's harder. But also that it's like in their face all the time, right? Like in Ckeditor, again, you've got to choose to run the accessibility check, whereas this runs automatically and it's always there and nagging you. I thought that was pretty cool.

Matt Kleve: Had you ever heard of that before?

Greg Dunlap: I hadn't, I hadn't.

Matt Kleve: Just a brand new that you learned.

Greg Dunlap: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: Because you stumbled into the session.

Greg Dunlap: That's right.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. I heard somebody say something you didn't hear before.

Greg Dunlap: Yeah. And it was. And, you know, I've been doing a lot of work and thought around content authoring experience recently, and the name of the session was Content Authors Want to do Accessibility Checks. So I thought I'd check this out. And there I went. And there it was. And so that was cool. I gave a session on improving your content authoring experience, and a lot of people seem to be interested in that, and that seems to be something that's gaining momentum in the Drupal community, which makes me happy. And so, yeah, there's been a lot of really cool stuff.

Matt Kleve: Very good.

Greg Dunlap: Thanks, Greg. No. My pleasure.

Marissa Epstein: Okay. I have a lot of opinions.

Matt Kleve: Hey, I just ran into to Mike Herchel. Mike, you know a thing or two about the Lullabot podcast, don't you?

Mike Herchel: What's Lullabot.

Matt Kleve: Oh, shut up. Hey, good to see you.

Mike Herchel: Good to see you too Kleve.

Matt Kleve: We're at Gov con. We're back in person.

Mike Herchel: Yes.

Matt Kleve: Yeah.

Mike Herchel: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: You gave a talk today?

Mike Herchel: I did, it was about single directory components and US web design system, where we're getting US web design system to work with single directory components, which.

Matt Kleve: Because you're like a federal contractor now or something, aren't you, Mike.

Mike Herchel: Yeah, yeah, I work for Agileana, which is a company that does large federal websites. And right now we're working on a project to upgrade like 300 odd US federal court websites from D7 to D10.

Matt Kleve: We don't get to get together on the the podcast anymore.

Mike Herchel: It's a shame.

Matt Kleve: You're still you're still in the Drupal community. Yeah, we get to get together at these events like this.

Mike Herchel: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: What are you most excited about coming out of Gov con? Like what? What what have you seen? What are you hearing?

Mike Herchel: It's a good question I don't like I don't necessarily have like, any takeaways at this point. Like, I've probably only seen like three sessions. I'll probably watch a bunch, you know, when I get home. But to tell you the truth, it's more about the people. It's more about like the energy and just seeing seeing what people are doing, talking with people, catching up with friends.

Matt Kleve: Yeah, a lot of familiar faces. And it's good to meet new ones.

Mike Herchel: Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of new people here, like I always say, like the government space is a little bit different than the normal, normal Drupal community. Like, like there's definitely some significant crossover. But like, you come here and you see companies, you see people that you don't see at like Drupal or Drupal camps.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Cool.

Mike Herchel: Cool.

Matt Kleve: All right. Thanks, Mike.

Mike Herchel: You're welcome.

Matt Kleve: Aubrey. You ready?

Aubrey Sambor: Sure.

Matt Kleve: Okay.

Aubrey Sambor: Let's do it.

Matt Kleve: What do we call you these days? You have some fancy title now, right?

Aubrey Sambor: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I am now a lead engineer at Lullabot.

Matt Kleve: Okay. So I got Aubrey Sambor here. Lead engineer of Lullabot. Aubrey... Govcon!

Aubrey Sambor: Yeah. This has been great. This is my first time coming to this conference. I don't live that far away, so I don't know why I haven't made it down here.

Matt Kleve: It's like a home game, right? Almost.

Aubrey Sambor: Kind of. Yeah. An hour and a half flight. That's close enough.

Matt Kleve: It's not too bad. I mean, for as many people here and many things you can learn and take away. You had a session?

Aubrey Sambor: Yes I did.

Matt Kleve: What'd you talk about?

Aubrey Sambor: I talked about do you still need SaaS in 2023?

Matt Kleve: Yeah. And do you?

Aubrey Sambor: Well, it depends. Of course. I'm not going to give an actual answer.

Matt Kleve: That's that's the developer answer, like any seasoned developer asked any kind of technical question by a client, the answer is, well, it depends. Right. Because there's always caveats.

Aubrey Sambor: So that is definitely the case with sass and CSS. I mean, if you still want to use sass, still use sass. If you want to use CSS, use CSS.

Matt Kleve: Have you seen anything or learned anything or anything that's been exciting to you that.

Aubrey Sambor: Yeah, I went to see Mike Herchel's single directory of components session, so I thought that was pretty interesting. I also went to see accessibility audits talk by some people in Providence. So that was also pretty cool. Yeah.

Matt Kleve: Good to get together, be at, be at Govcon events in person.

Aubrey Sambor: Yep. I love events in person. I've actually been to a bunch of conferences this year and spoke at a bunch of them. And it's great to see all my friends, especially after a couple of years of having no conferences to attend. So it's been great. It's been really, really fun.

Matt Kleve: Thanks, Aubrey. Appreciate it.

Aubrey Sambor: Yeah.

[Inaudible]

Brian Skowron: What? Oh, no. What are you doing here?

Matt Kleve: I got president of Lullabot Brian Skowron. Hey, Brian.

Brian Skowron: Hi.

Matt Kleve: Glad you're a gov con.

Brian Skowron: I'm glad to be at gov con.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Yeah. First Drupal event in a while you've been to, or you were probably a Drupal con in Pittsburgh.

Brian Skowron: Yep. I did Drupal Con in Pittsburgh. This is the first organized Drupal event I've been to since. Yeah.

Matt Kleve: What made you want to come out to to Gov con this year?

Brian Skowron: Well, I've always heard about it, and a lot of Lullabots have gone. A lot of my colleagues have gone. I've always heard good things, and it hasn't happened in a couple of years. And so I was excited to go. And also, Lullabot is doing more government work, so why not?

Matt Kleve: You are the president of Lullabot and this is a presidential city too, so.

Brian Skowron: Yes. That was the main reason why I came.

Matt Kleve: Well, Bethesda probably isn't the presidential city, but. Yeah.

Brian Skowron: You know. It's not bad. Never been to never been to Bethesda before.

Matt Kleve: Anything you've seen or any takeaways you've had from Govcon or.

Brian Skowron: It's it's a thriving community. And I feel like that's been a lot of the, the value that I've gotten out of it is just getting to understand, you know, more of the players in the government space. The sessions have been good and it's it's been, you know, kind of a short, focused event. And I came in late because of Halloween. So. Yeah. Really only been here for today, and it's been great so far.

Matt Kleve: Very good.

Brian Skowron: Yeah, it's been fantastic.

Matt Kleve: Thanks, Brian.