Web Developer Ventures to DrupalCon 2014

Each year we pick two team members (either ux designers or Drupal web developers), who haven’t had the chance to go to DrupalCon, and send them off to soak up the latest trends and developments within the community. This year I was lucky enough to be sent off to Austin, TX for DrupalCon 2014. Besides the wonderful food and the nice break from a cold Chicago, we were able to bring home enough valuable knowledge to influence Sandstorm’s development practices quite a bit.

One of the biggest lessons we were able to pick up was the importance of automation in web development. We have since begun implementing powerful tools such as Git, Grunt, and Bower to continuously integrate updates to the websites we have worked on. Coincidentally, these tools are essential when working with multiple developers on a single project, and this year we have expanded our development team by quite a bit.

Overall, DrupalCon has always been a great influence on the company as a whole. Not just for development, but as well with design and content strategy. The Drupal community is a very welcoming environment, as you would expect from an open source platform, which reflects our core values “learning and sharing” and is why we continue to go year after year.