DrupalCon Barcelona - A seminal moment in Drupal’s history

The Drupal community, along with 1xINTERNET, is experiencing a period of rapid innovation driven by the ambitious "Starshot" initiative, now known as Drupal CMS. Since its launch, over 700 contributors have joined, a leadership team appointed who have developed a product strategy for Starshot's groundbreaking features. 

Highlights include the Drupal AI Agent Chatbot, which allows non-technical users to complete advanced tasks using just natural language, and the introduction of reusable "Recipes" in Drupal 10.3. 1xINTERNET leads the Advanced Search Track, with our initial focus on refining the roadmap through community feedback.

DrupalCon Barcelona - Starshot Edition

DrupalCon is the biannual conference where leaders in Drupal gather to coordinate, collaborate and present the latest developments in digital and web technologies. This week 1xINTERNET attended DrupalCon Barcelona in full force. But this conference was like none before it, this was Starshots World Premier and it exceeded all expectations.

Time to take a fresh look at Drupal

The Drupal community, and 1xINTERNET with them, are in the midst of extraordinary times. A period of rapid innovation began just four months ago when Dries Buytaert set an ambitious vision for a groundbreaking enhanced version of Drupal, codenamed Starshot (now known as Drupal CMS).

Some might say it was an audacious move, but Drupal Starshot has inspired the community and triggered a groundswell of action. Tangible results are coming fast.

Since Portland the Starshot Leadership team has been appointed and 10 tracks created (with 3 more identified), bringing focus to specific capabilities that Starshot will have on the day of launch. Over 700 individuals have pledged their time.

The leadership team agreed on a product strategy which defines goals, target audience and necessary features allowing all contributors to work in highly effective ways. This movement has pace and is gaining momentum each day as more people realise ways to participate. 

Starshot is rapidly redefining what we think Drupal to be. The results are already breathtaking.

Drupal soars far above the competition

Last week’s DriesNote in Barcelona was the world premiere of Starshot. A first opportunity to see a working version of this all new enhanced Drupal CMS (formerly known as Starshot). Considering we’ve only been working on Starshot for 4 months, what we witnessed was truly breathtaking. A seminal moment in Drupal’s history.

Looking through the eyes of a marketer, Dries showcased how Drupal CMS puts in the hands of the marketer tasks previously unthinkable without technical expertise.

Without doubt the most outstanding moment was the unveiling of Drupal AI (artificial intelligence). A new Drupal Agent Chatbot is available in the administration interface. Using natural language you can alter content types such as adding fields, configure these fields, create classifications for content and populate them. 

Astoundingly, you can even migrate content from live web pages into a Drupal CMS site without the need to write a single line of code, just ask the Drupal Agent what to do using plain English (or any language for that matter).

Many in the audience were left speechless, it felt like science fiction but we all knew it was real. You can even try it yourself here!

And that is just the start. Drupal AI has been designed as an extensible framework. Each capability we’ve described is an AI Agent.

These can be created to provide access to different large language models, which fit your specific requirements, and thus incrementally add limitless possibilities for AI in Drupal CMS. We predict a rapid proliferation of agents as people start to realise the potential.

Want to learn more about Drupal AI? Jamie Abrahams, AI Track Lead, recently spoke about Drupal AI on Talking Drupal Podcast where you can find out all about what has been achieved and where we are headed next.

Starshot Recipes

Dries also explained how fundamental Recipes, new in Drupal 10.3, are for Drupal CMS. These reusable templates encompass specific configurations, modules, and settings to bring new capabilities to your Drupal website. Recipes are a quantum leap for less technical users. Complex functionality which would take time and a great deal of Drupal knowledge are now available with the click of a button.

Starshot recipes currently has 14 recipes. More will come as time passes. In doing so, innovation with Drupal CMS will gain pace. 1xINTERNET are proud to be Track Leads for the Advanced Search.

1xINTERNET Advanced Search Leads

It will come as no surprise that 1xINTERNET is taking an active role in leading Starshot, as Track Leads for Advanced Search. As track leads for Advanced Search in the Drupal CMS product (formerly known as Starshot), 1xINTERNET developed a concept and aligned it with other track leads, the leadership team, and the community.

Christoph Breidert took to the stage for the Starshot Initiative Leads Keynote, detailing how this community feedback has been crucial to informing and refining the Advanced Search roadmap.

At the end of the DriesNote our long time friend Tiffany Farris took to the stage and paid a touching tribute to Dries on the occasion of the 40th DriesNote. 

Whilst we all took a moment to look back, we at 1xINTERNET are most excited about the future of Drupal and entered the week energised to meet, collaborate and continue the journey to making sure Drupal is the first choice for the new and future generations of ambitious digital marketers. 

Slides and a recording of the DriesNote are available on Dries’ website. 

Check out our sessions at DrupalCon Barcelona

Drupal at the core of Schwabe Group’s Digital Strategy

Empowering content editors: Managing content with ease in highly complex environments

AI with Drupal - Using LLM technology is easy, but how do you actually build useful applications?

Hidden Diamonds - The best lesser known Drupal modules you want to add to your website

Stay tuned for more reports from DrupalCon in the coming weeks. There’s much to tell. And feel free to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive the latest industry news, exclusive offers and expert insights straight to your inbox!