Joanne Gordon

Drupal Camp Scotland 2025: A Day of Connections

Back in November (yes, I know — this post is fashionably late), I attended Drupal Camp Scotland on 7th November 2025. It was a full day of interesting, insightful and genuinely useful talks. From the moment I arrived, greeted by friendly faces over morning coffee – there was a strong sense of community. 

As my years working with Drupal add up, I’ve found myself thinking more about how I fit into this community. I spent around 20 years as a Graphic Designer, and during that time I dabbled in Drupal, theming and site building. It wasn’t until I joined the Web Development Team almost exactly six years ago that Drupal became my day-to-day focus. I think I’m finally starting to feel comfortable calling myself a “Web Developer” — and events like this definitely help with that. 

As the title suggests, connection felt like the main theme for me. Yes, connecting with other people in the Drupal world, but also connecting with the topics being discussed. Out of the nine presentations, there were three in particular that lined up closely with work I’m involved with right now. 

1. Using Storybook to Preview Single Directory Components

As part of my work exploring Single Directory Components (SDCs) and how we can integrate them into our platform, I was already familiar with Phil Norton’s (Web Developer at Code Enigma) article on the subject. I had previously followed his guide and had good results, so seeing him present the topic in person was incredibly valuable. 

SDCs give us a self-contained, tidy way of organising components and keep us aligned with Drupal’s long-term plans. Since they’re going to be part of Drupal Canvas, this direction makes sense for the future of theming in EdWeb. 

While the Web Development Team doesn’t maintain our pattern library EdGel, every now and then we need components that don’t yet exist. Storybook could make those situations much easier by giving us a way to build, preview and test components quickly — and maybe even offer editors a preview before they use components on their sites. 

Phil’s talk provided a great recap of the value of SDCs and offered practical insight that will feed directly into our ongoing investigations.

2. Same Image, Different Story: Why Drupal Needs Contextual Media Architecture 

As a primarily frontend developer, this talk caught my attention immediately. I’m currently working on a large piece of work around how images are used across our platform — from performance and quality to accessibility and editorial experience — so the timing was perfect. 

Gareth Alexander (from our own team) and Tony Barker (Annertech, LocalGov Drupal and more) raised really important points about how Drupal handles media. For example: 

  • Drupal stores a single alt text value per image — but what if an image needs different alt text depending on where it’s used? 
  • Can we store multiple focal points for different contexts? 
  • How do we improve the editorial experience around this? 

These are questions we’ve been hearing from our own users, so it was encouraging to see others thinking about the same issues. Since Gareth sits just a few desks away, I’m sure I’ll be asking him a lot more about this! 

3. “So… I heard we don’t need junior devs anymore now that we have generative AI?” 

Hilmar Kári Hallbjörnsson delivered this talk with so much energy that it was hard not to be completely pulled in. He spoke about teaching Drupal to university students, so they graduate with the skills junior developers actually need. He teaches a course called Developing Open-Source Web Software, with PHP and Drupal, and with the help of others started the Drupal Open University Initiative to share teaching materials with other teachers. 

As someone who works closely with students this really resonated with me. We take on two 12-month placement students every year, plus internships, and I enjoy supporting and mentoring the students. They always bring so much enthusiasm, curiosity and a willingness to dive into challenges. Many have gone on to Drupal roles after working with us, which is great to see. 

Hilmar’s message was clear: AI can support development, but it cannot replace the creativity, critical thinking and collaboration that junior developers bring to a team.  

The human side

I’ll finish off by mentioning Jochen Lillich’s presentation, “GenEI over GenAI – The Human Side of Website Delivery,”. His focus on empathy — on the humans at the heart of everything we build — struck a chord with me.  

Coming from a design background, thinking about audiences, tone and voice is natural for me. But at the university, our “audience” isn’t one neat group — it’s editors, site owners, staff, students, parents, guardians… all with different needs. As developers, it’s easy to focus on the technical side and forget the bigger picture, so I appreciated this reminder. 

Drupal Camp Scotland 2025 was a great mix of inspiration, reassurance and community spirit. It highlighted the technical challenges we all share, but more importantly, it reminded me how human our work really is.