The day started pretty early. They moved the main keynote to the morning this year. It was good hearing Dries speak on the future of the web and what potential role Drupal will play, especially with Drupal 8’s expanded focus on services/api’s. I then attended a session entitled “Don’t Let Crappy Content Ruin Your New Site” https://austin2014.drupal.org/session/dont-let-crappy-content-ruin-your-new-site — I thought the presenter did a great job and summarizing the issues we see in web design especially when having dozens of content contributors who’s goals, skills and desires are very disparate. I spent the remainder of the late morning and afternoon in smaller BoF sessions focusing mainly around front end development. Learned about tools for automated front end testing and was in an interesting discussion about the future of the major drupal themes. Its interesting to see the different personalities and opinions coming together in an attempt to streamline their processes and increase producitiy, it feels familiar to what I’m trying to push for at Stony. I got a chance to sit in on a pantheon presentation and will be meeting with them at 1:45 tomorrow to discuss some of their platforms advantages. I also sat and spoke with some of my Acquia contacts/friends and got answers to a few questions that have been bugging me. I have a meeting with Chris Hartigan at 9am Thursday. Made some more progress on setting up the North Eastern Higher Ed summit with Nancy @ Yale. Also got to speak with her and one of her technical guys Vincent during dinner.  I really like their approach and look forward to their session on Thursday. This has definitely been a rewarding conference thus far.

Super stoked about todays Higher Ed Summit. The event seems to be really well organized so far. About 150 people have showed up. Already saw some familiar faces from my work with NYC Camp.

http://edusummitdrupalconatx.drupalgardens.com/

On-boarding / training

One school has a staff of 25 students doing Drupal work with 1 full time staff member. Student workers create and manage content, make video’s and do photography for clients. Everyone else in room almost fell out of their chairs. Some paid, some independent study through CS/Web Design.

George Washington University
2 Hours Weekly Office Hours in a computer lab. Coupled with initial on-boarding training. Community building.

Tool to create website walk through’s http://walkhub.net/ Provides a way to collaborate on documentation.

Content Strategy

UT uses Google Docs as a platform to collaborate on content.
Lots of schools using Workbench / Workbench Access for controlling content.

http://voiceandtone.com/ Mailchimp writing style guide. Nice.

http://web.temple.edu/web-style-guide

Explore: CK Editor Show Blocks

Accessibility Blocker of the Month

Compliance Sherrif

bit.ly/DrupalEduContent

Accessibility

Great talk about accessibility tips for D7 and the future with D8 http://prezi.com/iqeia3wwunho/accessibility-challenges-workarounds-and-visions-of-drupa/

<a href=”tel:+15555555555″>Phone number links!</a>

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/juicy-studio-accessibility-too/

http://www.deque.com/products/worldspace/

Color Contrast
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/contrastAnalyser

Kill carrousels — not accessibile.

Youtube accessibility controls

Lunch Discussion Lead by Chris Hartigan – Acquia

Met Sean Crowley from Acquia. Chris gave good talk about different challenges Universities face on the web.

Google Analytics FERPA issues?

BOF Content Strategy

Pair up copywriters with Subject matter experts to create good content.
Use students
ConFab

Some schools are taking a groundswell approach where content can be liked and then moves to the top/gets more promoted.

kill text format options

most schools not using overlay

panelizer

paranoia module

github drupal-security

ckeditor 4.0

New Job Role Communications Web Content

Dartmouth has 9 people in IT doing web development, Communications, IA, content production, support: dartmouth.edu/comp/about/departments/web-services

MIT all major sites are in drupal. Outsourcing hosting and themeing is fundamental to success.

Dartmouth just outlined our exact situation with PHP on their main web server and why they are using Acquia for drupal. Feels so familiar.

Northeastern Higher Ed Summit July 18th

Got to talk with Nancy Flowers and a few other NYC Camp attendee’s, seems to be strong interest in having a summit this summer — excited to keep the conversation going.

Summary and conclusion

Great summit the organizers did a great job, the event moved smoothly and lots of positive conversations. Looking forward to working with more of my higher ed comrades.