Drupal Camp North West 2012 - Business Day

Where Craig's article focuses on the more geeky escapades of the Saturday, this article will cover the talks presented on the Friday. This was a business day which aimed to present Drupal as a great open-source tool for organisations of all sizes. On one hand, it looked at Drupal as an opportunity for web design businesses, and on the other, a viable tool for a company's in-house project.

Weber Shandwick/Livelink New Media - Facebook Workshop

This presentation focused on how Drupal was harnessed to administer a group of Facebook campaigns for a number of clients including Aldi and other household brands. Drupal enabled rapid development and early prototyping, as well as giving the client control over various aspects of the campaign.

Due to this being a business day, the technicalities were only touched upon. The meat of the presentation was more about how sharing was encouraged and how this subsequently impacted ROI. One of the more impressive campaigns was called Chocolate SOS, where users can nominate their friend for a free chocolate bar which creates a post on both user's pages, resulting in thousands of shares and a lot of exposure for the brand.

CTI Digital - Moving to Drupal: Plan, Migrate, Relax!

This talk given by Steve Gale of CTI was of particular interest for those looking to move over to Drupal but wanting to bring a lot of their current website with them. It covered the process that an agency should go through to ensure that the migration happens as smoothly as possible. What I found surprising was the amount of time Steve suggests is allocated to this process; at least one week, but probably two. On the surface this may sound like a lot of time but speaking from experience, the message was very much "plan, plan, plan".

One of the biggest takeaways from this talk was to focus on exactly what needs to be migrated across from a legacy site into the new site. There should definitely be an opportunity for cleansing, bringing across only content which is valuable and archiving old content on the legacy site for reference only. This approach allows the process to be tighter with less room for error.

Code Enigma - Be an Agile Client

At Curve, we work in a somewhat agile manner; like many agencies we have modified the classic model to accommodate our internal needs as well as those of our clients. We very much embrace the “product owner” role just like these guys, which puts the client firmly in the driving seat. This prompted a lot of discussion in the room throughout the talk, most notably with questions around how the client deals with such responsibility. Essentially this is where a “product mentor” role applies - to assist the product owner with their achievements. It seems like whilst the product owner is in the driving seat, the product mentor is in the passenger seat like a driving instructor providing direction when needed.

About the venue

DrupalCamp NW was held at Salford University, which is situated in the new MediaCityUK development in Salford. This is a purpose-built business and retail park, designed with a lot of open space and located on the side of the river. The area houses big businesses, most notably the BBC, along with a handful of popular restaurants and is surrounded by residential apartments.

A little round up of @DrupalCampScot #dcscot with photos courtesy of @SanneDD. http://t.co/0O1mDeIrfm

— Andrew Macpherson (@MartianWebDev) May 1, 2013