 Hello, it's Rachel Larson here from the Drupal Association and today I'm catching up with Badi and Gabe from the Decoupled Menus Initiative Day at DrupalCon North America to find out how things went, find out what you've been up to since and what you think of how people came along to the event and enjoyed it. So hello everyone, thanks for coming along. So the first thing I really wanted to know is DrupalCon North America for all of us here and you, me, everyone, it was an incredibly intense time. So how have you been relaxing since, Badi? Yeah, like, so it was not just DrupalCon, it was actually everything that happened before. So I think, like, probably four weeks before DrupalCon, we really started and we did, like, you know, video calls after video calls and we were rehearsing the keynote, Gabe, remember? We were just doing that a couple of times because we've never done a keynote before, so at least not of this size. So we thought that we should maybe prepare it a little bit better than maybe we would do normally. No, so I think, like, then DrupalCon comes and you just, you're full in and it was like five days, extremely intensive and I have to admit, directly after DrupalCon, you get this, like, you know, you're a little bit just, you get out or, like, you just take a pause. So I think we just took a pause maybe for one week or two weeks and we're slowly getting back into work. I think that was great. How about yourself, Gabe? Anything particular helped you relax and reset? Yeah, I moved to a new state. So it's my first spring here and I've just been enjoying that kind of seeing the changes when they come. What's what to expect for next year? Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. So whereabouts are you now? I'm in North Carolina. Oh, nice. Yeah, that'd be really lovely. Yeah. OK, so thinking back to when we at the Drupal Association first proposed this new initiative day format for DrupalCon, the decoupled menus team, you were incredibly keen to go first and you would immediately say things like, we want Tuesday straight away, which was actually really encouraging to me, you know, I'm proposing this dramatically different format to have somebody that really was enthusiastic and sort of say, yes, yes, we want a piece of this. So thank you for that. But when you actually got to Tuesday and you had to stand up there, well, stand up virtually there at the keynote and helping people all through the day, bringing information about decoupled menus to them all through Tuesday and then helping them get involved in actually the future of Drupal menus during contributions, was that scary with the things that you learned? Tell me all about it. How did that feel? Yeah, I was scary. I I was actually very glad to go first and I didn't regret it at all, mostly because you get all the hard stuff out of the way up front and then everything else becomes you can you can sit down and enjoy DrupalCon because I'm a notorious procrastinator and had it been later in the week, I would have gotten to just stress about it all week. So yeah, I know the same feeling. So actually, like before, like when we said, yes, I think like we really thought that the trees would trees not would actually start on Monday, or at least like I thought that so it brought like a little bit of an extra pressure because he normally speaks about the initiatives at his keynote. And for us, like not knowing, of course, what he's going to be talking about, like we also didn't want to because in the last three's note, he talked a lot about our initiative. So that was also like a little bit of like a puzzle that we didn't know. But of course, that that worked out, but mainly that the most difficult part was the contribution area. The online platform, because we were the first. So we occurred like during the week, understood how to use that. And so I think like our contribution day, the first day was like a little bit maybe just trying out the tools. And then the second day and the third day and the fourth day was already really good. So I learned on the last day that I think the Drupal 10 readiness initiative, they were like, they worked amazingly with the tool that I was like, I was saying had known that on Tuesday. But but the benefits on the other hand is that we did week like a daily meeting with in the contribution. So we actually got a lot of stuff done. And that was maybe like the that's what that was why we wanted to be first because we wanted to engage with the people in the beginning. Yeah. So is that your lesson to learn then around and now that we have a tool that we can continue to use into the future that may be the fact that you're familiar with that now is going to help you. Be able to hit the ground running, shall we say, maybe a little bit more. Yeah, totally. And especially like with the video platform using big blue button, you know, like now I know that we could we can do breakout rooms. So we, for example, did a breakout room in just other platforms and because we just didn't know how that worked. So like, but now knowing, you know, having all this experience in this one week, awesome, you know, if we can continue using the same and we learn how to use it. Cool. Yeah. Cool. So actually, it's funny you mentioned something there about about through the week and my initial expectation when we were putting together a program and sort of selling this to the various initiative leads was that you would have one day and then be able to relax for the other days and not have to worry too much. But actually, I saw that you were both making events and doing demonstrations and having more contribution time, not just on Tuesday, but on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. There was always something going on, which was great to see. It was obviously you were very keen. Did that work for you? Do you think it helped increase the momentum in the initiative or what? I think it is crucial. And I actually am really wondering afterwards, how can we maybe just do that for all the initiatives? So maybe thinking about it afterwards, maybe the four or five keynotes could just be on the first day because it's a little bit. It's a little bit, you know, that's what you always wish for when you go to an in-person event that you you you figure it out a little bit earlier because you need time to get in. So on the first day, not much happened. And on the second day, we were still forming the groups on the react menu component and the Svelte menu component and the web components and the documentation. So we had like four tables. So it took time. And I think like first on Thursday, which was day number three, we really started to like actually be able to get something done. So to think about that afterwards, like maybe we have to, you know, maybe this is a great way of how we could do it with the other initiatives to that we can allow people to like sign in earlier into the the tables that they want to go to and be part of it throughout the the conference. So that definitely worked for us because we engaged with around 40, 50 people and they stayed with us the whole week. So that's really great. Yeah, that's a big deal. When I actually think about Drupal Kana, I'm wondering if that's actually not so abnormal to go out through the whole week and that it only seems unique because of the online format. I know that for me, in-person Drupal Kana's are often just spent in the sprint rooms. And if I go in with something I really want to contribute to, I spend I spend my whole week there, you know? So I wonder if we were able to actually capture that same spirit of contribution throughout the week. And, you know, the way we we kept going through the whole week. And yeah, and I agree with you, Gabe. And the the good thing about the virtual platform is that we can actually engage easier, in my opinion, with new people. So, you know, I remember going into this big contribution area at an in-person event and I saw Gabe maybe there or other people and I didn't know them, but I knew that they were part of something. But I didn't want to like interrupt. So so the, you know, for first time contributors or those who want to engage and just be part of it, it's probably a little bit easier for them to engage virtually first to get to know each other because the hurdle is just less. Yeah, I think so. I think that I like the idea that we were saying that to a group of initiative leads, put time aside where you are explicitly available to others. So you're actually saying, hey, come and speak to me, which I think is what the the online meetings and the events that you were setting up through the week really did. It said to people, hello, come and speak. And I think that was really great. That that side of it really seemed to work. And talking of engagement. If somebody is watching this video now. And wondering how to get involved in decoupled menus. What should they do when this video finishes? Call us, no. So we have a slack, we have a slack channel on Drupal Slack. It's called the coupled menu initiative. And I think like we have a weekly meeting there at two o'clock UTC and then 12 hours later. And and first thing is just to like engage with us there. And we have in that sense, like maybe three focus areas at the moment, I would say it is the JSON API changes that are being done. There is that part of the JavaScript framework, creating the components, working on them. We have like we had a lot of work done with the web components, which where the other, you know, JavaScript web components that we had already created, they all said, like, hey, maybe we're just all going to use the web components. So so and then we have the third, which is the documentation. And we already created, I think around 15 pages that we then need to now consolidate and put on Drupal.org to create like a documentation of how to use the new JSON API changes that have been done and how do you set all that up? But at the same time, how do you use one of the components that have been created? So so these three areas that you can just, you know, I would say like you could focus maybe around these three things. Where do I fit? And when you come and you say, hi, maybe you can tell us like I'm interested in documentation, how can I help? And then we can probably figure out how to. And that was 2 p.m. UTC on which day of the week? Tuesdays. Tuesdays. OK, cool. I just couldn't remember. I think I missed it. So I just wanted to check. OK, wonderful. I'm going to ask one sort of like last question. If we were to have an initiative first style conference format again. Would there be any particular initiatives, either ones that already exist or ones that you would like to make up? That you think should be included? Yeah, I would love to see. Hosting ops initiative. How do we make Drupal easy to deploy and host? Not just for, you know, major hosting platforms like Acquia and Pantheon platform. But how do we get it so that it's easy to spin up locally and easy to deploy to a digital ocean droplet or to put into a container and run? So not just the tooling, but actually Drupal itself. How do we make that thing packageable? Yeah. I hadn't thought of that one. That's really interesting. Yeah, cool. Any additions, buddy? Um, I think hopefully we are going to go and do something more in the decoupled scene. So we just don't know what, but hopefully we can keep on, you know, doing the same thing in the decoupled scene because I think that there is a lot of opportunity there for Drupal. So anything around that and and maybe mainly, you know, for me, what is the most important thing is just to, you know, how can we enable others just to set up Drupal and just you start using it in a decoupled way. So the documentation part of it and all that. So yeah, I would like to just make sure that we have that focus every single time we do it again and again, because that is what we are seeing from our customers, that that's what they want. So we should continue at least being there relevant. Brilliant. OK, well, thank you very much to you both. I think that's a fantastic place to finish. I look forward to seeing you both in the decoupled menus initiative Slack channel on Drupal Slack. And I'll see you again later. Thank you. See you. Thank you. Thank you.