2019 DrupalCon Higher Ed Summit

The Higher Ed Summit organizers had considerably redesigned the schedule and makeup of the summit. I say to a significantly improved format.

This year, we:

• Introductions and the usual keynote start
• Held three sessions of three concurrent presentations, broken out by interest, i.e., marketing or back-end
• Lunch
• A “Solutions” meeting with randomized attendees, sever per table
• Three 15-minute presentations to all members
• Concluding thoughts
• A closing mixer with a networking game that was surprisingly effective. Even considering the introverted nature of Higher Ed IT professionals.

The summit organizer’s have posted the day’s schedule, here.

EduDU

• We strongly encourage using the EduDU Slack group and the #drupalcon channel to connect with other higher-ed professionals at DrupalCon, plan BoFs and braindates, and keep in touch with attendees after the conference.
• Please fill out the form at the EduDU website to receive an invite link. Non-edu email addresses will be removed from the Slack team, so make sure to use your work email addresses when signing up.

Opening session

• Paul Grotevant presents on new summit format
• “Braindates” continue the conversation afterwards
  • Connection opportunities.
• The Solution problem

Keynote: Web Accessibility

Gian Wild

Her presentation

Accessibility Oz

Some random thoughts I typed as Gian spoke

• Not just visual
• Better access to people are otherwise unable to do so
• Who is disabled? 20% in US and AU
• Screen and braille readers
• Screen reader introduction video
• Another screen reader demo, amazon website from a long time ago
• Cognitive Disabilities
• Add the word search to a search field
• Reading disabilities
• Cognitive disability
  • Phonemes dyslexia
• Assistive technologies
• User Techniques
  • Decreasing saturation common filter
• Physical Disabilities
  • “One Thumb to Rule Them All”
• Hearing Impairments
  • Signing cat
• Mental health disabilities
  • Depression, PTSD, Anxiety, OCD
• Assitive tech
  • Spotify, Reader view
• Legal precedents
  • Sydney Olypmics
    • June 1999 - August 2000
  • Home.depot, Target, Canada, NetFlix
• WCAG2
  • Four principals
  • Principals layout
  • Three levels

Phase A: Accessibility Roadmap

1. Build an accessibility committee
2. Develop disability reference group
3. appoint an accessibility champion
4. Hire additional disability services staff
5. Conduct an accessibility stocktake
6. Address accessibility issues identified in the stocktake
7. Develop accessibility resources
8. Provide a communication method for staff and students to comment on accessibility

Phase B: Develop an accessibility Plan

1. Statement
2. Write Plan
3. ID policies and procedures
4. Communicate

Phase C: Make accessibility fixes

1. All new websites to be compliant
2. Inventory
3. Test
4. Contact vendors
5. Fix

Phase D: Develop knowledge

1. Training
2. Sessions
3. Case Studies
4. Attend conferences

10:45 AM — My Presentation

You can find my slide-deck here.

My presentation on DevOps, Drupal 8 and Multi-site represents the culmination of three year’s work from our team’s investigation and implementation of the very topic. Of course we’re all very busy, and we’ve been putting such narratives to low priority for our support and standard daily tasks. Despite all this hard work, we’re still very much at draft status.

My own increasing managerial duties, and decreasing tech duties, have rusted my familiarity with the technical aspects. As the date approached, my unpreparedness mocked my empty slide-deck. I cursed myself many times for agreeing to do this. In retrospect, I’m glad I did. I also discovered the myriad documentation our team has created in support of this effort.

The meeting generated interest, and a group of attendees and I discussed various related matters after my presentation. The discussion we held helped to raise new questions and answer others we’ve been kicking around. This is the fruit of contributing back to the community. You always get more back than you put in. The nature of our discussion led me to miss the next scheduled presentations, but my other team members were able to attend these and brief me on what they learned.

Finally, my extensive preparation for this session paid off later in the week, at the Duke annual TechExpo presentation. We had a cancellation due to illness and needed to fill an open slot on the schedule. That’s for a later post.

Lunch

Lunch was delicious and fully-compatible with my low-carb way of eating. Better was the company and information we gathered while we ate. While we talked a variety of topics, configuration management (CM) was front and center. We enjoyed the illuminating company of Shawn DeArmond, University of California, Davis, and his insights on CM. He offered his qualified opinions on what makes sense, and I have a new YouTube video to watch.

2018 BADCamp Configuration Management Drupal Multi-Site and Distributions

1:00 PM — Solutions session

As we filtered into the room, Paul handed each attendee a table number. This assured randomized seating so that we couldn’t sit with our “normal” crowd. The rules for engagement were simple. Write down your greatest pain points. In round-robin fashion, share them with the table. Next, each person leads with their problem and we collaborate towards a possible solution.

My problem was around how to cultivate new talent, especially from underrepresented communities. This led to a fascinating discussion and back and forth on how to do so. One of the possible suggestions was to seek out the growing use of bootcamp-style training that has been growing nationally.Seek connections with these groups, and possibly offer mentoring.

2:00 Lightning Rounds

I’ll have to dig into my notes for this

DevOps for a small team

4:00 PM — closer and mixer