Join us on Thursdays at 10:00 am PST for a 30-minute webinar that will help keep your website fresh and updated. You may attend however many sessions you like. Choose from the topics below.

• Nov 5th: How to Make Your Site Last 5 Years (or More!)
• Nov 19th: Accessibility in Steps
• Dec 3rd: How a Site’s UX Impacts the Perception of a Brand
• Dec 17th: Creating a Search and Social Media Meta Tag Strategy
• Jan 14th: Inclusive Content Strategy
• Jan 28th: Reorganizing your Navigation for Success

Sign up for the webinars

BADCamp is a great camp where you’ll learn a lot, collaborate often, and laugh even more. But you’ll also do a lot of walking and will be in a new environment. In order to have the most successful camp possible, we made a list of our best tips for BADCamp. 

Haven’t registered yet? Tickets are FREE. Click here to register for BADCamp 2019.

And see where all the Kanopians are going to be at this year’s BADCamp.

1. Wear Good, Comfortable Shoes

In order to endure all the walking and steps, we strongly recommend wearing shoes that are comfortable and give you lots of support. You don’t want to miss out on all the fun stuff because you have to take a break to rest sore feet.

2. Bring a Laptop . . . and a Notebook

Sometimes presenters will ask you to follow along and try some of the cool things they show you. Or you’ll want to jot down notes, or share a tidbit to a friend via Slack. So having your laptop is key. But remember that sometimes getting access to an outlet to charge your laptop can be tricky. A notebook or notepad and a pen will let you capture those important nuggets while your laptop charges.

3. Bring a Water Bottle/Travel Mug

Water fountains and coffee/tea will be available. Bringing a refillable water bottle allows you to stay focused on what you’re doing, and get the most out of the sessions you’re attending. And, of course, using a water bottle is far better for the environment than buying bottles of water. 

4. Bring Chargers for ALL your Devices and a Mobile Charger

There’s nothing worse than being out and about with a dead phone/tablet/laptop. Bring chargers for all of the devices you intend to use at BADCamp. If you use a battery-operated mouse (or wireless remote for presenting), remember an extra set of batteries. Even if you don’t end up needing them, you could find yourself with a new friend when you share those extra batteries with someone in need.

5. Bring Business Cards

Make it easy to connect! You will meet lots of great people, and will want to keep in touch with many of them. Get in the habit of giving out a card each time you meet someone.

6. Condense your Stuff

A lighter load is ideal for walking around between sessions. Plus you will want room for SWAG! Condense your backpack down as much as possible. Pro Tip: Get a small tote or even a Ziploc bag to stick all of your conference swag in. That way all of the stickers and smaller items are in one bag that you can stick in your luggage at the end of the conference.

8. Bring a Pair of Headphones

As much as we all want to be able to unplug from our jobs and just focus on the sessions, it’s not always possible. Sometimes you have to put your nose to the grindstone and get some work done. If you’re the type that needs to listen to some music while you work, or if you have to have a video meeting, bring along a pair of earbuds so that you can focus and not disturb others around you.

7. Invest in a Good Backpack

Getting a good backpack is a sound investment in your neck, shoulders, back, knees…really your whole body. Carrying around your stuff all day in a tote or shoulder bag is murder on whichever shoulder you choose as your victim. Find a quality backpack, preferably one that has a strap that connects the shoulder straps across your chest. This extra strap helps to distribute the weight more evenly across your upper body, keeping your neck and shoulders safe, and the straps in place.

8. Dress in Layers

October in Berkeley is beautiful, but as with most conference rooms, the individual room temperatures are unpredictable. Bring a hoodie that you can throw on and/or take off as the climate requires. The historical average for that time of year is in the mid 70’s (about 22 – 25 Celsius).

9. Plan Your Schedule

Are you coming to learn specific skills? Check out the training classes, summits and sessions available and create your own schedule.

Do you want to find a new employer? Check out the job board and sponsors area to meet awesome Drupal shops.

Who do you want to meet with while you are at BADCamp? Find out who is coming on the attendee list and reach out to connect. Magical moments are frequent at BADCamp.

10. Bring a Friend

While not required, having a friend tag along with you can make for a memorable BADCamp experience. If you’re road tripping to BADCamp, there will be photos, sing-a-longs, and weird roadside attractions that get to enjoy together. If you’re flying, it’s nice to have a travel buddy to keep you company while you’re waiting at the airport during the inevitable layover.

However, don’t use your buddy as a reason to shut out others. Go in with an open mind and you’re sure to find another new friend (or friends!) to also share experiences.

At DrupalCon Seattle, Kanopians gave three talks, hosted one summit, participated in two others, led first-time contributor workshops, hosted three BOFs, and two of our engineers (Sean and Jim) passed their Acquia certifications. Our boss Anne even made her first commit.

If you missed our talks, fear not. The recordings are below:

Deep Cleaning: Creating Franchise Model Efficiencies with Drupal 8 

Presenters: Anne Stefanyk and Katherine White

COIT offers cleaning services and 24/7 emergency restoration services and their 100+ locations serve more than 12 million homes & businesses across the United States and Canada. But their own website was a huge mess. In this case study we will cover the more technical parts of this Drupal 8 implementation.

How to Work Remotely and Foster a Happy, Balanced Life

Presenters: Anne Stefanyk

In this session, we talk about how to be the best remote employee, and provide strategies and ideas if you are a leader of a remote team. We talk about key tactics to keep you (and all other staff) inspired, creative, productive and most importantly, happy!

But first, we have to travel to Seattle. We’re so excited about it that we made a Spotify playlist made up of all Seattle bands. So much great music has come from Seattle, you’re bound to find something you like on your way to DrupalCon Seattle.

We’re busy at DrupalCon Seattle with summits, sessions, community work, and more. Come visit us at booth #306, or check out where we will be below. Either way, come say hello.

Summits

• Monday April 8, 8:30 am – 12:30 pm: Anne Stefanyk is joining Pantheon at Selling to the Marketing Buyer .
• Tuesday, April 9, 9:00 am – 4:30 pm:  Anne leads an afternoon breakout session at the Nonprofit Summit ,
• Tuesday, April 9, 10:00 am – 4:30 pm: AmyJune Hineline leads the Community Summit .

Community

Our community liaison AmyJune will be staffing the Core Mentoring booth on Wednesday and Thursday. She’s also hosting two workshops:

• Monday April 8, 1:00 to 3:00 pm:  AmyJune will be leading a first-time contributor workshop ,
• Friday April 12, 9:00 am to noon: AmyJune hosts an encore first-time contributor workshop. Other Kanopians will be available to help with setting up tooling and getting folks ready to tackle real issues.

Sessions

Kanopians are speaking at three sessions:

• Wednesday 1:30 pm: Anne joins a panel discussion about Scaling Beyond Drupal .
• Thursday 9:45 am: Kat White joins Anne to share a D8 case study on an international cleaning client
• Thursday 3:15 pm: Anne talks about how to love working remotely .

Birds of a Feather (BOFs)

BOFs are a great way to have intimate discussions on topics, and collaborating with peers is one of our favorite things.

• Wednesday 11:00 am: AmyJune Hineline is hosting one on SimplyTest.me .
• Wednesday 4:45 pm: Sean Dietrich is hosting one on Docksal .
• Thursday 2:30 pm:, Jim Birch is hosting the Drupal and SEO BOF.

Collaborations

Each Kanopian will be collaborating all week long while at DrupalCon! Keep a look out for Jim, Jason, Cindy, Kat, AmyJune, and Sean as they join other Drupalers to help push the Drupal project forward.

Looking forward to seeing you at DrupalCon Seattle!

The NTC Conference is one of our favorites, and we can’t wait to see you all at NTC 2019. We even made a travel list on Spotify that’s comprised of songs from Portland artists and bands. Stop by booth #316, or come say hello at one of our sessions. We’d love to see you.

UPDATED March 20th: we updated the post to add the videos of the presentations below. 

Tuesday, March 12: PreConference Day

Responsible Tracking: Learning From Your Users Without Being Creepy

Session time: 9:45a – 10:45a
Presenter: Kat White

There are a number of high-impact but unobtrusive ways to learn more about how users interact with your site and your brand. Learn about your users and how they interact with your site. You’ll get a better understanding of the types of tracking tools, the information you can glean, and how to ensure your data tracking is responsible, transparent, and accessible.

Checking Under the Hood: Auditing Your Website for a Smooth Ride

Session time: 11:00a – 12:00p
Presenter: Anne Stefanyk

Site owners fear the day their site “breaks down.” Performing a site audit can ensure you understand the current state of your site, from the back end code level to the front end performance. It can also help you forecast potential problems when adding future features. Attendees will learn the basic building blocks of performing a technical audit.

Developing a Website RFP? Tips on Getting the Responses You Want

Session time: 1:00p – 2:00p
Presenter: Allison Manley

Nobody loves writing or responding to request for proposals (RFPs) but it is often a necessary process. We will discuss the steps it takes to write a good website RFP, but also how to attract the right vendors to bid and what to do to make this process an educational and meaningful experience.

Inclusive Content Strategy

Session time: 2:15p – 3:15p
Presenter: AmyJune Hineline

Inclusivity is at the heart of an effective content strategy. We’ll review what we can do as content authors to ensure our readers feel that we are speaking with them, not at them. We’ll look beyond the semantic markup and structured content to see the strategic value of inclusive, well written content.

Thursday, March 14

Finding a Needle in a Haystack: A Framework for Evaluating CMS Platforms

Session time: 10:30a – 11:45p
Presenter: Kat White

Finding the right CMS for your site feels like the classic “needle in a haystack” problem. Thoughtful platform selection is critical to your online success over the long term. Learn how to sort through the tools to find the best fit for your organization.

See you at NTC 2019!

Every October is one of my favorite conferences: HighEdWeb, which this year is in Sacramento. I’ve been at least 7 times (likely more), and spoken at a few. As someone who attends a variety of conferences in several verticals and industries, HighEdWeb is one of my favorites because of how well it’s organized, the quality of the keynote speakers, the chance to see the best sessions compete for the “Red Stapler” Best of Conference award, the social events, and the community of people. And it’s all amazingly and smoothly handled by unpaid volunteers!

I was lucky this year in that I picked a few sessions that were eventually voted Best In Track (such as this accessibility talk, and this one on turning client relationships into collaborations). But there were others I thought were also terrific. I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite “Golden Nuggets.”

Erin Supinka at Dartmouth College

Erin’s presentation, “A Tale of Strategy, Discovery, and Triumph” was a master class on infusing strategy into social media by aligning every move one makes with a business goal. Regardless of industry, this is just smart: whatever content you create for your organization should be tied to a strategic business goal, which provides a framework for the content you create. It also gives you an out in case a stakeholder wants to push content that doesn’t align with goals, saving both time and grief. Impressive talk, especially considering Erin is less than five years out of college herself . . . she handles strategy better than many who have worked in the industry for much longer. This talk deservedly won the Red Stapler award for the best talk of the conference.

Jennifer Stroth at Stanford Law

Jennifer’s talk, “How do we know what we’re doing? Coming up with an analytics strategy that works” was a great overview of how Stanford Law School tracked their site’s progress after a full end-to-end redesign and build on WordPress.

Scott Olivieri at Boston College

Scott’s talk on “Diversity in Higher Education” was both eye-opening and fact-based. Using examples and research, he demonstrates how to talk about (and how not to talk about) diversity on a school website, and how to market it properly with authenticity.

Kanopi is very familiar with the higher education space, so it’s also great to connect with others in higher ed to hear about the problems they need to solve, and to learn how they are solving them, usually with very limited resources. There is so much creativity in this group. HighEdWeb Sacramento was terrific, and I look forward to attending in Milwaukee next October!

In the meantime, contact us at Kanopi if you need help with your higher education site.