Over 300 participants from councils and their suppliers discussed how they use LocalGov Drupal to improve digital services.
Here, Maria from Agile Collective, the event sponsor, looks back at her highlights from LocalGov Drupal week.
Our agency, Agile Collective, was lucky to sponsor LocalGov Drupal Week 2024. It was a fantastic event that reminded us just how diverse and vibrant the LocalGov Drupal community is. We had presentations from developers, content designers, product managers, UX specialists, and more, all coming together to celebrate the brilliant work happening every day to improve digital council services.
The LocalGov Drupal project continues to progress at pace thanks to the incredible enthusiasm of those involved. It feels infectious, and Agile Collective loves being involved. We know it's the same for others, and that’s a large part of why the project continues to attract more contributors. It’s a virtuous circle of contagious enthusiasm and contributions that strengthen the distribution, giving councils more of what they need regarding functionality and community.
Taking time to help out
We know that everyone appreciates the time council teams take to share their knowledge and experiences so that they can be applied to future projects. This commitment to helping others is exemplified in LocalGov Drupal Week.
A stellar example is from Big Blue Door and Southwark Council, who gave us an insight into their digital transformation project. We were particularly impressed with the Figma Design System, which Big Blue Door shared with the community. We’ll be using that for sure.
New developments
With such a rapidly growing product and community, it's hard to keep up with all the developments. However, individual councils are picking up LocalGov Drupal and using it in new and inspiring ways.
We enjoyed Jamie and Lucia from Wirral Council’s session “10 ways LocalGov Drupal has improved our website.”
Here, they share how the council is using some cool features - some familiar: Microsites, Subsites, Paragraphs, Publications, Guides and some new (to me): Scheduling alert banners, Preview links, Service contact owners and Content access by path (restricting editing by section). Number 10 on the list is “The community”. Jamie outlines different ways to get involved in the community and says, “The more you put into [the community], the more you get out of it.” I agree! :)
In the week's first session, we heard from three councils - Sheffield, Cumberland and Essex - about how they’ve been using LocalGov Drupal as their council intranet. This ia a great example of how flexible the platform is.
Our very own James Hall gave an insightful session on the importance and benefits of improving your website performance. He introduced some key concepts in performance jargon and then focused on some of the most problematic areas for council websites.
Another session, which focused on issues close to our hearts, was the collaborative session between Woking Council and Invuse. It focused on prioritising user-centric design. They talked us through their current project's discovery phase and shared some insights gleaned through user engagement.
The future
The project's future looks bright, and it was great to hear that the core team is working hard to ensure its financial sustainability. The Community Fund idea is an excellent example of this. Getting councils and suppliers together to fund and work on specific functionality is a great idea. It gives some flexibility to the funding model and allows those councils with more financial resources to contribute a little more to get more code shipped.
The session on community funding was the highlight of week for me. Rup from Chicken gave us a first glimpse of the PDF importer he’s been working on. The team is looking for more funding for this work. There were also contributions from Will Callaghan (LocalGov Drupal), Chris Wales (Rohallion), Mark Conroy (The Confident) and Marios Ioannidis (Orion Web) in the session. Check out the Community Fund page if you’re interested.
Finn’s session, Looking Forward to 2025 Drupal Developments, was also interesting. This was a horizon scan of things heading our way in the LGD and wider Drupal community. This included an update on Microsites, which now has a stable release, using AI in Drupal, which has some interesting practical applications, and the Drupal Starshot project, which could be a game changer for anyone with ambitions to build a simple website. There’s lots to look forward to!
We’ve been involved in LocalGov Drupal since the Alpha phase of the project, and it's fantastic to see it continue to gather momentum. Events like LocalGov Drupal Week help to crystalise this success, and we’re proud to sponsor the event. We look forward to seeing you in some of the community sessions very soon, including the accessibility drop-ins, which I run.