Being Human

What’s the first thing you think of when someone is called “mentally ill”? Many probably imagine someone unkempt, babbling incoherently on the street or locked up in an asylum.

I am mentally ill, but despite my multiple diagnoses, I am a functional member of society. I’ve been able to deal with my mental illness with treatment, support, and lots of work, and if you’re suffering from mental illness, chances are that you can as well.

In this session, attendees will learn about the basics of accessibility through the lens of inclusive design; the talk will also highlight roles for developers as advocates and implementation specialists for accessibility. Situating people first, this session will examine how persons with disabilities—permanent, temporary, or situational—can face challenges working with non-accessible websites.

Cutting-edge organizations are turning their focus toward humanizing workplaces and improving the support they offer employees and contractors alike. 

When the workplace offers clear purpose, open discussion, and psychological safety, team members will thrive. But what does that mean for the organization? Reduced turnover, greater productivity, enhanced relationships, and overall happier people.

Stress can be a healthy motivator or a crippling disease. That is why so many prominent workplaces - such as Goldman Sachs, Google, Aetna, Ford, and General Mills - offer mindfulness training to their employees. These organizations understand that if you change your relationship to stress, it can open the doorway to concentration, creativity, resilience, and well-being.

Our websites are maturing into feature-rich publishing platforms, allowing collaboration across organizations and delivering content across multiple channels. But the out of the box publishing experience is fairly flat -- with content either published or not.

Getting it Done with Strategy

Accessibility is more than code, it’s more than UX, it’s also a vital part of your marketing strategy. In this session, we’ll talk about ways to talk about accessibility that showcase it’s value to your stakeholders. 

We’ll touch on:

• ROI -  metrics show accessibility is good for business.

• UX - how many of your non-disabled users aren’t converting? 

• SEO - get more out of your marketing budget!

• Legal - it’s real and really important.

I've always had a mentality of giving back to the people who made me.  How to provide insight to others who might be going through similar motions or experiences that I've traveled so they can learn from my mistakes, my successes, and why certain paths were taken.  One of the biggest giving back moments of my life was being a Board member for ADUG.  I never got a lot of return out of it financially, as that wasn't my intent.  My intent was always to give back to the open source community.  In college, I was a PHP/Front-End Developer, and it gave me a perspective that I otherwise wouldn't ha

What can you do when something or someone is bothering you?  

A Hot Topic Conversation is one where you have a real issue you want to improve, and that you feel strongly about. It has two parts: logical and emotional. Both areas must be addressed for a Hot Topic Conversation to be productive.

This session is for you if you want to improve your communication skills at work, home, and in partnership relationships. We will discuss how to prepare for a hot topic conversation, how to be a better listener, and how to make sure your communication is both felt and understood.

Lots of people have built their careers around Drupal, but not everyone!  No matter your current role, industry or level of experience you can leverage your work history to further your career both in and out of Drupal. Whether a developer, designer, project manager, or content creator, you have useful skills that can help you advance in different ways - just think about where you want to be going over time.