Image
27 Mar 2026
Drupal.org aggregator
Community Working Group posts: April Sides Wins the 2026 Aaron Winborn Award
At DrupalCon Chicago 2026, the Drupal Community Working Group was honored to announce April Sides as the recipient of the 2026 Aaron Winborn Award. Named in memory of longtime contributor Aaron Winborn, this award recognizes individuals who embody kindness, integrity, and a deep, above-and-beyond commitment to the Drupal community.
About April Sides
April Sides truly embodies the spirit of the Aaron Winborn Award through the care, consistency, and intention she brings to everything she does in the Drupal community. She has been a driving force behind initiatives like A11yTalks and Drupal Camp Asheville, while also contributing to programs like MOSA and serving on the CWG Community Health Team to foster a more welcoming and supportive space for all. As a speaker, trainer, organizer, and volunteer at nearly every camp she attends, April shows up again and again for this community. Her work is grounded in accessibility, inclusion, and genuine care for people, and her impact is felt not just in what she builds but in how she supports and uplifts everyone around her.
Heartfelt Nominations
April is not just a stellar professional. They are a habitual contributor. Serving their local Drupal community and now serving on a non-profit board over Drupal events, April is an inspiration. When I think of April, I remember how they brighten the room, with humble fashion sense, making the multitudes of duties seem easy.
April Sides deserves the Aaron Winborn Award because she consistently shows up for the Drupal community with care, integrity, and a deep sense of responsibility for the people in it. April does the kind of work that often goes unnoticed, not because it isn't important, but because it's rooted in trust, discretion, and kindness. She makes space for people when they need it most and does so without expectation of recognition. Over the years, I've seen April take on some of the hardest and emotionally demanding roles in our community, including event leadership, community health work, and serving as a code of conduct contact. These roles require empathy, patience, and fairness, and April approaches them in a way that makes people feel heard and supported. When situations are complicated or uncomfortable, she listens, she helps, and she follows through. April's commitment goes beyond maintaining community spaces. She actively works to make them better. April leads with kindness and integrity, and her quiet, consistent dedication has made the Drupal community a safer, more welcoming place for so many of us.
April is such a great person and cares so much about the community. She's an organizer of the second best DrupalCamp in the world (which is no small feat). I believe that camp would not exist without her hard work.
Award Creation
Special thank you to Annertech and CSGov in Czechia for creating and delivering the award this year.
Take a look at how the award was made.
About the Aaron Winborn Award
The award is named after a long-time Drupal contributor who lost his battle with ALS in 2015. This award recognizes an individual who, like Aaron, demonstrates personal integrity, kindness, and an above-and-beyond commitment to the Drupal project and community.
Previous winners of the award are Cathy Theys, Gabór Hojtsy, Nikki Stevens, Kevin Thull, Leslie Glynn, Baddý Breidert, AmyJune Hineline, Angie Byron, Randy Fay, Mike Anello, and Kristen Pol. Current CWG Conflict Resolution Team members, along with previous winners, selected the winner based on nominations submitted by Drupal community members.
Nominations for next year's award will open in early 2027.
File attachments:
27 Mar 2026 5:39pm GMT
DrupalCon News & Updates: Your Drupal CMS Track at DrupalCon Europe Rotterdam 2026
The Drupal CMS track is back at DrupalCon Europe! Whether you are a site builder, a contributor, an agency leader, or someone just getting started with Drupal CMS, this is the place to share your story, learn from others, and help shape the future of Drupal CMS together.
From Barcelona to Rotterdam
What began as a mini-track at DrupalCon Barcelona 2024 has quickly grown into one of the most popular tracks at DrupalCon Europe. In Vienna 2025, the track showcased the journey toward Drupal CMS 1.0 - and the community responded with enthusiasm, filling sessions and sparking conversations across the event.
Foto by PD Johnson
Now, with Drupal CMS continuing to mature and gain adoption, DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 is the perfect stage to highlight real-world experiences, new features, and the road ahead.
What We Are Looking For
We are interested in hearing from the innovators who are driving Drupal CMS development as well as organisations adopting Drupal CMS on topics such as:
- Amplify first impressions, onboarding, and quick wins for those getting started.
- Refine the conversation around site building, recipes, and extending functionality.
- Reframe the experience of moving from other platforms or upgrading from classic Drupal.
- Showcase how to get involved and why your contributions make an impact.
- Share case studies and lessons learned from real-world projects in production.
- Define the vision, roadmap, and community direction for the future.
Submit Your Session Proposal
Submit your session proposal today! Visit the DrupalCon Rotterdam 2026 website to submit your proposal. Whether it is a talk, a panel, or a hands-on workshop, we want to hear from you.
Meet the Track Team
The Drupal CMS track is organized by a dedicated group of community members. This year's track team includes:
- Jeremy Chinquist
- Vladimir Roudakov
- Dan Lemon
Check out all tracks and track team members here. Have questions about the track? Reach out to us on Drupal Slack or e-mail Kuoni.
DrupalCon Europe Rotterdam 2026 is shaping up to be an incredible event. The Drupal CMS track is your opportunity to contribute to the conversation, share what you have built, and connect with the community. We look forward to seeing you in Rotterdam!
27 Mar 2026 2:04pm GMT
26 Mar 2026
Drupal.org aggregator
Dries Buytaert: State of Drupal presentation (March 2026)
This year, Drupal turned 25. DrupalCon Chicago felt like the right place to mark that milestone. My keynote was part celebration and part wake-up call. I talked about Drupal's foundations, how AI is putting pressure on them, and why I believe we can rebuild them stronger than before.
If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below or download my slides (32.6 MB).
Site templates and the marketplace
About a year ago at DrupalCon Atlanta, I introduced the idea of site templates and a marketplace to go with them. By DrupalCon Vienna, we had one site template, but no marketplace.
In Chicago, I showed eleven site templates available in a basic marketplace at marketplace.drupal.org. All eleven can be installed directly from the Drupal CMS installer.
AI for site building
For more than 20 years, Drupal's ecosystem has rested on a stable triangle: the platform itself, digital agencies who bring Drupal into the real world, and the community that builds and maintains it. That triangle has proven remarkably resilient through many waves of new technologies.
But what happens when AI disrupts all three sides at the same time? In my keynote, I showed how we are responding.
I started off by showing a demo of a workflow I think will become common for Drupal agencies. You spend 15 minutes prototyping a website with AI, then convert it to a Drupal site with the help of AI and a skilled developer in a matter of hours.
AI gets you to a prototype fast. Drupal gives it the foundations that last.
Organizations will always need real workflows, permissions, security, scalability, integrations, compliance, and governance. Drupal is a great platform for this.
The demo worked because Drupal CMS ships with Drupal Canvas, which includes both CLI tools and AI skills. But the real magic comes from Drupal's foundations: the APIs, building blocks, and architecture we have developed over 25 years. This is the accidental AI advantage I talked about before. Drupal really is the best CMS for AI.
AI for content management
At DrupalCon Vienna, I introduced the Context Control Center as a rough prototype. Since then, we have added many features. It is now nearly production-ready.
The idea is straightforward: AI agents need good context to help manage tasks in Drupal. With the Context Control Center, teams define their brand voice, target audiences, key messages, product details, and editorial guidelines in one place. Then every AI agent on the site draws from this single source of truth. The result is that you create knowledge once, and scale it to all the pages and content on your website.
In my keynote, I showed two demos of the Context Control Center in action. First, Drupal's AI agents turn a simple marketing brief into a complete, on-brand page using Drupal Canvas, consulting the Context Control Center along the way. It followed brand rules, asked clarifying questions, generated structured data for search, and added cross-links.
Second, I showed a proof of concept for dynamic contexts, where the Context Control Center pulls in real-time data from Google Analytics to help improve content performance after publication.
Saying no to AI slop
AI is lowering the barrier to contribute to Open Source projects like Drupal. On paper, that sounds great. More contributors, more patches, more momentum.
But it can also be a real challenge. The volume of contributions is going up while the quality is going down. More patches are landing on a small group of maintainers, and reviewing low-quality code wastes their time.
If you're using AI to contribute, you are responsible for what you submit: don't submit code you don't understand. Our quality standards matter, and we will uphold them.
Drupal Growth Initiative
Having a great product is not enough. We also need to tell a great story. As we approach an important readiness milestone by DrupalCon Rotterdam this fall, the Drupal Association is ready to take marketing to the next level.
We are launching a Drupal Growth Initiative organized across three tracks:
- Enterprise Drupal growth
- Drupal CMS adoption
- AI leadership
Our craft always evolves
In my keynote, I also told the stories of two community members who embraced AI in a meaningful way.
Aidan Foster, who has been running Foster Interactive for 17 years, chose to go all in on the Drupal AI Initiative instead of staying on the sidelines. Together with his team, he is rebuilding the foundations of his agency to leverage AI and prepare for what is next.
And Jürgen Haas, a longtime contributor and creator of the ECA module, used AI to move at the speed of a team and make Drupal's ECA module much easier to use. In both cases, AI amplifies expertise. It does not replace it.
The world is being flooded with AI-generated average. Average is cheap now, but expertise remains hard-earned and valuable. This community has spent 25 years building it, and that is not something AI can replicate.
AI is the storm, and AI is the way through the storm. I said that first in Vienna. Six months later, I believe it more than ever. Not as a slogan, but as something I have watched happen. We need more people like Aidan and Jürgen. If you want to get involved, join us on Drupal Slack or attend DrupalCon Rotterdam this fall.
26 Mar 2026 11:06pm GMT