DrupalCon is your best opportunity to learn about Drupal, whether your interests are in the technology, the community, or the businesses supporting it. The next DrupalCon will be held in London from August 22 to August 26. Commerce Guys has sponsored and presented at the event since DrupalCon San Francisco in 2009, and we've always seen it as a great opportunity to get precious feedback from other users and developers of the modules and work we contribute. At DrupalCon Chicago in May, we unveiled the beta version of Drupal Commerce, which will go final by the time we fly to London.
Accordingly, when the call for sessions opened for London, we hopped at the opportunity to propose a wide variety of sessions dealing with e-commerce on Drupal. Specifically, these session proposals center around understanding Drupal Commerce from various angles - as a beginner, a site builder, a contrib developer, and an integration developer - and incorporate many people from our team and other project contributors eager to share how they've used the modules in their recent projects.
The call for sessions closed last weekend and the votes are now open. Read on for a full list of our team's proposed sessions and links to go vote for the sessions you'd like to attend in London.
EVOLVING FROM UBERCART TO DRUPAL COMMERCE
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/evolving-ubercart-drupal-commerce
E-commerce on Drupal has a storied history involving major Drupal based projects, integrated applications, and ground-up rewrites. Since 2008, Ubercart has been the primary solution for e-commerce on Drupal. However, with the unveiling of Drupal Commerce at DrupalCon San Francisco and subsequent presentations at camps and cons around the world, it's been easy for people to see that a fresh look at e-commerce on Drupal is exactly what Drupal 7 demanded.
Whereas with Ubercart, our foundational question was "What can you do with it?", with Drupal Commerce our foundational question is "What can you build with it?"
DRUPAL COMMERCE, A POWERFUL E-COMMERCE PLATFORM
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/drupal-commerce-powerful-e-commerce-platform
E-commerce has entered a new era. The time when e-commerce only meant managing a catalog and organizing a check-out process is over. The merchants' expectations are now much broader. e-commerce is about managing the right combination between 3 key Concepts: Commerce, managing Content and building a user's Community.
Drupal 7 and Drupal Commerce have been very closely integrated in order to enable the merchants to build their stores while enjoying fully the content and community tools that are very deeply inscribed in Drupal's DNA.
In this session, we will overview use cases, taken in or out of the Drupal world and explain how Drupal Commerce can help the merchants grow their business online. We will also describe why Drupal Commerce has a unique value proposition on the market, and why it is so appealing when compared to the other solutions around.
DRUPAL COMMERCE CONTRIBUTED MODULES OVERVIEW
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/drupal-commerce-contributed-modules-overview
Drupal Commerce provides a lean core of commerce functionality, which is meant to be extended with contrib modules for common use cases. But there are hundred of different use cases, and Drupal Commerce on it's own can't cover it all. And that's where the magic of the Drupal Community comes in.
These days everyone is writing a Commerce module. Shipping, stock, migration, affiliation, payment methods, lions, tigers and more! This presentation will show you what the "golden" contribs are, covering the most popular use cases, then do a rapid fly-over of other contributed modules on the horizon. Finally we'll show you how we (and you) can keep up with them.
DEVELOPING WITH DRUPAL COMMERCE
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/developing-drupal-commerce
Some of the earliest and most complex deployments of Drupal Commerce have been developed in Europe, including Eurocentres for global language course sales, SubHub for subscription management, and traditional physical product sales at augustes.com. These sites' developers have worked their way through the dark corners of the Commerce APIs and really blazed a trail through Drupal 7 site development in general, contributing patches and knowledge upstream to the project and community.
Join us for a panel discussion moderated by Ryan Szrama that explores the experience of these developers and Commerce Guys' own integration team to find out what it's like to develop with Drupal Commerce in preparation for your next big project. Questions will focus on building sites with complex requirements, integrating with third party services, and using Drupal Commerce in Europe.
DRUPAL COMMERCE NUTS & BOLTS FOR CONTRIB DEVELOPERS
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/drupal-commerce-nuts-bolts-contrib-developers
Drupal Commerce provides a lean core of commerce functionality, which is meant to be extended with contrib modules for common use cases. And these days, everyone is writing a Commerce module. Haven't started yours yet?
Come learn how Commerce uses D7 technologies (entities, fields, the ajax and testing frameworks...) and contrib modules (Entity API, Views, Rules) to achieve an unprecedented level of flexibility. Learn about important patterns such as API/UI separation, building UIs with Views (including embedding forms), storing prices, price pre-calculation, etc. Then learn how to apply the lessons learned to your own code, especially if it is code that interacts with Drupal Commerce.
GOING FROM BORING BOUTIQUE TO SOCIAL COMMERCE
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/going-boring-boutique-social-commerce
Every online app is becoming social - people can like things, share things, vote and comment on things, post photos of things and localize things. Now let’s have people do that while buying things! There is no doubt about the huge popularity enjoyed by social networking to date. This boom has transformed internet use and the character of the Web itself. What is the impact of these new uses on e-commerce and how to leverage this to increase conversion?
The presentation will cover a wide range of strategies, from product offerings that are de-localized form your store, to on-demand sales, group purchasing, and private sales. We will present the 5 steps to bring social into your client store.
IMPORTING A STORE INTO DRUPAL COMMERCE
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/importing-store-drupal-commerce
Many online stores start out as a list of products, descriptions, prices, and images. Sometimes this is a CSV file or other feed, sometimes it's a legacy site, such as an Ubercart site. We'll show how to use the Feeds and Commerce Feeds modules to build a complete store, using importing techniques.
THE ROYAL COMMERCE CHALLENGE : BUILDING HER MAJESTY'S DRUPAL STORE
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/royal-commerce-challenge-building-her-majestys-drupal-store
The challenge: Create a functioning online store that's fit for a Queen! In only 40 minutes! (with time for questions after.)
Starting line: The install page of the Drupal Commerce Kickstart install profile.
Finishing line: A functioning online store with a catalog of products; a modified cart and checkout pages; a 3rd-party payment method; a theme other than Garland / Bartik; proper UK taxes and currency; a simple discount system - and full explanations along the way!
The knighthood prize: Social commerce tools! And more royalness....
The audience will determine if the presenter has succeeded in meeting the challenge.
TAXES, DISCOUNTS AND SPECIAL OFFERS IN DRUPAL COMMERCE
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/taxes-discounts-and-special-offers-drupal-commerce
Drupal Commerce takes advantage of the powerful Drupal 7 Rules framework to provide a wide range of flexibility in managing taxes, discounts and special offers. All without needed to write a line of code...
In this hands-on session we'll present: Drupal Commerce's built-in support for US-style Sales Tax as well as European style VAT, how to configure tax rates, how to manage taxes for multiple tax rates (book tax versus food tax, etc), how to manage multiple-jurisdiction taxes (US state plus federal taxes), how to create rules to offer simple discounts, and finally, how to manage more complex discounts based on date, location or even other items in your cart. In this demonstration we will discuss different use cases from around the world based on our experience addressing these challenges.
DRUPAL COMMERCE AND PANELS
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/drupal-commerce-and-panels
Customizing the look and feel of your product displays is an important part of having an effective store, come learn how Panels fits with Drupal Commerce and how to take advantage of product relationships, field level rendering and custom panels layouts.
Drupal Commerce is a commerce solution for Drupal 7. As a ground up rebuild of a commerce solution it takes advantage of a number of new Drupal 7 technologies that give it definitive advantages for custom panels layouts.
THE PRICE IS RIGHT? E-COMMERCE STRATEGIES WITH DRUPAL COMMERCE
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/price-right-ecommerce-strategies-drupal-commerce
Who knew setting the price of a product could get so complicated? From complex price discrimination tactics (hint : it's not about being bigoted), to flexible pricing based on quantity (physical products or duration), selling products can be a lot harder than just choosing the right price for a product. In fact, a single product almost never has a single price.
Join us as we discuss several case studies where we have been confronted with complex rules designed to optimize pricing, and what we have done to resolve these challenges using Drupal Commerce, the new fully-Drupal-7 integrated Drupal ecommerce solution. We'll discuss quantity-based price breaks, situational price changes and duration based pricing. And seeing as how we'll have some great talent in the room, we'll also take some audience questions early on to review strategies together towards the end of the presentation.
GOING UPMARKET WITH DRUPAL-BASED PRODUCTS
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/going-upmarket-drupal-based-products
Enterprise 2.0 with Drupal Commons! E-Commerce with Drupal Commerce! Publishing with OpenPublish! Enterprise Voip with Drupal Telephony! (we're working on it). Drupal is more and more used as the basis to build new products, taking Drupal into markets for which it was not exactly designed in the first place.
The power of Drupal and its community allows for fast implementation of these solutions but there is always a gap between the Drupal world and these new markets, a gap that is filled with opportunities and that we sometimes have trouble to see, just because we're coming from a very different ecosystem. Drupal based solutions can be leaders in their own market instead of just challengers. This session will show how we can effectively moving upmarket faster that we can think at first sight.
DOCUMENT-ORIENTED STORAGE FOR DRUPAL 8
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/document-oriented-storage-drupal-8
Drupal 6 was strongly tied to MySQL and its table format. Drupal 7 introduced the concept of Entities and Fields. Now comes Drupal 8, and it needs a new Copernican Revolution: switching to storing and managing generic semi-structured "documents". In this session, we will discuss the need for a Document-oriented storage API in Drupal 8, review the state of the art in this domain and discuss implementation options.
PATTERNS FOR CLOUD COMPUTING
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/patterns-cloud-computing
Come and learn the inner workings of Drupal 7, the most agile and flexible version of Drupal, through an analysis of the problems and patterns for Drupal on Cloud: remote database, assets storage and distribution, smart caching strategies in Drupal 7, code and configuration management
DRUPAL COMMERCE FOR PROJECT OWNERS
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/drupal-commerce-project-owners
Learn the ins and outs of building e-Commerce sites with Drupal 7 + Drupal Commerce from Mike O'Connor (Commerce Guys), based on real world projects! The key point of this presentation is how to build more, with less custom code, using the power of Drupal 7, views, panels, and Drupal Commerce. Additionally, you should learn when code is required, and minimize technical debt when you do add custom code.
BENCHMARKING DRUPAL AND DRUPAL-BASED SOLUTIONS
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/benchmarking-drupal-and-drupal-based-solutions
Benchmarks are playing a big part in selling Drupal and Drupal-based against competing solutions. Benchmarks are one of the most efficient ways to "get the big picture" to customers. But doing a benchmark is a time-consuming, bean-counting work, that go often go wrong, resulting in unbearable spreadsheets covered with little crosses here and there. In this session i will present a serie of fast, attractive, re-usable, multi-dimensional benchmarking patterns based on my experience converting large customers to Drupal.
UNDERSTANDING CTOOLS PAGE MANAGER
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/understanding-ctools-page-manager
Page Manager is perhaps the most misunderstood module in the drupal ecosystem. Exposing a user interface to hook_menu() is confusing for most developers, much less site builders. Come have the fundamental building blocks of page_manager explained, why they exist, how they work, and how best to utilize them for your own benefit.
CREATING A NEW ADMINISTRATION PARADIGM
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/creating-new-administration-paradigm
Administration within Drupal tends to be a monolithic structure that users must learn to navigate and utilize if they ever want to take full advantage of the platform. In addition to this, the permission architecture of Drupal can be a bit arbitrary as to who gets access to what, often failing to have an appropriate level of granularity. In this session I will show you how to deploy custom administrative environments for your users, create a more granular access system, and save it for long term use and re-deployment. This session will focus primarily on the context_admin module and its relationship with ctools/page_manager. A working knowledge of features module will help in understanding this session, as well as experience with panels.
DRUPAL COMMERCE AND PANELS
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/drupal-commerce-and-panels
Customizing the look and feel of your product displays is an important part of having an effective store, come learn how Panels fits with Drupal Commerce and how to take advantage of product relationships, field level rendering and custom panels layouts. Drupal Commerce is a commerce solution for Drupal 7. As a ground up rebuild of a commerce solution it takes advantage of a number of new Drupal 7 technologies that give it definitive advantages for custom panels layouts.
UX AND DESIGN FOR YOUR E-COMMERCE SHOP
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/ux-and-design-your-e-commerce-shop
How do you get your customers to buy more, stay longer and leave your site happier people? We'll explore the UX and design processes from start-to-finish for creating an E-commerce shop by focusing on the needs of your customers. In the end, you'll know how to deliver not only a great design but a user experience that allows your customers to quickly complete their order with complete confidence and without abandoning the checkout process.
DRUPAL MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS & ALLIANCES
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/drupal-mergers-acquisitions-alliances
Drupal is a growing and maturing industry. The typical Drupal business is no longer just a small sole proprietor, trying to make ends meet. There is now a wide range of businesses working with Drupal, from well established large integrators, to well funded venture-backed startups seeking to revolutionize the way websites are built. Mergers and acquisitions in such a landscape are to be expected, and recent history shows that consolidation is already happening.
OTHER COMMERCE RELATED SESSIONS
See also these sessions proposed by our friends and partners:
- Multi-currency Shops with Drupal Commerce - This session aims to shed light on how to deal with multiple currencies by giving not only an overview over the possible approaches and their advantages / disadvantages but also by showing some concrete examples.
- Drupal Mobile Retailing - More consumers than ever are shopping through their mobile devices. In this session we’ll examine the challenges of building not just a mobile e-commerce site or an app, but a complete shopping experience using Drupal Commerce and mobile technologies.
- Social Commerce - Buzzword or the Next Big Commerce Trend? - This session explores a whole range of features to increase trust and thus reduce sales lost at this point in the purchase - and how these can be implemented using Drupal.