On 9 December 2025, leaders from across the globe will meet in Paris for the Drupal AI Summit, hosted within the Future of Software Technologies (FOST) conference, the world’s largest federated technology event.
The summit brings together engineers, architects, product leaders, and marketers who are putting AI to use in real systems. It explores what happens when AI meets the open-source values that built Drupal: transparency, community, and long-term thinking.
Within FOST, the Drupal AI track will host twelve focused sessions led by leaders in Drupal AI. These sessions will share lessons from real projects and outline the steps toward making Drupal the most AI-enabled open-source CMS.
Attendees who are part of the Drupal community can access complimentary VIP tickets, each valued at €299, which include entry to 25+ co-located tech conferences at the same venue. The discussions will focus on architecture, governance, and collaboration, showing how to create AI tools that teams can trust and maintain responsibly.
View complete agenda and secure your ticket today!
Why this summit mattersAI is now part of how organizations work, publish, and communicate. The question is no longer whether to use it but how to use it well.
Through its open-source foundation, Drupal is helping teams improve publishing, accessibility, and content quality with AI. These are not experiments; they are production workflows that make everyday work faster and clearer.
Most AI systems are created quietly in the background, out of view in black boxes. Open source makes this work more transparent. It brings the process out for everyone to see and understand, so teams can see how the system behaves, adjust it with intent, and guide it with clarity.
Progress on Drupal AI has accelerated in the past year, with the Drupal community shaping it as a framework for practical features across content generation, moderation, governance, and automation. Each feature is designed with human oversight in the loop to keep controlled and responsible AI at the core.
The Paris summit brings these efforts into a wider conversation. It is a place for people who want to see AI and open systems work together, as partners in how modern software is built and maintained.
Building togetherAI will continue to influence how digital experiences are created and maintained. The question is how we build it and who gets to decide.
The Drupal AI Summit is for those who believe progress should stay open and shared. It is a day for collaboration, curiosity, and honest discussion about what responsible and open AI can look like when built together.
Join us in Paris on 9 December 2025 at CNIT Forest, La Défense. Learn how Drupal and its community are shaping the next phase of AI, one that keeps people at the center of every creation.
In this episode, Martin sits down with Adam Boros, a passionate developer who shares his journey in the Drupal community. Adam discusses the importance of automation for small teams and recounts his experiences with Drupal's evolution from version 6 to the recent resurgence of enjoyment with Drupal 10. He introduces his innovative personal calendar builder created for DrupalCon Vienna, explaining its simplicity and the enthusiastic community feedback it received.
For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/cafe011
TopicsAdam was originally studying Architecture but never graduated. He started web development as a self-learner after working a few years in print design and DTP back in 2002. Using Flash5 and ActionScript at first, Adam discovered Drupal around 4.6 while looking for a CMS to replace PHPNuke for a local NGO. It was true love at first sight and after a few years of hobby projects and active involvement with the Drupal community in Budapest he ended up being a full-time drupalist at a university where Adam has worked since then for the past 15+ years as "Drupal Systems Architect".
Martin Anderson-ClutzMartin is a highly respected figure in the Drupal community, known for his extensive contributions as a developer, speaker, and advocate for open-source innovation. Based in London, Ontario, Canada, Martin began his career as a graphic designer before transitioning into web development. His journey with Drupal started in late 2005 when he was seeking a robust multilingual CMS solution, leading him to embrace Drupal's capabilities.
Martin holds the distinction of being the world's first Triple Drupal Grand Master, certified across Drupal 7, 8, and 9 as a Developer, Front-End Specialist, and Back-End Specialist. (TheDropTimes) He also possesses certifications in various Acquia products and is UX certified by the Nielsen Norman Group.
Currently serving as a Senior Solutions Engineer at Acquia, Martin has been instrumental in advancing Drupal's ecosystem. He has developed and maintains several contributed modules, including Smart Date and Search Overrides, and has been actively involved in the Drupal Recipes initiative, particularly focusing on event management solutions. His current work on the Event Platform aims to streamline the creation and management of event-based websites within Drupal.
Beyond development, Martin is a prominent speaker and educator, having presented at numerous Drupal events such as DrupalCon Barcelona and EvolveDrupal. He is also a co-host of the "Talking Drupal" podcast, where he leads the "Module of the Week" segment, sharing insights on various Drupal modules. Martin's dedication to the Drupal community is evident through his continuous efforts to mentor, innovate, and promote best practices within the open-source landscape.
ResourcesCalendar Builder https://aboros.github.io/drupalcon-vienna-2025-calendar-builder/ Calendar Builder repo https://github.com/aboros/drupalcon-vienna-2025-calendar-builder
GuestsAdam Boros - aboros
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Get to know Paul Johnson and James Tillotson, leading 1xINTERNET’s UK growth and bringing Drupal, AI, and open-source solutions closer to British clients.
When the Drupal community gathers, something extraordinary happens.
From 14 to 17 October 2025, nearly a thousand people came together at the Austria Center Vienna, Austria to celebrate open source, exchange ideas, and contribute to the future of Drupal.
DrupalCon Vienna 2025 was not only a conference, it was a living example of collaboration, diversity, and innovation in action.
Image A Community in NumbersThis year’s event welcomed 935 registered participants, with an impressive 96.04% check-in rate.
Interest in DrupalCon Vienna built steadily through the year, with the highest number of registrations coming in June (307) and September (236),
A Truly Global AudienceDrupalCon Vienna brought together a remarkable mix of voices and perspectives.
Participants represented over 40 countries, with 85% coming from across Europe, 8% from the United States, and 7% from other regions.
The top ten countries represented were:
From Costa Rica to Kenya, from Armenia to New Zealand, attendees crossed borders, time zones, and languages to connect through one shared passion - Drupal.
Image New Faces and Familiar FriendsOne of the most inspiring aspects of the Drupal community is its balance between newcomers and long-time contributors.
In Vienna, 28% of participants attended their first DrupalCon, while 38% had taken part in four or more DrupalCons. This mix of fresh enthusiasm and deep experience keeps the community dynamic and forward-looking.
For the first time, this year’s DrupalCon introduced Drupal in a Day, organized by Hilmar Kári Hallbjörnsson. The training session welcomed 113 learners, aged 18 to 52, highlighting the wide range of people discovering Drupal for the first time.
Attendee BackgroundAn impressive 38% of attendees were delegated by their company to attend DrupalCon Vienna.
Attendees were mainly represented by:
In terms of expertise:
The majority of participants (53%) came from digital agencies, design, or development shops.
They represented a variety of industries, with the strongest presence from:
Behind the scenes, the heart of DrupalCon beats thanks to its volunteers.
A huge thank-you goes to the committees, track teams, and on-site volunteers who made the event possible.
This year, 56 on-site volunteers contributed their time and expertise, supporting session reviews, contribution mentoring, information desks, and photography. Their dedication ensured that every attendee could learn, contribute, and feel part of something bigger.
Made Possible by Our SponsorsNone of this would have been possible without the generous support of our sponsors.
Their continued investment in Drupal helps us deliver high-quality, inclusive, and impactful events that keep the open-source spirit alive.
Looking AheadDrupalCon Vienna 2025 reminded us that open source is more than code. It is community, creativity, and collaboration in action.
Thank you to everyone who joined and contributed to making DrupalCon Vienna 2025 a success.
By generating and tricking a user into visiting a malicious URL, an attacker can perform site defacement.
The defacement is not stored and is only present when the URL has been crafted for that purpose. Only the defacement is present, so no other site content (such as branding) is rendered.
Solution:Install the latest version:
Drupal 11.0.x, Drupal 10.3.x, and below are end-of-life and do not receive security coverage. (Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 have both reached end-of-life.)
Reported By: Fixed By:Drupal core contains a chain of methods that is exploitable when an insecure deserialization vulnerability exists on the site. This so-called "gadget chain" presents no direct threat, but is a vector that can be used to achieve remote code execution if the application deserializes untrusted data due to another vulnerability.
It is not directly exploitable.
This issue is mitigated by the fact that in order for it to be exploitable, a separate vulnerability must be present to allow an attacker to pass unsafe input to unserialize(). There are no such known exploits in Drupal core.
Solution:Install the latest version:
Drupal 11.0.x, Drupal 10.3.x, and below are end-of-life and do not receive security coverage. (Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 have both reached end-of-life.)
Reported By: Fixed By:Drupal Core has a rarely used feature, provided by an underlying library, which allows certain attributes of incoming HTTP requests to be overridden.
This functionality can be abused in a way that may cause Drupal to cache response data that it should not. This can lead to legitimate requests receiving inappropriate cached responses (cache poisoning).
This could be exploited in various ways:
Changes are being made in the underlying library which will mitigate this problem, but in the meantime Drupal core has been hardened to protect against this vulnerability.
Solution:Install the latest version:
Drupal 11.0.x, Drupal 10.3.x, and below are end-of-life and do not receive security coverage. (Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 have both reached end-of-life.)
Reported By:The core system module handles downloads of private and temporary files. Contrib modules can define additional kinds of files (schemes) that may also be handled by the system module.
In some cases, files may be served with the HTTP header Cache-Control: public when they should be uncacheable. This can lead to some users getting cached versions of files with information they should not be able to access. For example, files may be cached by Varnish or a CDN.
This vulnerability is mitigated by the following:
Install the latest version:
Drupal 11.0.x, Drupal 10.3.x, and below are end-of-life and do not receive security coverage. (Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 have both reached end-of-life.)
Reported By:Planning an enterprise eCommerce implementation is notoriously difficult. There’s no single best way to approach it. Every organization has a different mix of legacy systems, required features, customers, and staff, not to mention the internal politics that can shift requirements like the moon shifts the tides.
But there are some commonalities. Almost every enterprise site we undertake begins with a massive feature list and gap analysis, and organizations often try to understand the scale and complexity of their implementation by classifying features.
They put them in buckets like:
Each one is a different level of effort, and theoretically, these buckets will help with estimation and planning.
The problem? Terms used to describe features are often fuzzy and unclear.
Take “invoicing” as an example. Invoicing can mean 18 different things to 13 different people. It's not a single feature—it's a category of features. There might be an “invoicing” module in the platform you are evaluating, but does that actually satisfy the requirement? It depends on what "invoicing" actually means to your organization.
Read moreDrupalCamp Burkina Faso will be hosting its third event from April 24-26, 2026. Previous events have brought entrepreneurs, students, as well as government ministers and national media. This year the Camp is hoping to expand international sponsorship and recruit guest speakers who can help build the skills of the local community.
We want to invite you to participate.
Across the African continent there is an increasingly rapid pace of digital transformation. Through our connections with communities across Africa, we're seeing governments, major industries, and growing business markets rapidly prioritize digital sovereignty and online engagement, and we see them seeking international expertise to launch and up-skill their local markets.
I see an incredible opportunity for Drupal in Africa. We're seeing other open source projects like Typo3 and Wordpress make a concerted effort to lobby government and industry users, but Drupal has a unique advantage of strong communities in several countries across the continent already.
~ Tim Lehnen, CTO - Drupal Association
We hope you see the potential opportunity as well.
If you are interested in sponsorship, contact: seferiba@gmail.com
If you are interested in being a virtual guest speaker, contact: seferiba@gmail.com
In an era where AI can generate thousands of lines of code in seconds, I found myself asking a fundamental question: What makes me valuable as a developer when artificial intelligence can create everything?
While AI tools multiply our capacity to create, perhaps the real value lies not in generating more, but in choosing better. This is something every developer, designer, and team leader needs to hear.
A Principle Rediscovered Across GenerationsThe concept of "less but better" isn't new. In the 1920s-1930s, architect Mies van der Rohe popularized "Less is More"—a principle that profoundly influenced the Bauhaus school and its core focus on simplicity, rationalism, and functionality that shaped modern design. Designer Dieter Rams later refined it to "less, but better" for the consumer product era.
What strikes me most is how each generation rediscovers this wisdom in their own context. When tools can generate unlimited options instantly, the skill isn't in creating more; it's in knowing what to keep.
Why This Matters NowFrom my experience, I've noticed three things that make this principle critical in modern web development. A simple approach is better from a technical, designer, and UX perspective.
Technically, less code means better performance and sustainability. Every unnecessary line of code is technical debt waiting to accumulate. Every extra component is another potential breaking point, another thing to maintain, another load on the user's browser. When we choose simplicity, we're not just making aesthetic decisions—we're making our solutions faster, more reliable, and easier to maintain.
From a design perspective, simple solutions with gradual implementation build trust. Users don't need to see everything we can do in the first interaction. They need to accomplish their immediate goal with confidence. A focused, clear interface tells users we understand what matters to them. Complexity can signal uncertainty—ours, not theirs.
Looking at user experience, I believe people are overwhelmed. They're managing hundreds of tasks, using dozens of tools, drowning in notifications and options. The more we can simplify their interaction with our solutions, the better their experience. This isn't about doing less work—it's about doing the hard work of deciding what truly matters.
Practical Application: The Real Challenge with AI ToolsWhen we built Palcera.com using AI tools like Claude and Figma, I discovered how easy it is to drown in possibilities. Ask an AI to generate components, and you'll get dozens of variations. Request copy options, and you'll receive paragraphs upon paragraphs. The tools are powerful, but they lack the one thing that matters most—context about what your users actually need.
This is where the real work happens: selecting and guiding toward the minimum viable solution. Not minimum as in "barely functional," but minimum as in "exactly what's needed, and nothing more." This takes time. It requires understanding your users deeply enough to know which of those AI-generated options actually serves them.
When building editorial experiences and user interfaces, this becomes even more critical. People use these tools daily, often alongside hundreds of other responsibilities. Every unnecessary click, every confusing option, every piece of visual clutter is friction they don't need. The editorial tools we build should fade into the background, supporting their work rather than demanding attention.
AI processes information faster than any human and can be remarkably creative, but it's not ready to handle complex strategic decisions. We need professionals to guide these tools, to add the human touch that understands not just what can be built, but what should be built. That's not going to change anytime soon.
The Opportunity AheadHere's what excites me about this moment: we can approach the AI era as an opportunity to rebuild our mindset and technical approaches. Right now, we can strip away accumulated complexity and ask: if we were starting fresh today, what would we actually build?
This "rebuild from scratch" mindset is available to us at any time. Not literally rebuilding everything—that would be impractical. But approaching each new project, each new feature, each new interface with fresh eyes. Starting with the core problem we're solving, then adding only what serves that purpose.
The principle of "Less is More" has survived over a century because it addresses something fundamental: clarity and focus create better outcomes than complexity and abundance. In an age of infinite AI-generated possibilities, this truth matters more than ever.
The question isn't whether AI will replace us. The question is whether we'll use these powerful tools to create solutions that truly serve people—or just create more noise in an already overwhelming digital landscape.
I choose simplicity. I choose intention. I choose less, but better.
What will you choose?
A note on AI usage: I used AI assitance to create this blog post for research, validating historical facts, organizing my thoughts, and editing. The ideas and perspective areentirely my own.
Subject of My Journey with AI Tools: Practical Tips from a Recent Discussion Author Ana Coto Abstract When AI generates unlimited code, value lies in choosing better over creating more. Why simplicity defines modern web development leadership. Tags Career Development Community Development Development Drupal Planet AI FrontEnd Design Principles Rating Select ratingGive Why Web Development Simplicity Beats AI-Generated Complexity 1/5Give Why Web Development Simplicity Beats AI-Generated Complexity 2/5Give Why Web Development Simplicity Beats AI-Generated Complexity 3/5Give Why Web Development Simplicity Beats AI-Generated Complexity 4/5Give Why Web Development Simplicity Beats AI-Generated Complexity 5/5Cancel rating No votes yet Leave this field blank Add new comment
There’s been a quiet but meaningful shift within the Drupal community—not in what we’re building, but in how we organise and plan for the future. Governance and long-term strategy have moved closer to the centre of conversation. While not entirely new, these topics are now gaining clearer structure and attention.
Earlier this year, a multi-year strategic roadmap for Drupal core (2025–2028) was outlined through community consultation and closed for comments in August 2025. The roadmap prioritises improving contributor experience, refining release management, and sustaining platform stability. The strategy now guides Drupal’s core direction over the next three years.
Alongside this, the Drupal Association and contributors are focusing on project governance. In a governance update published in late 2024, the Drupal Association outlined efforts to clarify working group roles, improve leadership transparency, and ensure that contributors—especially from underrepresented regions—can more easily participate in project decision-making.
These governance efforts are supported by the publicly documented Drupal Governance Overview, which outlines the decision-making process and assigns responsibilities across the project.
These aren’t flashy reforms, but they reflect Drupal’s commitment to stability, community participation, and long-term resilience. For contributors, developers, and agency partners, they represent essential groundwork for how Drupal evolves and who gets to shape its future.
Now, here are some of the major stories we published from the previous week:
DISCOVER DRUPALWe acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now. To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kazima Abbas,
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.
1xINTERNET expands into the UK with a new North West base, led by Paul Johnson and James Tillotson. The move strengthens partnerships with UK organisations and brings advanced Drupal and AI expertise closer to British clients.
Today we are talking about The United Nations Open Source Week, Digital Public Infrastructure, and Digital sovereignty with guest Tiffany Farriss & Mike Gifford. We'll also cover Local Association (EU Sites Project) as our module of the week.
For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/528
TopicsTiffany Farriss - www.palantir.net farriss Mike Gifford - accessibility.civicactions.com mgifford
HostsNic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Maya Schaeffer - evolvingweb.com mayalena
MOTW CorrespondentMartin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu