On September 25th, Matthew Saunders moderated a panel that included Frederik Wouters, Paul Johnson, and Jamie Abrahams. We conducted a working preview of how Drupal AI will show up at DrupalCon Vienna and what the Strategic Initiative has been building since the last Drupalcon. Vienna was less than three weeks out, and momentum across the initiative was clear. It was a walk through workshops, sessions, and real implementation paths that teams can apply on live sites. We recorded it, so you can watch the webinar as well.
Hands-on training is a priority. Frederik and Christoph are running AI workshops designed so attendees leave with something working on their own machine. The format starts from zero, explains each step while you do it, and ends with a small but real implementation. That tone threads through the rest of the agenda. There is a strategy and application session for non-developers, and advanced material for experienced builders who want to go deeper into agents and orchestration. The goal is to create quick wins and the confidence to continue at home.
So these will be like hands-on workshops where you’ll be able to produce a real implementation of AI in a short space of time.
Frederik Wouters
A major theme is workflows. ECA is getting attention it has not had before. The panel called out how deterministic flows gave teams a safe on-ramp, while agent patterns are now taking the spotlight for more complex tasks. The message was practical. Use Drupal’s structure to decide when AI runs, what it can touch, and how to capture inputs and outputs. Keep humans in the loop where risk is high. Treat agents as an evolution, not a replacement for the guardrails that ECA and similar tools provide.
And I’m really excited to start showing off slightly more guided patterns that combine agents and what you’re good at with Drupal all together.
Jamie Abrahams
Content modelling matters more, not less. Several times the conversation returned to Drupal’s strengths. Structured content, permissions, and configuration give you predictable behaviour. That is how you keep outputs reviewable and safe. There was a clear push toward stronger configuration management and recipes so teams can share working patterns. The bigger picture tied Canvas, recipes, and a marketplace together with AI. You build in a visual environment, you install known-good packages, and you wire AI in at clear touchpoints. It is not magic. It is good composition.
Drupal’s a really fabulous foundation for AI. We’ve spent years building a platform that’s got exceptional data modeling.
Paul Johnson
The Vienna programme reflects that balance. There is a talk on the European Accessibility Act and how AI shows up in compliance and editorial processes. There is a Yale case session that promises concrete lessons from an institutional roll-out. There are agent-building sessions from newcomers’ first steps to advanced builds, plus references to public examples that developers can study later. Marcus’s Workflows of AI site was mentioned as a catalogue of how things are built. The point was simple. People learn faster when they can inspect working code and repeat the steps.
I hope that the beginners get their first touch of working with AI. I hope that the business people get some cases out of it. I hope that the marketing people get some marketing materials.
Frederik Wouters
Security and trust were not presented as slogans. They were framed as predictable outcomes. Teams need patterns that fail safely and visibly, not clever code that surprises people. The panel tied this to Drupal’s design system work and to a push for richer metadata inside Canvas. If the CMS can describe components and intent, AI can act more reliably. That is how you reduce hallucinations and keep changes explainable.
We’re pushing a lot with a metadata schema inside Drupal that can help AI understand what it’s doing and tell AI what it’s going to do.
Jamie Abrahams
Community and governance came through strongly. The initiative has widened, with more makers joining and real cross-company collaboration around a shared set of problems. That collaboration is a differentiator. It is also how we avoid duplicating effort and how we publish roadmaps that others can build on. The panel encouraged people to get involved, pointing to the maker calendar, Slack channels, and an upcoming training serieswith Drop Solid and the European Commission.
There’s a lot of good governance around the platform as well, so Drupal is in a really strong place, it is a very strong differentiator.
Paul Johnson
If you boil it down, the webinar set expectations for Vienna and beyond. Come ready to build. Start with a contained use case. Use Drupal’s structure to keep AI on rails. Learn in a workshop, then bring that pattern home and expand it. Strategy, governance, and documentation are not overhead. They are how we keep this useful, safe, and repeatable at scale.
This content can help you become an excellent AI practitioner and give you practical structures to help you bring AI strategies to your clients and leaders.
Matthew Saunders
If you want to get involved in the Initiative, join #ai, #ai-initiative and #ai-contrib on Drupal Slack. See you in Vienna.
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