DrupalSouth Community Day 2026
Hellenic Club, 1 Matilda St, Phillip ACT
19th Nov to 20th Nov
The detail of sessions have been provided by our presenters. Sessions will be added as they are confirmed, and are listed in title alphabetical order.
A SKILL.md for Drupal: where AI helps with components, and where it doesn't
Jeannie Panting
Technical
Ask AI to build a Drupal component and you'll get something that looks right. Look closer and you'll often find code written for an older version of Drupal, conventions ignored, and accessibility missed.
A SKILL.md changes that. It's a plain file that tells the AI how your project works and what you expect before it writes a line of code. In this session I'll share the process I've been using, with a live demo showing the difference it makes and where it still needs some work.
This isn't a polished framework, its a work in progress trying to find what works the best. But if you've never written a SKILL.md, you'll leave with a practical place to start, along with how to use it carefully.
A SKILL.md changes that. It's a plain file that tells the AI how your project works and what you expect before it writes a line of code. In this session I'll share the process I've been using, with a live demo showing the difference it makes and where it still needs some work.
This isn't a polished framework, its a work in progress trying to find what works the best. But if you've never written a SKILL.md, you'll leave with a practical place to start, along with how to use it carefully.
A structured way to explore AI enablement in your next project
Julia Topliss
Non-technical
It can be hard for organisations to know where to start with understanding all the applications AI can have in a web project. For many, part of the journey is understanding that AI enablement isn't a single decision but many decisions.
In this session we will walk through a method for pulling the AI opportunities apart so that stakeholders and the organisation can see them clearly: how to find the candidate applications in your own web project, how to sort them into categories decision-makers can act on, and how to apply early high-level scores that help decide which applications might be most useful, and in which sequence.
In this session we will walk through a method for pulling the AI opportunities apart so that stakeholders and the organisation can see them clearly: how to find the candidate applications in your own web project, how to sort them into categories decision-makers can act on, and how to apply early high-level scores that help decide which applications might be most useful, and in which sequence.
Accessibility as architecture: why your design system should make WCAG compliance automatic.
Rikki Bochow
Non-technical
Most teams treat accessibility as a pre-launch audit, a snapshot in time that goes stale the moment components change. A good Design System instead runs automated accessibility check on every component with every change. This talk covers how we do this in Storybook, what that setup catches, what it doesn’t (automated tools are a floor, not a ceiling), and why the real procurement question isn’t “do you test for accessibility” but “what stops a working component from quietly breaking six months from now.”
30min
30min
Ask six people: rapid testing for non-researchers
Tori Sanderson
Non-technical
Most government web teams have the same two blockers to user research: no budget line, and no researcher. So they ship on assumptions and hope the analytics tell them something afterwards.
You don't need either of those things to get real evidence.
Over eleven weeks we ran three rounds of usability testing on industry.gov.au with the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. More than fifty participants across moderated sessions and tree testing, covering a high-traffic public service page, four flagship publications, and a new navigation prototype. Most rounds rested on six moderated sessions. Six is usually enough to know what is broken.
This is the practical version of how that worked, for people who don't do research for a living.
I'll cover how to choose what to test and what to leave alone, how to write a plan your stakeholders will sign off in a day, how to find six of the right people without a recruitment budget, and how to run a session without leading the participant into telling you what you want to hear.
Then the two habits that made the difference. Getting stakeholders into the sessions so they watch people hit the same snags the findings will later describe. And playing the findings back while they are still warm, rather than three weeks later in a report nobody opens.
I'll be honest about the messy part too. Our tree test showed low findability at the same time as the new prototype clearly beat the current site. Both were true. Knowing what to do when your evidence points two ways is most of the skill.
You'll leave with a testing cadence that fits inside a normal delivery cycle, and a way to turn page-level findings into the kind of system-level recommendations that actually get funded.
Research is not a luxury line item. It is a rhythm, and you can start it next sprint.
You don't need either of those things to get real evidence.
Over eleven weeks we ran three rounds of usability testing on industry.gov.au with the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. More than fifty participants across moderated sessions and tree testing, covering a high-traffic public service page, four flagship publications, and a new navigation prototype. Most rounds rested on six moderated sessions. Six is usually enough to know what is broken.
This is the practical version of how that worked, for people who don't do research for a living.
I'll cover how to choose what to test and what to leave alone, how to write a plan your stakeholders will sign off in a day, how to find six of the right people without a recruitment budget, and how to run a session without leading the participant into telling you what you want to hear.
Then the two habits that made the difference. Getting stakeholders into the sessions so they watch people hit the same snags the findings will later describe. And playing the findings back while they are still warm, rather than three weeks later in a report nobody opens.
I'll be honest about the messy part too. Our tree test showed low findability at the same time as the new prototype clearly beat the current site. Both were true. Knowing what to do when your evidence points two ways is most of the skill.
You'll leave with a testing cadence that fits inside a normal delivery cycle, and a way to turn page-level findings into the kind of system-level recommendations that actually get funded.
Research is not a luxury line item. It is a rhythm, and you can start it next sprint.
Be Lazy - get the DB to do that
Daniel Black
Technical
Databases are so much more that store and retrieve engines. Their features make implementing anything from a booking system, to AI searching, to a versioned history trivial. In this talk I'll show how these features exist in MariaDB and how to make a Drupal application that uses these.
At the end of this you'll be able to:
* create a booking system
* see what things were like on older versions
* create AI application
At the end of this you'll be able to:
* create a booking system
* see what things were like on older versions
* create AI application
Designing encapsulated content
Angus Gordon
Non-technical
Links are great: they’re what makes the web a connected network, rather than just a bunch of documents. But sometimes, our users aren’t looking for connections. They don’t want to ‘see also’ or ‘read more’ or go down a rabbit hole. They just want an answer to a question or help with a task.
This talk is about the ways in which good intentions – our desire to offer choice and avoid the appearance of a dead end – can actually harm users’ confidence that they’ve reached their destination. We’ll get some practice spotting moments of uncertainty and frustration, and we’ll talk about how to fix them by designing encapsulated content – content that conveys a sense of clarity, containment and completeness.
This talk is about the ways in which good intentions – our desire to offer choice and avoid the appearance of a dead end – can actually harm users’ confidence that they’ve reached their destination. We’ll get some practice spotting moments of uncertainty and frustration, and we’ll talk about how to fix them by designing encapsulated content – content that conveys a sense of clarity, containment and completeness.
Does Discovery have a branding problem?
Morgan Goulding
Non-technical
Discovery is often the first stage in a project - exploring the problem space, uncovering insights, and laying the groundwork for solutions. But, most digital projects don't start with a blank page anymore. They begin with a budget decision, a business case, or a solution that's already taking shape. With so much thinking happening before discovery starts, it's fair to ask: what are we actually discovering?
This session explores how discovery is evolving, the value it continues to create and whether it’s time for a rebrand.
This session explores how discovery is evolving, the value it continues to create and whether it’s time for a rebrand.
Dupal Feud - Fun for the whole family.
Toby Wild
Non-technical
Family Feud, but Drupal!
Two teams of five will compete Family Feud style to answer some simple questions about Drupal.
Gain the most points and your team will win a prize!
We will only have time for one game, so first two groups of five to come up to me before the talk kicks off will be the two families.
Two teams of five will compete Family Feud style to answer some simple questions about Drupal.
Gain the most points and your team will win a prize!
We will only have time for one game, so first two groups of five to come up to me before the talk kicks off will be the two families.
GovCMS security features
Janna Malikova
Technical
GovCMS is Australia’s leading government content management platform, hosting hundreds of public sector websites under strict cybersecurity requirements.
While GovCMS provides robust cloud infrastructure, the primary line of application defense relies on the pre-configured security modules shipped within the GovCMS Drupal distribution. I will cover the essential Drupal security modules bundled and configured in GovCMS (including Login Security, Security Kit, and security.txt) to mitigate brute-force attacks, enforce strict HTTP security headers, streamline responsible vulnerability disclosures, and maintain compliance with Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM) guidelines.
While GovCMS provides robust cloud infrastructure, the primary line of application defense relies on the pre-configured security modules shipped within the GovCMS Drupal distribution. I will cover the essential Drupal security modules bundled and configured in GovCMS (including Login Security, Security Kit, and security.txt) to mitigate brute-force attacks, enforce strict HTTP security headers, streamline responsible vulnerability disclosures, and maintain compliance with Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM) guidelines.
How we implemented AI search on GovCMS
Adam Bramley
Technical
Keyword search matches words, not meaning. On Cancer Australia's site, packed with clinical guidance, statistics and publications, that can be a problem. People search by topic, not by whatever exact term the source document happens to use.
We built semantic search into GovCMS. Utilising hybrid queries that blend vector and keyword scoring, with an on-demand AI summary sitting on top, backed by OpenSearch and AWS Bedrock.
This talk covers the architecture: Drupal's Search API in front, with two separate search pipelines so Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) latency never blocks the initial results. It also covers the security work: moving OpenSearch off of Lagoon and onto Amazon's managed offering, then locking it behind CloudFront, WAF and a private subnet.
We'll walk through the build itself: the contrib modules we used, the infrastructure calls we made, and what we'd tell any agency doing this.
Keep the AI answer assistive, not authoritative. And don't let new infrastructure become the exception to your security model.
We built semantic search into GovCMS. Utilising hybrid queries that blend vector and keyword scoring, with an on-demand AI summary sitting on top, backed by OpenSearch and AWS Bedrock.
This talk covers the architecture: Drupal's Search API in front, with two separate search pipelines so Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) latency never blocks the initial results. It also covers the security work: moving OpenSearch off of Lagoon and onto Amazon's managed offering, then locking it behind CloudFront, WAF and a private subnet.
We'll walk through the build itself: the contrib modules we used, the infrastructure calls we made, and what we'd tell any agency doing this.
Keep the AI answer assistive, not authoritative. And don't let new infrastructure become the exception to your security model.
New agency, new voice: From workshop to website in 4 months
TIm Gay
Non-technical
How do you create a distinctive identity and voice for a new agency, then bring it to life through a website in just four months?
Join Tim and Shannon as they share the journey of NAIC’s new brand and Drupal SaaS website – from early discovery through to design, development and launch.
They’ll share how brand workshops shaped the agency’s identity and voice, audience research informed the website experience, and close collaboration with Drupal developers brought it all to life.
At the heart of the project was the relationship between strategy, design and development. By bringing these disciplines together from the start, the team could make informed decisions, solve problems quickly and keep moving towards a shared vision.
Tim and Shannon will take a practical look at how their team took a new agency from workshop to website in just four months - and what you can learn from their experience.
Join Tim and Shannon as they share the journey of NAIC’s new brand and Drupal SaaS website – from early discovery through to design, development and launch.
They’ll share how brand workshops shaped the agency’s identity and voice, audience research informed the website experience, and close collaboration with Drupal developers brought it all to life.
At the heart of the project was the relationship between strategy, design and development. By bringing these disciplines together from the start, the team could make informed decisions, solve problems quickly and keep moving towards a shared vision.
Tim and Shannon will take a practical look at how their team took a new agency from workshop to website in just four months - and what you can learn from their experience.
Not your grandad's Drupal
Lee Rowlands
Technical
Drupal has continued to modernize the developer experience with many of the old Drupalisms replaced with modern PHP features.
Did you know you don't need a module file anymore? Or that .theme files are deprecated?
Did you know you can register a form or controller without a routing,yml file?
Or that a test can implement hooks AND be a form?
The presenter will show a range of developer improvements available to use in your projects today.
Did you know you don't need a module file anymore? Or that .theme files are deprecated?
Did you know you can register a form or controller without a routing,yml file?
Or that a test can implement hooks AND be a form?
The presenter will show a range of developer improvements available to use in your projects today.
Putting the hyper into hypermedia: htmx 4 in Drupal
Brendan Tuckerman
Technical
Drupal is undergoing a change in the way that it handles AJAX requests, CSS transitions, WebSockets, and Server-Sent Events. Now available in core, the tiny htmx library provides a replacement for jquery and AJAX, reducing the javascript size by 71%. It also provides and alternative to headless and decoupled front ends by offering a simple way to handle dynamic front-ends.
Htmx version 4 has just been released and will be available in Drupal 12. This presentation aims to do a couple of things: introduce htmx to people that might not have seen it before; demonstrate the cool stuff it can do in the current version as well as the to-be-relased version 4; and provide some suggestions for module maintainers on moving from ajax or jquery to htmx.
Htmx version 4 has just been released and will be available in Drupal 12. This presentation aims to do a couple of things: introduce htmx to people that might not have seen it before; demonstrate the cool stuff it can do in the current version as well as the to-be-relased version 4; and provide some suggestions for module maintainers on moving from ajax or jquery to htmx.
The Discomfort Dividend
Fonda Duffy
Non-technical
Agencies run on relationships. Delivery leads are conditioned to smooth things over at all costs - they're expected to say yes to the client, avoid hard conversations and keep the team happy. It feels like the safe choice, but it isn't.
Being liked and being trusted are different currencies and the leads who build the most durable trust are the ones willing to spend short-term likability to get it. So how can you tell the difference between conflict worth having and conflict to avoid? This talk breaks down what separates productive friction from just being difficult, and how you go about building credibility to make an unpopular call and have it land.
Being liked and being trusted are different currencies and the leads who build the most durable trust are the ones willing to spend short-term likability to get it. So how can you tell the difference between conflict worth having and conflict to avoid? This talk breaks down what separates productive friction from just being difficult, and how you go about building credibility to make an unpopular call and have it land.