DrupalSouth Wellington 2026
Contribution Day @ 93E Cuba St, Te Aro, conference @ Harbourside Function Venue
12th May to 14th May
On the day
- Sprint: Tuesday, 12 May 2026
- Sessions: Wednesday, 13 May 2026 (Day 1)
- Sessions: Thursday, 14 May 2026 (Day 2)
Wednesday, 13 May 2026
| Rooms |
Plenary / Breakout 1 Te Aro |
Breakout 2 Waterfront |
Breakout 3 Loft |
|---|---|---|---|
| 08:00 | Registration | ||
| 09:00 | 👋 Welcome / 📸 Group photo | ||
| 09:30 | 09:30 - Te Aro Death to the Black Box: Winning in 2026 through personal agency, financial prudence and community / Keynote / Serge van Dam YouTube | ||
| 10:00 | 💬 Break | ||
| 10:10 | 10:10 - Te Aro Sparks Interactive: team, delivery and thoughts for the future / Sponsor talk / Dave Sparks (Sparks Interactive) YouTube | 10:10 - Waterfront Using GA4 to Improve Content and UX in Drupal-Powered Sites / User Experience & Content / Lana Gibson (Lanalytics LImited) YouTube | 10:10 - Loft Bots, Scrapers, and Proxies: Defending Drupal Sites in an Automated Internet / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Sean Hamlin (amazee.io) YouTube |
| 10:40 | ☕ Tea & Coffee sponsored by Technocrat | ||
| 11:00 | 11:00 - Te Aro Keywords to Context: Semantic Search and Retrieval-Augmented Generation with OpenSearch / Drupal Development / Daniel Veza (PreviousNext) YouTube | 11:00 - Waterfront How premium themes have changed the economics of a Drupal build / User Experience & Content / George Bonnici-Carter (Bonnici Ltd) YouTube | 11:00 - Loft The Pinto module - efficient theming for front and back end developers / Drupal Development / Adam Bramley (PreviousNext) YouTube |
| 11:30 | 💬 Break | ||
| 11:40 | 11:40 - Te Aro From Prompt to Pull Request: Human-led, AI-assisted workflows for building Drupal features / Drupal Development / Alex Skrypnyk (DrevOps) YouTube | 11:40 - Waterfront The Open Source Vulnerability (OSV) Scanner Releases Support for Drupal Security Advisories - project showcase / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Gareth Jones (Ackama) YouTube | 11:40 - Loft Designing encapsulated content / User Experience & Content / Angus Gordon (Weave Content Strategy and Design) YouTube |
| 12:10 | 💬 Break | ||
| 12:20 | 12:20 - Te Aro CWACking on with it: New Zealand Government's open source accessibility testing software programme / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Jason Kiss (Dept. of Internal Affairs - NZ Government) YouTube | 12:20 - Waterfront Drupal as an API for fun things / Other / Rox Flame (Xequals) YouTube | 12:20 - Loft Creating scalable structure: Content design systems in government / User Experience & Content / Emma Kelson (Weave Content Strategy and Design) YouTube |
| 12:50 | 🍱 Lunch | ||
| 13:50 | 13:50 - Te Aro Drupal as the Digital Backbone: Transforming Government Digital Services at Scale / People & Culture / Ian Laslett (EY Studio Plus) YouTube | 13:50 - Waterfront Building a Template for the Marketplace: Challenges and opportunities / Drupal Development / Murray Woodman (Morpht) YouTube | 13:50 - Loft What your content stakeholders are worried about in the age of AI - and why it matters for developers / User Experience & Content / Ruth Hendry (Ruth Hendry Consulting) YouTube |
| 14:20 | 💬 Break | ||
| 14:30 | 14:30 - Te Aro Being in the Room Is the Strategy - How Drupal, proximity, and rapid prototyping unlock real Government agility / People & Culture / Alex Matthews (xequals) YouTube | 14:30 - Waterfront Pacific Dataviz Challenge: Telling the Story of the Pacific Through Visualised Open Data / Drupal Development / Jason Ryan Thompson, Stanislas Ozier (Pacific Community) YouTube | 14:30 - Loft AI Can Do My Job Now (Sort Of) (Not Really) (It's Complicated): A user researcher's complicated relationship with AI / User Experience & Content / Billie-Mae Kennedy YouTube |
| 15:00 | 💬 Break | ||
| 15:10 | 15:10 - Te Aro Workshops that actually work: Turning discovery into delivery / Other / Emily Mills (Sol) YouTube | 15:10 - WaterfrontDrupalSouth Steering Committee Panel / People & Culture / Julia Topliss, Chris Burgess, Margery Tongway, Vladimir Roudakov YouTube | 15:10 - Loft Drupal as an ERP backend to Shopify / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Simon Hobbs (Free Sauce) YouTube |
| 15:40 | ☕ Tea & Coffee sponsored by Technocrat | ||
| 16:00 | 16:00 - Te Aro Try Government Again, We've Redecorated / Keynote / Jonnie Haddon (Creative HQ) YouTube | ||
| 16:30 | 📣 Special announcement | ||
| 16:40 | 💬 Break | ||
| 17:00 | 🏆 Splash Awards presented by Ironstar / 🍻 Networking Drinks Venue: Shed22 Pub, 4 Taranaki Street, Wellington / Apple Maps / Google Maps |
||
| 19:00 | End of Day One | ||
Thursday, 14 May 2026 (Day 2)
| Rooms |
Plenary / Breakout 1 Te Aro |
Breakout 2 Waterfront |
Breakout 3 Loft |
|---|---|---|---|
| 08:00 | Registration | ||
| 08:30 | ☕ Tea & Coffee sponsored by Technocrat | ||
| 08:50 | 👋 Welcome Day 2 | ||
| 09:00 | 09:00 - Te Aro The Case for Drupal CMS: Growing adoption and expanding our focus for a new digital era / Keynote / Pamela Barone (Technocrat) YouTube | ||
| 09:30 | 💬 Break | ||
| 09:40 | 09:40 - Te Aro How Drupal is keeping pace with a changing digital market and how it can benefit your organisation / People & Culture / Owen Lansbury (PreviousNext) YouTube | 09:40 - Waterfront Reproducible Drupal Environments The Easy Way: A Hands-On Look At Using Drupal With Nix & NixOS / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Andrew Benbow YouTube | 09:40 - Loft Secure and quality content - Automating moderation tests with Cypress / Drupal Development / Marji Cermak (Morpht) YouTube |
| 10:10 | ☕ Tea & Coffee sponsored by Technocrat | ||
| 10:30 | 10:30 - Te Aro From 'Meh' to Meaningful: Driving compliant, on-brand AI with context / Drupal Development / Suchi Garg (Salsa Digital) YouTube | 10:30 - Waterfront Rethinking the JavaScript Reflex / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Brynn Briedis (Pragma Partners) YouTube | 10:30 - Loft Building the right thing is a team sport / Sponsor talk / Morgan Goulding (Annex) YouTube |
| 11:00 | 💬 Break | ||
| 11:10 | 11:10 - Te Aro Getting started with Drupal Observability using OpenTelemetry and Grafana / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Jonathan Hunt, Chris Burgess (Catalyst) YouTube | 11:10 - Waterfront Delivering Quality Drupal / Other / Quinn Hart, Tamara Ross, Matthew Meisel-Dennis (Annex Digital) YouTube | 11:10 - Loft Eventa: A Drupal based ticketing platform / Sponsor talk / Rox Flame (Xequals) YouTube |
| 11:40 | 💬 Break | ||
| 11:50 | 11:50 - Te Aro Recipes, Site Templates and the future of Drupal distributions / Drupal Development / Michael Strelan (PreviousNext) YouTube | 11:50 - Waterfront Including Disabled Peoples' Voice in Consultation, Service Design and Building Services that provide accessibility that digital teams should know / User Experience & Content / Leo Goldie-Anderson (Health New Zealand) YouTube | 11:50 - Loft Drupal and the quest to win hearts and minds / Sponsor talk / Sanjay D'Souza (Catalyst) YouTube |
| 12:20 | 🍱 Lunch | ||
| 13:20 | 13:20 - Te Aro When good enough is not good enough - a short story about performance tuning for Valkey / Drupal Development / Max Pogonowski (Sitback Solutions) YouTube | 13:20 - Waterfront Vibe Coding - Introducing vulnerabilities at pace to your clients / People & Culture / Simon Howard (Bastion Security) YouTube | 13:20 - Loft Platform-First AI: How We Built a Secure AI Infrastructure and Showcased It Through Drupal / Sponsor talk / Toby Bellwood (amazee.io) YouTube |
| 13:50 | 💬 Break | ||
| 14:00 | 14:00 - Te Aro Converting Lovable Design to Drupal Canvas / Drupal Development / Naveen Prakash Duraisamy (Acquia) YouTube | 14:00 - Waterfront Security on Autopilot: Low-Touch Automated Security for Drupal Projects / Other / Nathan ter Bogt (PreviousNext) YouTube | Engineering for the Agentic Web When 50% of Your Traffic is Robots / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Janna Malikova (Tomato Elephant Studio) YouTube |
| 14:30 | 💬 Break | ||
| 14:40 | 14:40 - Te Aro Practical Performance Testing / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Nick Schuch (PreviousNext) YouTube | 14:40 - Waterfront An introduction to DDev and then how extend it with a mix of technologies / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Joshua Stuart Graham (EY Studio Plus) YouTube | 14:40 - Loft Stranger Things in UX: Designing interfaces in a post-prompt world / User Experience & Content / Millie Clery (Jude Digital) YouTube |
| 15:10 | ☕ Tea & Coffee sponsored by Technocrat | ||
| 15:30 | 15:30 - Te Aro Back to the Future: A look at web development around the millennium / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Alistair O'Neill YouTube | 15:30 - Waterfront It Worked in the Demo: Web Components, SDC, and What Happened Next / Web Tools & Complementary Technologies / Yi Jiang (Australian Public Service) YouTube | 15:30 - Loft No session. |
| 16:00 | 📣 Closing remarks | ||
