GovCMS Mega Meetup Recap

The GovCMS Mega Meetup 2019 was held recently in Canberra. amazee.io was in attendance, represented by Thom, Ben, and myself. This year the Mega Meetup had over 300 registrations, and a wide range of interesting talks — both technical and non-technical — as well as interactive panel discussions. As I’ve only recently joined the team it was also a great opportunity to meet up with some other Amazees in person!

Two of the talks I saw discussed migrating content from one (or more) existing Drupal sites to the GovCMS SaaS platform. The first was by Margery Tongway, a Web Developer at the Department of Industry, Innovation, and Science, who showcased a migration of several sites to the platform. It was great to hear about the positive developer experience and inspiring to learn about the thousands of pages of content which were revamped and standardized in the process.

The second talk by Cathy Wells, Director of Web Systems at Department of Agriculture, also discussed moving multiple sites to the GovCMS SaaS platform. It was impressive (and a little daunting!) to see the speed at which sites were being migrated.

I also saw the GovCMS roadmap presentation, by Toby Bellwood from Department of Finance, and learned about the speed at which Drupal 9 is approaching (fast!), as well as plans for improving the platform, such as implementing Multi-factor authentication. Toby also discussed the collaborative, consensus-driven approach to platform development, as well as the positive, helpful community that has formed around GovCMS and how the experience gained from the rapid adoption is being shared.

Finally, it was great to meet the team from Salsa Digital, who are working alongside amazee.io to help deliver the GovCMS platform. I’m looking forward to next year’s Meetup, which I’m sure will be even bigger and better!