DrupalCon Chicago was my first DrupalCon over a decade ago. Back then, roughly 4,000 people and Drupal were at peak hype.
This year, about 1,300 attendees, Drupal turning 25, and a keynote that felt more honest than usual about the challenges ahead.
To start, the AI demos were the strongest I have seen from Drupal.
Structured content feeding LLMs, React components rendering the output, and a Context Control Center that pulls brand guidelines and tone automatically. That is practical, bounded AI, and it maps directly to what we have been building with Drupal Decoupled.
But where I found the most reason for optimism around decoupled architectures was not on stage.
It was in the conversations we had directly with the Canvas team about Code Components, TypeScript support, and how decoupled rendering fits into their roadmap.
The tone was different this time, and the alignment feels real.
I wrote up everything I saw and where I think things are headed:
octahedroid.com/blog/drupalc…