Stop talking.
Start working.
Then talk louder.
Dries Buytaert took the stage in Rotterdam with the city’s motto — no blabbing, but scrubbing — and left with a new one for Drupal: start talking louder about what is working. Between those two sentences: six product announcements, one cardboard booth, a Rosetta sprint, and six full technical tutorials. This site retells all of it.
A booth made of cardboard, and a $50,000 cheque for Drupal
Before the founder walks on, Sean Panit from Acquia redefines what “contribution” can look like.
“Acquia is proud to be the number one contributor to Drupal… but most of that shows up in ways you can measure: code commits, core maintainers, product innovation. This year we asked ourselves a simple question: what else could contribution look like?”
“If you’ve walked past our booth, you’ve seen the answer. It’s made out of cardboard. On the wall, an artist hand-drew one simple sentence: we spent less on our booth this year so that we could donate $50,000 to Drupal.”
“We didn’t do this for applause. We did it because it’s the right thing to do, and we hope it ignites something within the entire community. Every sponsor, every CMS company, every hosting provider, every ad agency, even our competitors: find your own unique version of the cardboard booth. Because if Drupal wins, then we all win.”
“Acquia, powered by Drupal”
The logo changed this year — “because Drupal is in our roots, it’s in our DNA, and we want to make sure these two things always travel together.”
Roots matter in the age of AI
“Openness, flexibility, trust, and a global community innovating right out in the open is exactly what the next era of the web needs. Acquia innovation plus Drupal innovation — that’s the combination we’re betting on.”
“He started this project in his dorm room”
“No one has done more to make that possible than the person you all came to see. He’s never stopped passionately pushing it forward, or pushing us all to do the same. Let’s give it up for Dries.”
Eleven chapters, one arc
The talk moves like the city it’s hosted in: build hard, get destroyed, rebuild braver, then make sure the world notices. Follow it in order.
No Blabbing, But Scrubbing
Rotterdam’s motto, its canals, bombs, containers — and why Drupal rhymes with the city.
02Magical Thinking & the Reputation Gap
Chores, comic books, European digital sovereignty — and the “is Drupal still a thing?” problem.
03Go Where the People Are
Drupal CMS reignited innovation. Now the growth plan: multilingual, JavaScript, AI.
04Tutorial I · Multilingual
Drupal CMS 2.2 + Canvas: fast installer, recipes, 3-tier translation, AI workflows, Dashi.
05Tutorial II · JS Frontends
Code Components: React + TypeScript, Canvas Workbench, AI agents, canvas push/pull.
Tutorial III · Canvas Headless
Experience composition: Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, TanStack Start — with live visual editing.
07Tutorial IV · Drupal AI
Content quality scores, grounded RAG answers, assistant batch updates, governance.
08Tutorial V · AI Agents & MCP
Western Lakes live demo, the Tool API, dri.es photo archive, FlowDrop — and the Rosetta sprint.
09Tutorial VI · The Advocacy Program
Credits for telling Drupal’s story, the Rotterdam Pilots, and the new slogan.
10The Cast
Every person named on stage and inside the tutorials — with where to find them.
The stats that carried the talk
One city. One project.
One very loud ending.
Chapter 01 takes you to the canals and container ships of Rotterdam, where Dries finds the metaphor for everything Drupal is about to show.
Begin the keynote → Skip to the announcements