Kalamuna

Back-end developer essential guide to front-end browser testing and debugging tools

Flexbox, CSS grid, accessibility, device testing, JavaScript performance metrics - those are just part of day-to-day front-end developer life. Front-end development is definitely more complex today than it has been a few years ago. This means that it's harder for back-end developers to jump in and assist without knowing tools of the trade. Whether you are, like myself, mostly a back-end developer by day but run into situations when you need to help to debug, test and fix front-end, or aspired full-stack unicorn, or maybe a beginner front-end you will find something in this session. We will go step by step and browser by browser and cover tools, techniques, extensions for CSS debugging of flexbox and grid, JavaScript debugging and tricks for browse console, accessibility tools in your browser that will make your life easier as well as popular accessibility extensions. Then we will move into helper websites that make day to day routine debugging tasks easier. And finally will look into on device testing options in your browsers. Come along and add a few new tools to your developer toolbox.

Mic Check! How life as an activist prepared me to be a Drupal PM

The skills of an activist and the skills of a Drupal PM are less disparate than they may seem. Activists motivate and coordinate large groups of people, often with differing ideas, without the resources agencies possess. Before becoming a Drupal project manager, Lily Berman (among other similar endeavors) led a political canvass office and a traveling nonprofit organization. She has slept on the sidewalk with Occupy Denver, given a speech with a crowd-powered “mic check” microphone in front of the UN, and has been a spokesperson for her nonprofit on Nevada Public Radio and NBC Nightly News.  This presentation will share stories and insights from the road, along with revealing tools and concepts that will benefit anyone working in a team. Attend this session to: Learn how to effectively navigate differing opinions while ensuring your perspective is communicated persuasively Facilitate large meetings with ease, using tools and roles activists use to efficiently reach consensus with every voice heard Build stronger, motivating relationships and inspire action with your clients and internal teams

Lessons from the trenches of a veteran PM who went remote

Life as a remote PM has its own challenges. It can be stressful and hard to adapt especially after working in an office environment. I had to change a lot of my own processes to have successful projects and happy teams when transitioning to remote project management three years ago. Come commiserate and learn solutions!    In this session we'll:  Discuss the realities of remote project management and propose solutions.  Learn ways to adapt your personal processes and then how to roll process out to your organization.  Get practical and discuss how important it is to have the right tools for the job.   

How to move beyond WCAG and towards authentic digital inclusion

Do you feel distracted by a suite of automated tools, pages of report data, and feedback on work that was designed and developed weeks and weeks ago? If your antidote is achieving WCAG 2.1 AA conformance, you may be leaving more people behind than you think. Accessibility and digital inclusion can be easier. Authentic digital inclusion means ensuring that every end user can actually use a digital asset as designed and intended. Let’s start there.  In this presentation, the American Foundation for the Blind and Kalamuna will discuss how organizations can benefit from usability-centric development policies and processes. Strategic, agile approaches will demonstrate how a spirit of digital accessibility can be achieved. Attendees will learn: Why usability is the most important component in an organization’s accessibility approach How to get started incorporating usability in the development and design process What are the most important workflows to focus on for usability Why policies and processes are so critical to ensuring digital inclusion How to create knowledge transfer in your development and design teams to create and sustain authentic digital inclusion Plus, a demonstration of usability testing in action!     Kalamuna is an Oakland+Toronto-based agency that designs and develops institutional websites that solve complex challenges, simplify and improve user experience, and tell better stories.   American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) is a national organization with nearly a century of experience in setting standards and achieving milestones to improve the quality of life for people with vision loss. AFB Consulting offers a variety of services that address tactical, strategic, and programmatic needs to help organizations reshape their culture to promote disability inclusion.  

Building Websites That Protect User Privacy

This session will provide an overview on how to protect user privacy, including avoiding sharing website visitor traffic outside of your organization. If you're using Drupal, you have architected a website to store data securely with Drupal’s robust permissions, access checks and security best practices. However, your website loads third party scripts, which can share your visitor traffic with one or more outside organizations. Why build a highly secure website, while also sharing all your visitors’ traffic outside your organization? Unless your organization’s business model relies on ads, it’s entirely possible to build your website in a way that avoids sharing your website visitor traffic with third parties. Protecting website visitor privacy can be improved by starting with the following set of questions: Do you really need all those third party scripts on your website? Can you reproduce the functionality of third party script in house?  Do you really need to load fonts from another server? Can you download them and install them on your own server?  If analytics is an important requirement for your organization, would it be possible to invest in hosting your analytics tools in house? Are there tools for anonymizing server logging for your particular CMS or server?  CDNs are great for improving performance for your website, but do you trust them not to share visitor traffic? Would it be possible to host these files on a server you control instead?  What you’ll learn in this session: You’ll come away with a renewed sense of urgency for protecting website user privacy, including website visitor traffic You will learn what third party scripts are, how they share user data outside your organization, how they are a source of security vulnerabilities, and some ways to avoid using them You will learn about HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) You will learn what information Drupal logs from users and options to avoid tracking this information You’ll learn what information servers log about visitors and options to anonymize this information