---
url: 'https://dri.es/state-of-drupal-presentation-december-2020'
title: 'State of Drupal presentation (December 2020)'
author:
  name: 'Dries Buytaert'
  url: 'https://dri.es/about'
date: '2020-12-17T06:42:17-05:00'
license: 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/'
type: blog
summary: 'DrupalCon Europe Driesnote presentation'
tags:
  - Drupal
  - DrupalCon
  - 'Headless Drupal'
  - 'Drupal Association'
  - Diversity
image: drupal/state-of-drupal-december-2020
published: true
id: 5106
---

# State of Drupal presentation (December 2020)

Last week, Drupalists gathered virtually for [DrupalCon Europe 2020](https://events.drupal.org/europe2020). As a matter of tradition, I delivered [my State of Drupal keynote](https://dri.es/tag/state-of-drupal). You can [watch a recording of my keynote](https://youtu.be/iJDejwJ7_R4), [download a copy of my slides](https://dri.es/files/state-of-drupal-december-2020.pdf) (146 MB), or read the brief summary below.

[video iJDejwJ7_R4]

The theme of my presentation was "How to optimize for impact". Often [my DrupalCon talks](https://dri.es/tag/state-of-drupal) are product-focused. This time, I wanted to be more reflective on the journey of building Drupal over the last 20 years.

Drupal has done a great job of embracing technological innovation. Not many technologies survive two decades of dramatic changes. I called out our current work on [Headless Drupal](https://dri.es/tag/headless-drupal) as a recent example of keeping up with the pace of innovation. And now we're working towards launching official JavaScript components for Drupal, starting with [Decoupled Menus](https://www.drupal.org/project/decoupled_menus_initiative). You can see our progress in [this video snippet](https://youtu.be/KPjMcZQu0k4):

[video KPjMcZQu0k4]

From there, I moved on to reflecting on what I would change if I could do things differently. I covered topics like "being compelling beyond code alone", obsessing about the user experience, and [rewarding Open Source Makers to maximize the speed of innovation](https://dri.es/balancing-makers-and-takers-to-scale-and-sustain-open-source).

Perhaps most importantly, I've been surprised by a few big things since first creating Drupal, starting with the larger impact of Drupal on the [Open Web](https://dri.es/tag/open-web). Today, this is an important part of my big picture "Why". An important part of that vision includes cultivating a diverse, inclusive Open Source community.

Looking back, what do you think are Drupal's biggest successes? Knowing what we know now, what would you have done differently? Has anything surprised you?
