My First DrupalCon: Nara, Japan

• Sat, Nov 22, 2025
• 4-minute read

Last week is going to be a great memory for me. I finally got to attend and present at my First DrupalCon, in Nara. I’ve been wanting to go for the last 4-5 years, and though I have been to Japan before, this time it felt completely different because I was there to present.

The whole experience was surreal. I met and had dinner with the Acquia team (including Dries), which was a highlight. The sessions were really interesting, covering a wide range of topics, from Drupal Canvas to Recipes. Each session delivered a new experience.

Since it was my first time presenting at DrupalCon and at an international conference, I was nervous, of course. I didn’t have breakfast or a good lunch. My session was at 2:10 PM, so I decided to stick to eating fruits. Once the session was delivered, I ate all I could!

My preparation ran into two big challenges right before the session.

The Script Problem

I had been working on a perfect script for weeks, a script for each slide, maintaining the flow between slides with some funny jokes and serious sentences. But when I was preparing, I had doubts: would I be able to see my script while presenting? Will there be a second screen?

At the venue, I saw the answer was No. There was no way to see or read the script easily. This became a real challenge.

To solve this, I quickly created a Google document with my script and decided to keep it open on my phone. I just needed a short glimpse of the script, and I knew I could handle the rest since I had been practicing and enacting the presentation for weeks. I still needed that quick reference, though. So, the script part was sorted: read it from the phone.

The Demo Fail

Then came the live demo part. I had planned to demo the workflow I created on Activepieces, Drupal, and Slack, but about an hour before the session, I did a dry run and saw Activepieces’s LinkedIn piece throwing a version issue with their LinkedIn API.

It’s not surprising with live demos, it’s usual that they don’t work when you want to show them. For a backup, I had recorded a dry run video, but I still really wanted to present it working live, so I gave it a shot. I put on my developer hat and decided to call the LinkedIn API directly within the Activepieces workflow. That also did not work because versioning was a problem with the custom API piece as well. I had tried everything, even went back to old-school way of searching over StackOverflow. But nothing worked.

So, I had to stick to the recorded demo.

The Session Time

The moment came. I connected the projector chord to my laptop and shared the screen. I opened the script on my phone and started the presentation.

I could feel a little nervousness in my voice, but as I started, I just went with the normal flow. I didn’t look at the script at all. I was able to deliver the session without looking down. I covered all parts, demoed the workflow (using the video), and everything went smoothly.

I was very happy with my presentation. I had some people from my team click some pictures, and though they weren’t nice pictures, I could hardly see myself but they were great for memory. Post-presentation, I talked with people, asked them how it went, and they were all very happy with it.

Post that, I was enjoying like a child. That’s how I presented at my first DrupalCon.

This was an experience that I will remember forever: presenting at my first international conference.