A group for Drupal users in southern Ontario, mainly from Kitchener, Waterloo, as well as Cambridge, Guelph and surrounding areas.
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Who
All Drupal enthusiasts are welcome to join us for discussion and demonstration of topics for beginners and beyond.
What
Topics range from implementation examples and demonstrations to tutorials and workshops to round-tables, question and answers and panel discussions.
When
Meetings are held monthly, except for July, August and December. We meet on the third Thursday of each month, from 19:00 to 21:00.
Why
Learn about different aspects of working with Drupal, including development, site building, design, and more. Coming to a meetup is also a great opportunity to network with others who work with Drupal, and get help with any problems you're having. You will also have opportunities to share your knowledge with others and gain experience presenting to a group.
Where
In-Person Room
Our new meeting room is in the Engineering 7 (E7) building at the University of Waterloo. E7 is on the east side of campus right next to the bus terminal. View google map.
To park in the B or Q visitor lots next to the bus terminal you will need to use the AMP mobile pay app: https://aimsmobilepay.com.
The building looks like this:
Our meeting room is number 1331, just inside the entry doors for E7:
Online option
Online meeting link will be posted on the event page on the day of the meetup. We are committed to providing a strong online meeting presence, and have worked to make sure that comments from in person attendees are audible to those attending online. Please let us know if you have any problems with the online meeting format.
April Meetup: Critical Dates at the University of Waterloo
Wednesday, April 15 - 7-9pm
University of Waterloo, E7 1331
This month, Eric Bremner from the University of Waterloo will show how they use views remote data to connect to an external API to present important dates at the University of Waterloo. Two teams collaborated to present this content to students and staff with pages that get millions of hits during the year.
Note schedule change
Note that this meetup is on a Wednesday
Camp planning
Read moreMarch Meetup - Welcome to the Dark Side: Implementing Dark Mode in your Theme ***RESCHEDULED***
Rescheduled
Thursday, March 5 - 7-9pm
University of Waterloo, E7 1331
Presenter: Megan McDermott, Woolwich Web Works
Offering dark mode on a website is becoming increasingly popular. It’s a good option for accessibility, and a lot of people just prefer to view web pages this way.
You might think this should be simple - just swap the text and background colours and you’re good to go, right? It turns out that there’s a bit more to it.
In this session we will look at:
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January Meetup: Config Enforce + Other config things. ** NEW ROOM **
Thursday, January 22 - 7-9PM
University of Waterloo, E7 1131
Presenter: Derek Laventure, Consensus Enterprises
At Consensus, one significant challenge we noticed with the D8 config management system is the issue we call "config drift": if you make changes to a config YAML in your dev environment, what happens when you deploy that into a site with a different config? What if you only wanted to update one value in a config entity, but someone has changed a different value from the same config object in production?
Read moreNovember Meetup: AI Applications
November 20, 7-9pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 119
Southwestern Ontario Drupal Camp: Don't forget to register + volunteers needed
Looking forward to seeing you all at the SWO Drupal Camp next Friday, October 24 at the Kitchener Public LIbrary. We have a really strong line-up of talks scheduled so it should be a really good day. Don't forget to register!
Read moreSWO Drupal Camp: Registration is Open!
Registration for the first ever Southwestern Ontario Drupal Camp is now open! Registration includes:
- An inspiring keynote
- A full day of informative sessions
- Lunch and coffee break
- Awesome networking opportunities
September Meetup: Fall catch-up & more
Thursday, September 18, 7:00 - 9:00pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 119
For this meetup we'll catch up on what everyone has been working on since we last got together. Everyone will have the chance to talk briefly about what they've been working on lately (Drupal-related or not). It's okay if you think what you've been doing sounds boring - maybe the rest of us will find it interesting! You can bring a laptop to demonstrate some things, but this is optional.
Some topics we'll be hearing about include:
- Making microsites with contained search
Mark your Calendars! Southwestern Ontario DrupalCamp is happening!
SouthWestern Ontario Drupal Camp is happening! Joing us on October 24, 2025 for a full day of informative talks, networking opportunities, and more!
Please share this with your colleagues - we would love to include anyone who works on websites including designers, content creators, marketers, and developers who don't normally work with Drupal (or haven't used it recently).
Read moreDrupal Camp Planning meeting
At our last meet up we plannned to have bi-weekly meetings to plan our fall Drupal Camp. These meetings will be on Wednesday evenings from 7-9pm Online only
Tentative agenda
- Financing through new Drupal Canada organization
- Finalize name - SWO Drupal Camp? Southwestern Ontario Drupal Camp? Drupal Camp SWO? Some other variation?
- Sponsorship levels & offerings
- Marketing next steps - announcement, registering a domain, setting up a website, can we get a logo made??
Online meeting details
Read moreJune Meetup: Drupal Camp Ottawa recap + Drupal Camp Planning (SCHEDULE CHANGE)
Wednesday, June 11
7-9pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall Rm HH 334
This month we'll hear from those who went to Drupal Camp Ottawa and start planning our own Camp in the Fall.
We are in the process of finalizing a date at the Kitchener Public Library in October or November. They have a theatre plus 4-5 other meeting rooms that would be a great fit for a small Camp. We'll take a look at the Event Planning guide and figure out how to get this done.
Read moreSchedule change for May + June
Hi all,
Just a heads up that we're going to change the meeting schedule for our May + June meetings. We are thinking about meeting on Wednesday June 4 or June 11. A few of us have some scheduling conflicts coming up.
Let us know if one of those dates suits you better!
Read moreApril Meetup: To Drupal or not to Drupal, that is the question (DIFFERENT ROOM)
Thursday, April 17
7-9pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 119
This month we'll be talking about situations where we've had to make a decision about whether to develop something in Drupal or to use a different solution. Liam and Megan from Woolwich Web Works will discuss three case studies:
- An interactive visual explorer for home owners
- A tool for creating customized print marketing materials
- A custom LMS for the restaurant industry
March Meetup: Are development containers dead? Drupal development with devenv and Nix
Thursday, March 20
7-9pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 259
Detailed directions to the room
Docker is familiar to most developers, and nearly all Drupal developers have used DDEV. They allow teams to work in similar environments, while eliminating global dependency issues. If there were stats for it, we'd find a dramatic reduction in 'Number of times a dev said "works on my machine" per year' since the introduction of Docker and development containers.
Read moreFebruary Meetup: Optimizing time to first paint
Thursday, February 20 - 7:00-9:00PM
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 259.
Detailed directions to the room
This month, Martin and Eric will demonstrate a website that loads critical CSS so that the first paint of the site happens very quickly and improves Google Lighthouse scores dramatically. They will show how tailwind and preprocessing is used to obtain this slick implementation and any questions will be answered.
Read moreJanuary Meetup: Using Drupal to organize a Warhammer collection (probably)
Thursday, January 16, 7:00 - 9:00pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 259
Probable/possible topic:
For this month's meeting, Bryan Heisler will talk about using Drupal to organize his Warhammer miniature collection.
From Bryan:
Read moreNovember Meetup: Checking out Drupal CMS, Experience Builder & some other new things
User group meeting
Thursday, November 21, 7:00 - 9:00pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 259
For this month's meet up we'll be taking a look at some of the new initiatives in Drupal. We'll try out the new Drupal CMS and see where it's at, take a look at the new Experience Builder, and also check out some of the new AI tools.
Have you encountered any new modules that you're excited about? Come and share with the group!
Online Meeting Option
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84246166612?pwd=UkFju70UHIaXQ3qI3G3LanXgdVLF0E.1
Passcode 063469
Read moreOctober Meetup: Three Ways to view your Single Directory Components (**NEW ROOM**)
Thursday, October 17, 7:00 - 9:00pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 259
This month we'll hear about a few different ways of viewing Single Directory Components (SDCs) including UI Patterns Component Library module, Storybook Module, and SDC Styleguide module.
Read moreSeptember Meetup: Fall Catch up
Thursday, September 19, 7:00 - 9:00pm
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 119
For this meetup we'll catch up on what everyone has been working on since we last got together. Everyone will have the chance to talk briefly about what they've been working on lately (Drupal-related or not). It's okay if you think what you've been doing sounds boring - maybe the rest of us will find it interesting! You can bring a laptop to demonstrate some things, but this is optional.
Some topics we'll be hearing about include:
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June Meetup: Time to first paint + Hacking your hosting
Thursday, June 20 - 6:30-8:30PM
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 119.
Detailed directions to the room
Part 1: Optimizing time to first paint
Martin and Eric will demonstrate a website that loads critical CSS so that the first paint of the site happens very quickly and improves lighthouse scores dramatically. They will show how tailwind and preprocessing is used to obtain this slick implementation and any questions will be answered.
Read moreMay Meetup: University of Waterloo site management + Hacking your Hosting (Hybrid)
Thursday, May 16 - 6:30-8:30PM
University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall rm 119.
To begin our meeting, we will probably do some introductions and talk about DrupalCon, which is happening this week (May 5-9). Then we have two talks:
Part 1: University of Waterloo Site Management
Read more
