Conferences

BADCamp 2020 gave me a virtual stage to share stories and insights from my life as an activist, along with insights I think could benefit anyone working in a team. I dedicated years of my life to causes that matter to me. When I transitioned into working for a Drupal web development agency as a project manager, I thought I would be starting from scratch. I was wrong. 

Occasionally, you meet people in life that you just can’t wait to show off to your friends.  Not to brag (too much), but that’s our team.  Work relationships can feel like a random puzzle of personalities locking away chemistry and collective intelligence. But when you have quality people,  the randomness is a feature not a bug. We’re privileged to share our work lives with folks so varied and inviting. We’re bonded by an expertise and love for our craft and by a desire for that craft to be in service to others.

Continuing our long history of spending our swag budget for good, we planned to partner with the Baltimore Hunger Project (BHP) at The Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in Baltimore later this month. BHP provides 698 non-perishable bundles of food every Friday to combat the weekend “hunger gap” felt by food-insecure children in Baltimore.

Despite the political theatre and resulting uncertainty 2019 has brought us, I am overcome with gratitude for the relationships fostered by Kalamuna’s existence, and proud of the impact we have made together.

Accessibility is really important to the team at Kalamuna. We strive to ensure that every website we work on is as accessible as possible, and that what we design and implement can be used, understood, and appreciated by people of all abilities. But keeping up with all the tools, techniques, and best practices, not to mention the latest WCAG guidelines, can be challenging. Fortunately, there’s a conference that takes place every year where we can do just that.

Like many of you, we are appalled by the inhumane cruelty leveled against migrants and refugees, and are especially heartbroken by the state-sponsored abuses enacted against children. BADCamp gave us an opportunity to utilize our sponsorship booth to create space to talk about this humanitarian crisis. We invited attendees at our booth to help us allocate $1,000 between three nonprofits advancing legal aid, humanitarian aid, or policy change on this issue.

We were honored to have two members of our team present sessions at Drupal North this past June in the beautiful and vibrant city of Montreal, Canada.  Drupal North is an annual,  free, three-day conference focusing on Drupal-related topics and the community that drives the Drupal Project forward.

We were pleased to make new connections while also reconnecting with friends and peers. As always, it was also a privilege to be given the opportunity to share our expertise.

Theorizing the Web has brought people together in critical discussion of technology and the web and their role in society since 2011. To quote their about blurb:

As a digital agency, we believe it’s important to remember the world that exists beyond our JIRA boards. We feel a genuine responsibility to always try to do something that can be of service to the greater good; especially when the opportunity to give a damn is so constant and pervasive.

Last month I went through Scrum Master training to learn how to better whip projects into shape, and I want to share a few takeaways from the two-day training. They say that Scrum is an easy process methodology to understand, but hard to master. I would agree with this wholeheartedly. One of the benefits of becoming a certified Scrum Master is that you get two days of in depth training on the basics, and the basics are where it’s at.