Image credit: Aaron Deutsch

DrupalCon Global 2020 is in a couple weeks and there are a lot of amazing sessions. Hope you can make it! While preparing my own DrupalCon Global session, I reviewed the other sessions and made a list of ones you might want to watch to help you prepare for upgrading from Drupal 6 or 7 or 8 to Drupal 9.

In some cases, it was very hard to choose just one on a particular topic. For example, there are 3 great layout builder talks! So, while these are some of my top picks, don't forget to check out all the DrupalCon Global sessions and add your favorites to your schedule.

If you are upgrading from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 and don't need to make any website improvements, then you can focus on the Drupal 9 sessions. If you will be doing a redesign and/or upgrading from Drupal 6 or 7 to Drupal 9, check sessions for dreaming up your new site, planning your new site architecture, and implementing your new site.

Drupal 9 sessions

Everything you want to know about Drupal 9: the upgrade process from Drupal 6, 7, and 8, making upgrades faster with a new Acquia migration tool, the nitty gritty details on what makes Drupal 9 special, and new features coming in Drupal 9.1.

• Deep dive: state of Drupal 9
  by Amber Himes Matz and Gábor Hojtsy
  
• Drupal 9: New Initiatives for Drupal
  by jerdavis
  
• Bridging the migration gap from Drupal 7 to 9
  by webchick
  
• Getting ready for Drupal 9: Upgrading your module
  by penyaskito
  
• Preparing custom & contributed code for D9
  by mikelutz
  
• Preparing you & your site for Drupal 9
  by Kristen Pol
  
• The Drupal Initiatives mega-session
  by Gábor Hojtsy
  

Dreaming up your new site

Discovery, design, and project management are critical for your web projects. These sessions cover how to manage your team, user stories and user experience work, and other important aspects of designing a great website.

• The "P" word: managing the people in your digital project
  by tfish77 and rfanning
  
• Getting discovery right: The foundation of project success
  by Zoocha Will
  
• What is user journey mapping and why should I care?
  by chadhester
  
• From squiggles to straight lines: Sketching discovery & UX work
  by marsepstein
  
• One usability step at a time: Improve your site with a UX audit
  by alittledesign and BeckyCierpich
  
• Accessible patterns from the ground up
  by cehfisher
  

Planning your new site architecture

Drupal is a great framework for building the website you want by customizing to your needs. These sessions cover foundational features of the Drupal system: media, layout builder, components, admin tools, SEO, and migrations.

• Media in Drupal 8: everything you need to know
  by phenaproxima
  
• Page building showdown: Paragraphs vs. Layout builder
  by drupalninja99
  
• An overview of Drupal 8 front-end component integration methods
  by brianperry
  
• Outstanding admin UX
  by switzern and a3hill
  
• SEO and Drupal: Designing and developing a search-friendly site
  by dkadamus
  
• Avoid a redesign train wreck: Get your content from point A to B
  by lwinter
  

Implementing your new site

If you are new to Drupal 8 and 9, these sessions will help you understand how to work with composer, configuration management, and Twig as well as create custom modules and migrations.

• Moving to Composer: Converting an existing site
  by greg.1.anderson and Mile23
  
• Understanding Configuration Management and How to Override
  by drfuzetto
  
• Altering, extending, and enhancing Drupal
  by eojthebrave
  
• Layout Builder components can break your site. Here's how.
  by aangel
  
• Next level Twig
  by megan_m
  
• A strategic approach to custom migrations
  by adamzimmermann, asak, and zopa
  

Hope to see you at DrupalCon Global!

Apologies, my old website is still on Drupal 6 and looks particularly bad on mobile. I've only started posting here again after many years and I've been very busy reviewing Drupal 9 patches and surviving a pandemic. :) Please ignore the cobbler's old shoes for now, thanks!