Greetings and Happy New Year from the heart of San Francisco, where Chapter Three ended yet another exhilarating year filled with innovation, collaboration, and noteworthy milestones! 2023 was our 17th year in the biz, and it was a busy one, to say the least. We had great projects aplenty, and numerous appearances by our team at events around the world.
For the first time ever, Chapter Three attended both the North American and the European editions of DrupalCon. DrupalCon Pittsburgh, which took place in June, was a key follow-up to our breakthrough appearance the year before at DrupalCon Portland, where we unveiled Next-Drupal to the world. It was also an opportunity to assess the community’s readiness for decoupled Drupal.
We were thrilled when Josh Koenig, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Pantheon, and original Chapter Three co-founder back in 2006, explicitly stated that the future of Drupal is headless. In his talk “Hot Takes: Javascript and the Future of Drupal”, he cited a statistic showing that in May 2023, Next.js-powered sites outnumbered Drupal sites for the first time ever. He also called out Next-Drupal as a cutting-edge development in this space.
In October, we attended DrupalCon Lille and once again took the opportunity to raise awareness of our innovations in the decoupled space. The real highlight of our trip to France, however, came the day before DrupalCon began, with the one-day ComposableNOW event hosted by Amazee.io. There, John Faber gave an impassioned talk on using the open web for digital acceleration and data privacy.
Between these two events, we attended (and sponsored) Decoupled Days 2023 in Albuquerque, taking the opportunity to promote our signature Next.js product further.
Meanwhile, our man on the ground in Costa Rica, Senior Drupal Developer, Ronald Aguilar, held a workshop on leveraging Drupal with Next.js to build decoupled solutions.
Closer to home, we traveled to Napa for Acquia’s Bay Area Customer & Partner Appreciation, and also attended Figma’s signature event, Config 2023, right here in San Francisco.
In addition to traveling and presenting, we also focused on our projects. 2023 saw the exciting launch of a massive multi-site project for the Judicial Council of California, for whom we deployed a suite of over 50 court sites. In a similar legal vein, we partnered with the Oregon State Bar to build an interactive civil legal help portal for the State of Oregon. We used decoupled Drupal 10 (Next-Drupal) and React for the project – stay tuned for a more in-depth update on this soon.
Meanwhile, in a different sector, we built a developer portal for the cloud-based human resources and recruiting software company, iCIMS, which we launched in October. We also developed a new site for SF Climate Plan. We finished the second and final phase of a new web design for The Shops at Santa Anita, complete with a lightning-fast React front end and interactive map functionality.
Last but not least, we also embarked on and completed a Drupal 7 to 10 migration for one of our city’s most important service providers, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), for whom we now provide post-launch support services.
While we’re still catching our breath from a busy 2023 and looking ahead to a similarly busy 2024, we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t love the work. There were staff lunches and get-togethers throughout the year. All of the travel and project work, while hectic at times, somehow never feels like work. It always feels like a group of friends working together on projects. People stick around at Chapter Three, and that is why.
We can't forget about the extended Chapter Three co-workers.
Thank you all for being part of our story. We look forward to continuing to work together in 2024 and beyond!
