On August 4, 2025, I attended the EvolveDigital Summit, a one day conference on all things web development. The conference is now in its third year. The conference was originally known as EvolveDrupal, but the organizers rebranded it to EvolveDigital for this summit, in order to broaden the audience and scope beyond the Drupal community to the broader web development scene.

The summit took place in the heart of the Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, at the Montréal CoWork offices on rue Saint-Denis. It is a really modern coworking space that has dedicated classrooms and meeting rooms, which makes it a great venue for a tech conference.

The 2025 conference had 32 sessions across 4 main tracks by topic: Strategy & Comms, Tech & AI, Design and Creativity, and Digital Craftsmanship. It was really hard to choose sessions to attend, as there were many interesting options. As would be expected in a conference hosted in Montréal, there were sessions in both English and French. The previous EvolveDrupal Event in Boston this past June had their session recordings posted to YouTube - hopefully it will be the same for this event so I can go back and watch the sessions I missed.

Here is a breakdown of the highlights among the sessions I attended:

Écoconception numérique

(Digital eco-design)

Track: Design & Creativity

Presenter: Jean-François Poliquin, Design Manager, Radio-Canada

This session dealt with the subject of eco-responsibility in web design, and reduction of our carbon footprints in our digital ecosystem. Jean-François presented 20 concrete actions for designing sustainable digital products, including: reducing page weight, analyzing the life cycle, adopting a “mobile first” approach, reusing design systems, promoting intuitiveness, encouraging responsible use, and using AI with discernment. 

I really enjoyed how the talk took a practical approach to taking measures on every project that will improve our eco-responsibility.

The Dramatic and Poetical Tale of the Website Hierarchy of Needs

Track: Tech & AI

Presenter: Steve Persch, Director, Developer Relations, Pantheon Platform

This session was probably the most memorable and creative of the conference. Steve presented a journey of a web team with a simple request that had large ripple effects through the organization. He explored the problem of disconnected goals, and miscommunication across siloed teams. All of the presentation was given with a brilliant poetic narrative that really illustrated the problems faced in large organizations with multiple stakeholders.

From Chatbots to Content Magic: The AI-Driven Future of Drupal

Track: Tech & AI

Presenter: Martin Anderson-Clutz, Principal Solutions Engineer, Acquia

Martin, a frequent presenter at various Drupal conferences, gave an overview of the work being done in the Drupal ecosystem to adopt AI-based tools. The session focused on both individual modules integrating AI assistants and the Drupal AI Initiative, a strategic initiative aimed at accelerating AI innovation in Drupal. 

He presented demonstrations of existing tools in Drupal that aim to improve the experience for content editors, site builders, and developers. The demos included a look at the AI tools integrated in the new Drupal CMS, showcasing existing functionality that you can add to your Drupal sites today.

It was exciting and interesting to see how quickly AI is being adopted in the Drupal ecosystem, and how seriously they are taking the implications of using AI tools.

Building an Accessibility Practice That Sticks

Track: Digital Craftsmanship

Presenter: Fran Wyllie, Accessibility Specialist, Dev Manager, Northern

This session looked at building support for accessibility throughout an organization. Fran covered her process of building out both a team and sharing responsibility for accessibility across teams, and creating a culture of accessibility. She outlined the tools and processes to put in place, and what can be handled by automation and what needs a human touch.

It was a good breakdown of a framework that could be used to advance accessibility initiatives in web teams.

Accessibilité numérique à CBC/Radio-Canada : de la vision à l’exécution

(Digital accessibility at CBC/Radio-Canada: from vision to execution)

Track: Digital Craftsmanship

Presenter: Olivier Fortin, Senior Digital Accessibility (A11y) Engineer, Designer, CBC/Radio-Canada

Olivier gave an overview of the accessibility tools and practises put in place at CBC/Radio-Canada, Canada’s national broadcaster and leading digital news and current affairs provider.

He explained the importance of accessibility as part of their mandate, and how best practices were implemented across product teams, decision makers, developers and subject matter experts.

He explained the importance of positioning accessibility concerns early in the discovery phase of projects, how to collaborate, and provide cross-team training and sensibilization around accessibility, and integrate expertise at the heart of all teams.

SEO in the Age of AI: Is it dead?

Track: Digital Craftsmanship

Presenter: Lindsay Aouled Ezzine, Senior Digital Content Strategy Manager, Telus Health

Lindsay looked at the impact of AI summaries in search results and the practice of search engine optimization (SEO). She looked at the question of “Is SEO dead?”, and how web professionals and site owners can implement sound content strategy and SEO that will bring authority to their site, which will still be a huge factor even with AI search. She likened the current moment to the initial rise of SEO experts and trying to game results through keyword stuffing and other techniques that had the bots in mind. She stressed the importance of targeting website content to real users, and not only to AI.

Chatbot or Mega Menu? And Other UX Choices that Shape your Website Strategy

Track: Digital Craftsmanship

Presenters:

Suzanne Dergacheva, Co-Founder, Evolving Web

Bruna Siqueira-Davis, Product & Digital Strategist, Evolving Web

Suzanne and Bruna explored some UX and content strategy trends, including mega-menus, storytelling content, design systems, and chatbots. They looked at the pros and cons of each technique, and framed it in the context of adopting a product mindset. They stressed that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t exist, and that solutions should be determined based on the context of the organization, target audiences, and ultimately the end users of websites.

Conclusion

Overall, I found the EvolveDigital summit to be extremely informative and well organized. I met attendees from across North America, and even Europe. There was a lot to learn, and I hope to attend more of these conferences in the future, perhaps even submit a session for next year’s summit in Montreal.