MCP from Concept to Demo: An Open Data Example with DKAN

​New to the Model Context Protocol, or still fuzzy on what it actually does? This session is built to fix that — twice over. First you'll learn MCP from the ground up, then you'll watch it work in a real, applied example.

Dan Goodwin, Sr. Front End Developer at CivicActions, starts with the fundamentals: what MCP is, and the three primitives at its core — tools, resources, and prompts. Once those click, he grounds them in a concrete use case. Open data turns out to be a natural fit for MCP, and DKAN — the Drupal-based open data platform — is the perfect place to prove it. Dan tours the dkan_mcp_server module and the mcp_server module it's built on, then closes with a live demo of dkan_mcp_server, so you can see the concepts you just learned actually running.

You'll leave understanding not just what MCP is, but what it looks like in production. Whether you work with DKAN or have never touched it, you'll walk away with a mental model you can apply to your own projects. Bring your questions!