I Did It With Drupal in New Orleans

I’m on the plane, returning from 3 wonderful days in New Orleans with some of the smartest, most passionate, friendliest geeks around.

Again, I’m reminded why I drank the Drupal Kool-Aid. My Drupal obsession is really about the community.

Yes, Drupal is a powerful, flexible content management system and/or web application framework. In less than 10 years it’s gone from a hobby project in Dries Buytaert’s dorm room to the software powering WhiteHouse.gov.

Drupal has grown and improved without any company owning it, or even a feature roadmap. By giving this software away for free, and decentralizing it’s development to users, Buytaert has opened up Drupal to natural laws and Darwinian-like selective evolutionary pressure.

Anyone can modify and improve Drupal by contributing software patches, contributed code, documentation, or technical support to the project. Contributions “compete” and the highest quality / most popular / “healthiest” ones survive and are often incorporated into the core project.

The Drupal community has developed rules and procedures governing this process and it all happens without traditional management hierarchies of approval. Drupal’s community of 1000’s of users and developers work on the principles of trust, innovation and transparency.

DIWD is the 4th big Drupal event I’ve attended. I’m struck by how many wonderful, interesting, and friendly people I meet. Like previous Drupal events, I came away with inspiration, new friends and maybe even work partners.

• Michael was a biochemistry professor who recently made a brave career change to web development. His company is using Drupal to power online recovery communities for addicts and therapists.
• Jess is a software engineer who moved from Java development to Drupal in part because she enjoyed the “instant gratification” and rapid deployment of Drupal projects as well as the supportive, energetic community. She’s building Drupal sites for a large Arts non-profit in DC.
• Tsegaye is a talented web developer working at the Center for American Progress in DC. He’s using Drupal to publish sites like Enough! - an initiative to highlight and end genocide and and crimes against humanity in Congo and other places.

Some people say Drupal can save the world, others say Drupal is a false god, but in the words of Dries - Drupal just is. It’s not a hammer, it’s not a panacea, and it certainly has plenty of areas needing improvement. It also has changed many lives, empowered many causes, and helped many individuals make lots of money as Drupal service providers.

I remain firmly committed to the project and the community. I have drank the Kool-Aid. I am thrilled to watch Drupal continue to evolve.