I am going to start posting blogs for a semi-recurring, weekly post I make on LinkedIn. I've been more active there with shorter, summarized thoughts. They often summarize something I've learned or some perspective I've gained during the week. The first was posted around 7/15/21. As follows: Post: Big wins are just a collection of small steps. To be successful, you need to get into the weeds of those small steps. Visions are directional, but plans are tactical. Any good plan should help define the specifics needed to achieve the vision. Teams plan and operate better when breaking complex

SimplyTest.me, like other large efforts in our community, requires many types of contributions to be effective. Effective today, I am announcing the creation of a new partners program. While this program will evolve with time, we wish to kick off the effort of recognizing both the individuals and companies that helped us get here and are helping us transform. All types of sponsors will be recognized through ongoing social media campaigns. This is especially important as we look to formalize a roadmap and need trusted partners to help us execute. Financial Sponsors Nearly three years ago, we

In the wake of the poor leadership demonstrated by the FSF, there was a sharp contrast displayed today at DrupalCon. Passion, interest, and innovation around open source software seems to be at an all-time high. One of the most prevailing open source projects, Drupal, just turned twenty years old. You can't help but recognize Dries and other long time community leaders for choosing open source before it became cool and helping to push the boundaries of what a large, open source community is capable of doing. Today's Driesnote was an inspiring message fitting for now and the road ahead. While

SimplyTest.me is a labor of love but it has been one of the most unique, satisfying contributions I've made to the community. Most of that labor has been dedicated toward maintaining the Drupal 7 version. Our maintenance was massively improved with the introduction of Tugboat.QA, but this year found major changes in the Drupal community with the launch of Drupal 9, the major changes to Composer workflows, and the Gitlab integration. All of these things are of high impact for Drupal and required major changes to SimplyTest. This has been especially hard to keep up with for me. Our latest

Vacation this year has been amazing. I've caught up on some of my long-standing to do list, like launching this new nerdstein site and digging into some of the newer technology I've wanted to explore. SimplyTest has some great new contribution I am excited about. I've spent a ton of time with the kids coloring, playing, and just enjoying these moments while they are young. It is shocking how quickly they have grown. I've cooked a lot and those close know how much I enjoy doing that. I've blogged more - finally - after a long hiatus and lack of motivation. I am currently enjoying an Eight &

Let me welcome you to the new nerdstein.net. I'd like to thank Ana Laura Coto for help with the design. I'd like also thank Jonathan Daggerhart for being there when I needed an assist. I am really happy to finally share this project with the world. This has been a long time coming. Three years. Yes, you read that correctly. Three years. Why? I prioritized learning. And, I am slow and methodical. This website is a culmination of many things I learned over a three year span. But, three years?!? Yep. I have a rewarding and challenging full time job at Acquia. I have a family with two young kids

Drupal 8 introduced a lot of changes. Its usage of best-of-breed dependencies, like Symfony, represented a major shift for Drupal. Drupal 8 also moved to a more nimble release cycle with its major and minor releases, allowing a major version of core to get new features in minor releases. Between dependencies releasing updates and changes to core being more common, Drupal needed to evolve to manage change. One way this happens is through deprecations. This provides a way for Drupal to evolve, identify old code as deprecated, and offer guidance on a replacement. Deprecations were especially