people

Component-based architectures have become both a popular and fairly crowded space in the Drupal community. For over a year, I have followed the progress of some tools created by those leveraging Pattern Lab as a component based design library. I can’t claim to know the full breadth of problems these individuals encountered, many of which are experienced technologists in our space. But, every solution I have seen has been complex and demonstrates some architectural red flags. I wanted to take a fresh look. I paid a designer to redesign my blog for a migration to Drupal 8. This presented the

In my earlier blog post, I researched community governance in other open source communities. While it was not exhaustive, I identified a set of trends and practices communities use to serve community members. The question remains: what can Drupal learn from other communities? To answer this question, we must understand where we are today. It turns out that answering this is quite difficult depending on our individual experience, network, and exposure to the community. Admittedly, with respect to Drupal’s governance, I am far from an expert. While I have been in the community for a while, I

Something has been bothering me and I haven't been able to put my finger on it. I hesitated writing this. By doing so, I fully understand that some will choose to twist or misinterpret my words to further instill doubt into the community. While this is one's right and often turns into a lengthy Twitter debate, many in the community have shied away from sharing their voice for fear of retribution. As a community, we have accomplished great things not because we agree on everything, but because we know how to disagree without being disagreeable. We are capable of debate through issue queues

Jrockowitz's recent blog post on crowd sourcing, found here, sparked so many ideas for me. I wanted to discuss the most prominent idea in this blog post, the idea for a company that nurtures community contributions. Such a topic has often been on my mind and Jrockowitz post might have helped me to connect enough dots around this idea. Community members (especially maintainers) often volunteer their time and energy to community projects with little incentive aside from their will to do good. BackgroundBefore elaborating further, I think there are some key motivations to align. The first is

DrupalCon was a great way to connect with the community and gauge the pulse from recent events involving Crell. After writing blog posts, I engaged with many people to share thoughts and hear perspectives. One common question that came up: what do other communities do for governance? This motivated me to do some research of my own. I wanted to be better informed in discussions to know what other communities are doing in an effort to identify where our communal gaps might be. I am a firm believer that the Drupal community doesn’t need to “reinvent the wheel” or think we are “special snowflakes”

It is safe to say that people like talking about themselves. I'm guilty of that, but I don't think I have actually given any real consideration or focus to the matter. That changed this morning. I had a friend ask me: "What are you passionate about?" I was disappointed by how lame I responded. At my core, I'm a problem solver. I'm also a social nerd - I love people; I'm an extrovert; I'm nerdy. I'm also a self-recognizing honey badger as this has traditionally served as my "winning strategy". None of these things define what I'm passionate about - they just define aspects of who I am and how I

Drupal has a full vocabulary of Drupalisms. While I think that is fine for Drupal-specific features, it also is a sign that we seem to promote our own island when there are similar concepts that exist in the technology space. When possible, we should try to align with more conventional terms that others outside of Drupal understand. If anything, this can make Drupal more approachable and better understood in broader context. I think I identified one such term: the term "Site Building" has never sat well with me - both as an activity and as a role. Site Building is an activity generally

Sometimes situations take time to resolve. This situation is complicated and the goal is to treat everyone respectfully. We're beginning to see things play out now. I want to offer some of my recent thoughts. By no means are they right or fully informed, but I wanted to share (please don't shoot the messenger).A subtle reminderThis situation has reminded me that: We are dealing with actual people We are all human Let’s break each down a bit more to set proper context. We are dealing with actual peoplePeople drive our community. Behind the keyboard is a person. No technical contribution would

For a moment, may some of the hurt and fearful in the Drupal community take a moment to pause and reflect. Take a deep breath and slow down from the continuous retweeting, reddit posts, or the most recent Drupal Confessions. (By the way, does anyone else think "Drupal Confessions" sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit or a bad emo song?) Let me begin by reminding you that some of the strongest voices are the farthest from those potentially marginalized by the Crell situation. These loud voices are drowning out the voices of those they claim to also stand up for. It's like a bad train wreck

In my previous two blog posts [one] [two], I shared my concerns and open questions over the recent events surrounding Crell and discussed my initial efforts to become informed even when full transparency does not and likely will not exist. I have formed the opinion that those seeking answers and specifics may never get the level of detail they desire, both for legal and privacy reasons. I continue to engage with others in conversation out of respect for those processing these events and out of my desire to form a well-rounded and bias-free stance. With the complexities involved, there is no