Addison Berry (add1sun)
Fri, 01/04/2008 - 06:10 — add1sun
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?:
At this point I pretty much live and breathe Drupal. This community is very important to me and I feel a strong bond to it. I know that the first year for the Association has been very important and hard work. I feel like I've been standing on the sidelines watching my friends toil and that I should help in whatever capacity I can.
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?:
My current personal battle plans for 2008 are mainly focused around mentoring and education. I'm working hard to move the Drupal Dojo forward and I'd like to see how the Association and the Dojo can work together. I am also keenly interested in the larger picture of OS mentoring. I'd like to work with other OS projects to collaborate on mentoring by sharing information and ideas regarding organization and materials. I'd love to see joint mentoring/seminars where Drupal overlaps/interacts with other projects like jQuery or Linux. Related to all this I also want to work on a "Train the Trainer" (TtT) program to help new people make the leap from student to teacher as well as getting experts who have the knowledge feel more comfortable teaching what they know. By TtT I am not referring to a certification or "gold star" kind of program, but simply creating materials and classes that will help teach people how to be more effective teachers by covering presentation and preparation techniques. This kind of material could also fit in with some event programs as well (especially for camps.)
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?:
I am currently part of getting Dojo 2.0 mobilized and moving towards reality. This is a substantial community project and I have already been working on laying out a roadmap to assess needs and gather resources. You can see mine and others' ideas and progress so far on the Dojo groups site: http://groups.drupal.org/taxonomy/term/3311. I also plan to help with this year's SoC program. I will be presenting on Open Source Mentoring at the Women in Open Source conference in LA this February and I plan to take the opportunity to discuss the topic with a variety of OS projects and make some good connections with like-minded folks in other projects. Most of what is in my "plan" at this time involves lots of research and communication (within and outside of the Drupal community) to determine what is needed to really make mentoring and Train the trainer programs successful and evaluate what resources we need. I feel that a year of solid research, planning and initial implementation (of Dojo and training materials) will lay a good foundation for a more formal plan to be presented to the association and pursued by a possible new Board position next year of Director of Education.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?:
Many of the things to be pursued will need a fair amount of research before an initial budget can be determined so anything here is just speculation. The Dojo is currently looking at non-monetary incentives (like advertising space on videos and sponsor links for contributors) to get work done but a budget to pay for the less "interesting" tasks could help things move along. What those tasks will be, and therefor the cost, is still to be determined at this time. One idea put forth as well is to create a Dojo program similar to GHOP or SoC that would fund tasks. To be enough of an incentive and still cover a range of tasks, it would probably need at least $5000. Outreach to other projects and coordinated training should not require a budget this year at the level I am planning to pursue. Perhaps down the road things like travel and conference attendance could be budget items. The training materials to be created will mostly require time to research and put together a combination of written and video materials. If we wanted to produce these as physical items (papers and CD/DVDs) then a budget would be needed for printing and mailing. I'm not sure this is needed or desired but we can determine that down the road. If so, CD/DVDs can be made en mass anywhere from .50 to $2 each depending on the quantity so a "short" run of 100 discs can be had for under $200 and 700 for under $1000.
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?:
I've come up through the Dojo from the start and I have spent a fair amount of time teaching others (both in the community at large and through my job with Lullabot) and creating documentation and videos to that end. I have taught not only within the context of Drupal but also as an IT trainer at my previous job and teaching English as a second language in Thailand. I am also helping coordinate Google's GHOP contest for Drupal. I'm passionate not just about sharing information but giving people confidence to apply their knowledge and teach others. Basically I think that teaching and learning are the most fun things in the world to do and so combining that with Drupal makes for a blast as well empowering people to do Great Things.
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?:
I've been using Drupal for almost 2 years now. I got my <a href="http://drupal.org/user/65088">Drupal.org account</a> 1.5 years ago. I had been using Wordpress for blogging and then as a mini-CMS. When my job at a Federal Court wanted to redo their website I knew Wordpress wouldn't cut it so I looked for a more robust solution. I settled on Drupal after a brief comparison with other CMS. I sort of banged my head all alone for a while and then really fully jumped in to the Drupal community when the Dojo began a year ago.
Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?:
I am on the Drupal.org documentation team as well as being a site maintainer. I currently maintain 2 contrib modules and have made/tested core patches. I've made numerous videocasts and been helping admin the Dojo as well as occasionally teaching. I also helped organized the GHOP contest. I pretty much try to get my hands into as many parts of Drupal as I can. Aside from Drupal I was also involved with the Apache Forrest project for a while doing documentation and patches.
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?:
11-15 hours/month
Apply for Board of Directors membership:
Apply for Permanent Membership only
Statutes:
I have read and understood the Statutes of the Drupal Association. I am prepared to participate by following those statutes.
Comments
good candidate
I know you have a great handle on Google stuff. On that alone, I'm excited to see you get some more official input on DA's involvement in the continuation of those and similar projects.
The Dojo has always seemed from the start like it's on the edge of fizzing out. I can't help but wonder if the DA becoming more involved in it is a wasted effort or not.
Clarification
Yes the Dojo has had ups and downs and the Dojo 2.0 effort is looking to make it more sustainable. I want to make it clear that I am not saying that the DA should "fund" the Dojo. I think that part of the hesitancy for the larger community to really step up with the Dojo is that it seems like a wobbly thing that people can't figure out where the value of the contribution pays off. I think spending some time to nail that down will open up better paths for individuals and companies to make the Dojo a *very* useful tool for the community and, more importantly, a sustainable one. If the DA ends up being *one* entity that helps with that in some capacity, then great. If not, that's fine too, I just think that mentoring is something that could be of interest to the Association to support since I feel that it would be a great help to the existing community as well as making a bridge for new people.
My focus on the DA is to figure out how to create solid internal mentoring for Drupal and reach out to other OS projects and mentoring organizations to learn and share.
I hope that clarifies things a bit. Please let me know if I'm still clear as mud. :-)
Mentoring ambassador
I think your goal of being a mentoring ambassador is a great goal.
I will say that I believe Dojo's are at a critical point of incubation. I believe in 2008 an economy will emerge around dojo's as entrepreneur's figure out how to fund their constant involvement in dojo's. The association should be very cautious to not involve itself, clumsily and with good intention, in that marketplace of value creation. It's very easy for a political, well meaning, slow moving, all volunteer, lightly funded organization to block the initiative of businesses and entrepreneurs.
"I was going to fund dojo, but I heard the association was going to do it. But now it's been 6 months, and the association seems more interested in fighting for the trademark in Elbonia." is a scenario I'd like to avoid.
Drupal does suffer from a steep learning curve, and encouraging more mentorship is one important way to support the Drupal project. Let's just be sure the association supports the Drupal project, and does not "become" the Drupal project.
Kieran
Mentoring important to future community growth
I've been a web developer for 12+ years, I've spoken in front of large groups, presented in front of very intimidating people, and yet I've had this strange hesitation about getting more directly involved with the Drupal community. Thankfully I've had people like webchick and Addie (who I just heard speaking about getting more involved) provide continuing encouragement, which has been invaluable in keeping my community involvement spirit alive. (Thank you ladies!)
The role of a "mentoring ambassador" will be critical to recruiting new and diverse talent to the Drupal fold. At some point it would be helpful to identify the perceived roadblocks (not just the learning curve) to being a full blown community member so those could be addressed directly. Having someone actively involved with these issues will be vital to maintaing a healthy user community.
Update
I have updated my application to provide a little more detail.
Disclaimer
I just wanted to say that I wrote my application up before reading the others so anything in mine that sounds like Angie Byron's must be due to the cloning operation since it isn't due to copy/paste. :p
LOL
nice one ... your contributions speak for themselves.