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Nedjo Rogers

Tue, 01/08/2008 - 23:01 — nedjo
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?: 
I support the work the Association has done so far in expanding and enhancing the Drupal project and community and would like to do my part to further that work.
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?: 
I'm interested in helping in the planning of events and also the drupal.org redesign with a focus on supporting developers in coming together and coordinating their efforts, particularly towards core Drupal API development. More ambitious API improvements are beyond the ability of any one developer and require sustained and sometimes intense and focused collaboration. Drupal.org is our main day to day site of collaboration. It works very well, but its toolset may be oriented more to smaller than to larger initiatives. Formal and informal drupalcon discussions and associated code sprints play a key role in allowing developers at all levels to come together and critically engage on new initiatives and directions. Keeping firmly in mind that the Association's role is to support Drupal's development - not to provide direction or decision-making - just how can we make the most of drupalcons to enable developers to map out the best future directions? Are there other sorts of face to face meetings of developers and others that we could help bring about? These are questions I'd like to engage on with other Drupal Association members.
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?: 
Focus first on existing tools: * drupalcons: how can they be planned and structured to best facilitate development planning and collaboration? * drupal.org redesign: Are there ways our issue queue system and other related tools could be expanded to facilitate larger projects (sets of issues) involving groups of developers rather than a single assignee? * what support do teams need to be able to carry forward plans mapped out e.g. at drupalcons? Possible approaches include (a) providing drupal.org tools for teams of volunteers as formed at drupalcons through which they can coordinate and carry out joint workplans, (b) offering or facilitating nominal sponsorship (e.g., travel costs) for small, self-organized teams of developers to apply for support to get together in mini-conferences to map out new directions.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?: 
Sponsoring partial costs of collaborative team mini-conferences could be in the area of $3,000 per year. This could be organized on a sponsor basis, i.e., we seek sponsorship from Drupal-oriented companies.
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?: 
I'm a skilled and experienced facilitator and have a lot of organizational experience and skills, having served on the boards of several non-profits and coops. I have a good familiarity with the Drupal community.
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?: 
I've been active in the Drupal community for a little over four years. I started out using Drupal at a small community nonprofit where I was responsible for assisting other nonprofits in building organizational websites. I produced a few modules at that time and made some initial core contributions before moving to CivicSpace where I was able to make more significant contributions.
Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?: 
At the code level I have contributed and maintained numerous modules and made several core contributions as well as contributed to reviewing and refining others' work. As a staffperson at CivicSpace I helped maintain and improve the project module for a period as part of CivicSpace's Drupal contributions. I've made significant contributions to the Drupal handbook. Currently I work with Code Positive, a London-based Drupal consultancy with clients including Greenpeace UK.
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?: 
6 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

Mon, 01/14/2008 - 21:57 — nedjo

Application updated

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I've thought through a bit more ways we can support and facilitate collaborative development and particularly how that aim maps to our existing initiatives like drupalcon and drupal.org redesign. I've updated my application accordingly.

Mon, 01/14/2008 - 09:57 — bmann

+1

We've talked about doing coding workshops, of sponsoring core developers to get together. I'd like to see you focus on that, rather, than as webchick mentioned, getting involved in sponsoring development.

Mon, 01/14/2008 - 09:39 — webchick

Code is sticky...

Our statutes specifically forbid us from having any control/direction over the Drupal code base.

However, it sounds like you might be suggesting a more "managerial" role, that's a step back from actual involvement and hands-on on the code, and instead sponsoring things like code sprints, facilitating discussions among people all working on the same thing, etc.

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about the Association having a role such as this. If you read the community Drupal Association wishlist, you could interpret a couple of the top results as being facets of this. And certainly it's quite clumsy now to get things like this done; someone who wants to bring together a code sprint or whatever is left with little choice than the "organic" process of getting folks in the community to "chip in" to fund things out of pocket, or approaching a major Drupal shop for sponsorship.

But I think it would have to be very carefully managed, if we did go about it. And there's a lot of room for problems. If we shell out 3,000 EUR for 5 people to sit in a room for 2 days and hammer out a WYSIWYG editor in core, for example, what does that actually mean? Are we paying for specs? A plan? UI designs? Code? *Working* code?

Also, if we start bringing money in for "major" development, we'll definitely set a precedent. Will we ever again see a community-grown effort like Schema API or the installer without Drupal Association sponsorship? Will the Drupal Association then inadvertently become inexorably tied to Drupal development, apart from the day-to-day bug fixes and minor features? That would be a sad thing indeed. :(

That said, if this is a route we choose to go, you would definitely be a good person to lead it. You can sniff out when something's smelly a mile away, you have good management skills, and each decision you make is made deliberately and only after careful consideration.

What are your thoughts on dealing with some of these challenges?

Mon, 01/14/2008 - 22:09 — nedjo

Good summary of the challenges

Indeed the line between enabling and directing can become blurred. We need to focus firmly on the former.

Promoting discussion and collaboration around Drupal development is already a key part of what the Association does. I'm not really thinking of new departures, but rather of continuing to focus on how we use our existing tools and approaches as well as whether there might be additional ones we might try.

re we paying for specs? A plan? UI designs? Code? *Working* code?

I've been more thinking that we're helping to create a forum, with no set deliverables (and certainly no guarantee that any deliverables are applied). That said, I suppose we could consider sponsoring the development of specs--it's something that many bodies roughly comparable to the Association might do.