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Denis Lafont-Trevisan

Thu, 01/10/2008 - 22:13 — Denis Lafont
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?: 
1) I've been using open source for years. It is time to give back. 2) Drupal rocks. I am convinced I can help its spread and evolution in new directions. For the benefits of many, especially NGO.
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?: 
1) Help Increase the mindshare around Drupal in the media. This will help the promotion of local events, help increase the interests of small and large IT shops in Drupal and then help building a strong, local and very active ecosystem around our beloved Drupal. 2) Increase the market share of Drupal in medium-size and large organization in order to increase funding and code/module reversal.
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?: 
First, since I am applying only for a permanent member, I will be available for the Marketing and Communications Coordinator for whatever tasks. Secondly, the 2 goals are for me very tied, that's why I would apply a similar strategy if asked: I would focus on Press Release and materials to point out reference implementations by industry / key topics. Just to give an example, I would put all my energy to convince site like france24.com , rue89.com or mediapart.fr to jointly issue a press release with the Drupal Association, explaining why they succeed with Drupal. It will generate the buzz we need to increase Drupal's footprint, funding and evolution. I would also leverage the community and my personal network to identify existing or potential Drupal evangelists all other the world, and be sure that they are exposed when it comes to media coverage. Once they are identified by the media, they will have opportunities to speak in conferences, a very good way to boost Drupal adoption by enterprises. Media coverage+ Conferences all other the world would be the basics of the strategy I would help executing. (This has been added since my first application): I've just realized that the pages behind Drupal.com is also a must have to secure the promotion of Drupal in the corporate world. If Acquia & Dries planned to use this domain as a "business community" landing page, I can help setting up the thing.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?: 
None. The few bucks the Association have are be much more needed for other goals. We can reach my goals with a very strong team spirit, a lot of imagination and strong networking.
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?: 
I have 10 years of experience in building solutions for large companies. I know their needs, from ECM to Collaboration, from J2EE CSD to SAP, from blog to wiki farms as well as open source. It gives me a quite good understanding of what Drupal can bring to this guys, and what kind of benefits they can have with Drupal. On top of my daily job of Technical Director, I've been strongly involved in evangelizing Internet from 1993 to 2000, the open source from 1998 to now. I know quite well the medias and the kind of value they want to find. Linkedin or Google me to have more details. To conclude, I have another key strength: I am a strong team player. No politic. No aggressive position. No personal ambition other than pleasure. The more the team succeed, the more I feel good. I think a few people can confirm :-)
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?: 
I've been using Drupal for my personal needs since 2 years. Recently, I've been pushing Drupal for the implementation of a Knowledge Management system in a 80.000 people organization (Guess where :-) ) and will probably start 2 new projects for two other companies.
Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?: 
Well, my first, only and most famous one is the patch for managing the "rel=tag" for the tagadelic module ( see http://drupal.org/node/79645 ) . I set the record with 3 bad coding practices in well..one line. As you see, it is better that I do not applicate for any coding relating position :-). I will focus on my marketing & RP skills, as well as my understanding of corporate IT. It is better for Drupal :-) In a sense, my main contribution has been to help spread Drupal mindshare here in France in the Fortune 100 playground. Drupal is the MUST EVALUATE solution in many cases. I've been leveraging my knowledge of Drupal to explain to large customer here why Drupal rules. I will have many conferences in 2008 where I will spread the word. See in particular http://tinyurl.com/372ysq or http://tinyurl.com/38a2ue . I have help identify major sites using Drupal (See my contributions on http://www.drupalsites.net/user/1534/track )
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?: 
4 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 - 06:23 — webchick

Marketing/promotion is something we've always been weak in...

... so helping to increase its exposure would definitely be "a good thing." :)

Do you have contacts in the media outside of France, by any chance? Because the Drupal Association is a global organization, we'd want to increase its media exposure world-wide.

Mon, 01/14/2008 - 21:38 — Denis Lafont

Because Drupal is worth it...

Angela,

Let me clarify my point:

1) I do not have a huge PR address book anymore, even in France… I've been doing huge PR from 1995 to 2003, and get back to more technical/management job since then. This is the bad news ;-( .

2) The good news is... we do not care :-) . Let me detail the 2 dimensions we can work on year 1, without any contacts (which is not exactly the case BTW):

2.1) Write PR jointly with big corporations. Amnesty, Capgemini, Novell, United Nations are using Drupal. Let's imagine we can have 1 press release with each company. 4 Press Releases with worldwide audience. I will activate my Linkedin contacts, use Active MediaMagnet ( http://www.myrasoft.com/activemediamagnet/ , I will provide the licence) and relay it to the community. We will put them on Drupal.com if Dries ok, with several spokesmen/spokeswomen per country. Be sure that by the end of this year we will have a solid journalist database.

2.2) Accelerate the number of conference where we speak about Drupal. Once you have conferences, you will have local media. To identify potential conference, I will activate my Linkedin contacts all other the world, and with the help of the community we can have identify the top conferences to be in each year. We screen Call for Conference and Call for Papers, and relay to the community and identified evangelists.

If we work 2.1 and 2.2 in parallel, we can reach a tremendous new step in Drupal promotion in large corporation.

Please note that this strategy has a weakness. Obtaining a PR from large firms is not that simple. Yet again, I have a good network in large corporation, and with the help of the community, we can handle that. It will not be fast ( I would bet for our first press release at To + 4 months), but only the beginning is slow. After… Wow. Drupal rocks ! Journalists love nice stories. And Drupal has plenty of them.

I hope I answer your question. Feel free to comment, I am eager to convince all of you of the interest of my application and be part of that adventure. Because Drupal is worth it. :-)