Gregory Heller
Thu, 01/10/2008 - 22:40 — Gregory Heller
What is your motivation for being a member of the Drupal Association?:
I have been a part of the Drupal community since 2005 and in 06 and 07 have helped to coordinate Drupal Camps and Drupal user Groups. I would like to be able to share my experiences and expertise in order to expand the community, share best practices and support others in doing the same, ultimately making Drupal a stronger project.
What are the primary goals you would like to work on?:
Marketing Drupal to non profit and political organizations.
Bringing a "power user" and "end user" perspective into the association.
Support planning and coordination of Drupal Camps in new "markets"
Development of training curricula for users as well as developers.
Improve communication and collaboration among Drupal development firms.
What strategy will you employ in order to accomplish said goals?:
I regularly attend conferences that cater to the non profit and the political community. As a community ambassador I would represent Drupal at these conferences.
For DrupalCamps and Training I would convene conference calls with people interested in planning these events as well as develop re-usable resources for people organizing such events and programs.
For improving communication among development firms, I would convene conference calls as well as establish systems and relationships to facilitate greater communication and collaboration. THis might involve regional meetings, or special sessions at DrupalCons, or take some other form.
What yearly budget would you need in order to accomplish said goals?:
Honestly, I have not thought about detailed budgets to accomplish these goals. Much of it is really a commitment of time. However it would be helpful to be able to offer financial support to groups looking to organize Drupal camps. From my experience in Seattle, our camps cost less than $1000 to organize. I would like to establish funding for such camps, perhaps a graduated funding system that supports camps differently based on expected size, size of the market, or how many times a group has planned such a camp.
It would also be helpful to make funding available for the development and codification of curricula, but I cannot offer specific details on how much money, or over what period of time.
What strengths/experience you have to help you accomplish the goals?:
As mentioned above: I have participated in the planning and organization of Drupal Camps, primarily in Seattle, but also in NY and San Francisco. I was the initial (and no co) convener of the Seattle DUG.
over the last two years I have hosted a number of conference calls amongst Drupal development shops.
In late 2005 I began discussing the idea of a "Drupal Guild" or association of Drupal developers that I believe fostered important discussions within the community.
I participated in the organizing of the first Drupal Camp (that I know of) in San Francisco in early 2006 which has lead ot many more and also a number of fee based Drupal Training offerings by others.
I also have significant experience organizing events of varying sizes (not just for Drupal)
How long have you been using Drupal, and how'd you get your start?:
I started using CivicSpace in 2004 and moved to Drupal in 2005. At the time I was working for the New York State Senate and we were exploring CMS options. In mid 2005 I joined CivicActions where my use of Drupal expanded tremendously and since have been a part of numerous teams and projects deploying small, medium and large Drupal powered websites.
Have you made existing community contributions, and if so, what?:
As mentioned above, I founded the Seattle DUG and organized 2 Seattle Drupal Camps as well as others. I have also worked with engineers on my team on conceptualizing, and developing numerous modules.
I convened a number of Drupal "Shop Talks" conference calls in 2006 and some in 2007. I have helped other Drupal Camps through sponsorship (through my company) and also ordered and distributed thousands of Drupal Logo Buttons.
Non drupal related: I am part of EcoTuesday.com and have organized a monthly networking event here in Seattle. I also was formerly involved with a vintage motorscooter community in NYC that hosted an annual "rally" with 100 to 300 participants and revenues/budget in excess of $10k us. Also I started the Scooter-Relief.org fund to raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast Flooding and now we raise money for accident victims and medical emergencies within our community (having raised approximately $20k us to date).
For 6 years I served on a 50 person Community Board in NYC (the most local level of government in New York City). And also serve on the Board of the College Alumni Association at New York University.
How much time can you invest in your Drupal Association work?:
10 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
I've benefited from Gregory's expertise
As a nonprofit staffer exploring Drupal back in 2005, Gregory helped me see some of the potentials for Drupal at a NYC meetup. I was also impressed with the guidance he gave our nonprofit when we were in the early stages of a Drupal project that did not, unfortunately, pan out.
I'm obviously in favor of Association members doing outreach to nonprofits, since that's part of my own application, but I wanted to support his candidacy by showing that he's already been successful in at least one of his goals. :)
Hmm @ curricula
A lot of people have talked about this at various times in the past, but it always comes off smelling like a huge basket of worms. :D
Who's the target "market" for the curricula? "Developer" ends up being a fuzzy term... there's everything from what we would term "site administrators" to themers and snippet-users, to people who want to write their own modules, to people who want to integrate Drupal with external systems/existing modules, to people who want to develop their own APIs, and probably a lot more I'm not thinking of.
How do you plan to involve the community in the development of this curricula? For example, do you have a relationship with the Drupal Dojo folks, and are you familiar with some of the stuff they've tried to organize there?