Dries Buytaert

Drupal Association community elections

When we designed a new governance structure for the Drupal Association last year, we decided that most of the board is selected through a nominating committee with the goal to carefully balance many factors like needed skills and geographical and sector representation. However, it was also deemed important that we have directors chosen directly by the Drupal community to make sure that the community is always well-represented.

I'm excited that we're holding our first open community elections. Two community "at large" directors will be elected to the Drupal Association Board of Directors. If you'd like to consider running, please have a look at the "At-large" nominations page. And if you're a Drupal community member, please make time to participate in discussions with candidates and of course to vote, starting January 26. (This process was vetted openly in the community by the Elections Committee and numerous community volunteers at http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-association.)

Your participation will help us take this next important step in implementing a new improved governance structure to strengthen the Drupal Association. Thanks!

Drupal Association Board election results for 2011

Earlier this year the Drupal Association began a process to elect and build a new board. In July a call for nominations was made and the community responded with over 50 submissions. The nomination committee spent many weeks reviewing the nominations, following up with potential candidates, until finally submitting a slate of nominees, which was confirmed by the board. I'm happy to announce the new Board of Directors:

1. Jeff Walpole (until 2014)
2. Vesa Palmu (until 2014)
3. Tiffany Farriss (until 2014)
4. Cary Gordon (until 2013)
5. Danese Cooper (until 2013)
6. Mike Woster (until 2013)
7. Angela Byron (until 2012)
8. Mitchell Toomy (2012)
9. Unknown - one open seat, to be filled

The Board also approved Dries Buytaert (me) to fill the "founder role" in this year's Board of Directors.

The Board's term will begin on November 1, 2011. The first meeting of the new Board of Directors will be on November 16, 2011. This will be followed by the Drupal Association Board Retreat in Chicago, December 9 - 11, 2011.

Selection process

A nomination committee consisting of over eight community members considered over 100 candidates before settling on the great groups of individuals that we're proud to welcome to the Drupal Association. We believe this Board brings a lot of expertise to the Drupal Association, as well as more diversity in terms of industry representation, agency size, skill sets, gender, and geographic location. As the Association has grown so has the extent of financial and community responsibility and this board represents a shift to better address those needs in order to build a strong Association to support our community.

At-large / Community board seats

To ensure solid community representation we will also begin the process of electing two "At-large Board Members". At large board members are nominated and selected by the community at-large with no prerequisites for nomination. We are currently looking at the best method to get community involvement and will begin the process very soon.

Advisory Board

The Board of Directors is a guiding force for the Association and helps to set strategic direction. However, we recognize that the board members do not have all of the answers. To advise the board we have sought out talented individuals with a wide breadth of experience and expertise to serve as the Association's advisers. Our advisory board is designed to grow and expand with the needs of the organization and the community. One of the many ways the Association is working to stay strongly connected to the community is by seeking out community leaders, influencers, and talented individuals that can lend insight into the direction of the Drupal to be advisers to the Association.

The Association's advisers currently include:

1. Kristof Van Tomme
2. David Strauss
3. Larry Garfield
4. Kieran Lal
5. George DeMet
6. Bevan Rudge
7. Greg Knaddison
8. Laura Scott
9. Khalid Bahey
10. Fernando Paredes García
11. Moshe Weitzman

We're growing

One year ago the Drupal Association hired its first employees to strengthen our conference and our volunteer community. In that year Drupal.org surpassed a million nodes and hosts over 12,000 developer accounts. DrupalCon welcomed nearly 5,000 attendees and over 1,000 people have been trained at the past four conferences. Membership in the Association has also doubled in the past year and we are still growing. We are on target to have 2,000 individual members and over 750 organization members by the end of this year. This is an exciting time to be involved with the Drupal project and the Drupal Association, and I believe the new Board of Directors will help the Drupal Association get to the next level. So please join me in welcoming all the Board of Directors for the Drupal Association.

Here are bios of each Board Member and a short introduction as to why each member was selected:

Angela Byron

The Drupal Association needs to make sure it doesn't lose connection with the developer community that made Drupal into what it is today. Angie with her self-made success and long time contributor is someone who personalizes the values of our community. Angie also provides continuity in the Drupal Association board.

Danese Cooper

Danese has a very strong track record in open source governance: the experience she gained beating the drums of Open Source at Sun, Intel, Wikimedia foundation and now the Gates Foundation makes her a strong Board Member.

Tiffany Farriss

Having served not only on the Drupal Association board but on the governance committee, Tiffany provides important continuity in the Drupal Association board. She brings experience in a mid-sized Drupal business active in the Drupal community, events (DrupalCon production), and financial skills, having served as the Drupal Association treasurer.

Cary Gordon

Cary played an important role in the professionalization process of DrupalCon and was member of the governance committee. Cary is the owner of a small Drupal business and as such is representing smaller Drupal shops. As a member of the previous Drupal Association board, Cary is also important for continuity.

Vesa Palmu

As a serial entrepreneur and owner of Mearra, Vesa represents the European Drupal business ecosystem. His company, a medium sized Drupal shop in Finland that is expanding outside of it's borders, is similar to many Drupal shops in the European market. Vesa has been one of the organizers in the Finnish Drupal community and he's the informal national representative for Finland on the Drupal Association's European community dinners. Next to his professional experience Vesa brings affinity with the world of NGO's through his involvement in several smaller not for profits and the Finnish Red Cross.

Mitchell Toomey

We chose Mitchell because as a senior employee of the UNDP he brings insights in Drupal's role at big Drupal customers and at international governmental organizations more specifically. Mitchell leads an international team using the Teamworks Drupal-based intranet application and active in six regional hubs throughout the developing world with a current focus on Africa. He has an MBA in Organizational Behavior and Information Technology.

Jeff Walpole

Jeff was selected because on top of his business experience, he brings key insights on the use of Drupal in government and the Drupal distributions/products ecosystem. As the CEO and co-founder of Phase2 Technology, Jeff is a business leader in the Drupal community. He knows what it takes to build a multi-million dollar services company, and to invest in and market Drupal products.

Mike Woster

Drawing from his experience as the COO of the Linux Foundation and holder of an MBA, Mike has strong experience in running a tech non-profit. His knowledge of the tech non-profit world should give the Drupal Association insight into what financial and organizational models the Drupal Association might consider and how those would impact the community. His MBA from Kellogg School at Northwestern University has been put to immediate use in his role at the Linux Foundation interacting with lawyers, reading financial reports, and managing a distributed staff. His undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University and industry experience as a developer ensures he understands the “tech” side of a tech non-profit.

Dries Buytaert

Dries Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for Drupal. Dries also co-founded the Drupal Association and served as president of the Drupal Association since its start. He is also co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, a venture-backed Drupal company with 160 employees. Dries is also a co-founder of Mollom, a small web start-up that helps you stop website spam. Dries holds a PhD in computer science and engineering. In 2008, Buytaert was elected Young Entrepreneurs of Tech by BusinessWeek as well as MIT TR 35 Young Innovator. Dries brings community experience, business experience and continuity to the Drupal Association. As a native of Belgium that moved to the US, and that travels extensively, Dries is able to represent the international ecosystem.

Nominations for Directors of the Drupal Association

The Drupal Association is seeking nine candidates for its Board of Directors. The Board of Directors establishes policy, hires and manages an executive director, reviews and approves the budget and financial reports, and participates in fundraising. For more details on the organizational structure see earlier posts.

Strategic priorities for the Drupal Association include: implementing its new bylaws and organizational structure, starting leading and participating in standing committees, pursuing transparency through active communication, achieving operational efficiency, promotion, and expanding assistance to organizers of community events and activities.

The board usually meets at least twice per month. Directors must be prepared to commit at least 15 hours per month to the Board and related activities.

Four Board meetings per year are held in-person and directors are expected to travel to these. Board meetings will coincide with DrupalCons when possible. Director positions are not paid, and directors should expect to pay their own expenses in most instances.

We are looking for a diverse board and will consider the following factors when selecting candidates:

• Geographic diversity
• Industry diversity: the perspectives of various sectors are valuable (government, publishing, education, not-for-profit, corporate, etc.)
• Skill sets
• Drupal Ecosystem: the board should reflect the various perspectives of the members of our community (volunteers, small shops, large shops, large integrators, in-house teams, designers, end-users, etc.)
• Outside perspectives: FOSS at large, legal, CPA

Experience in any of the following areas is desirable; non-profit boards, event management, business, marketing and communications, law, finance, accounting, fundraising and technology. Experience and involvement with the Drupal project and community are desirable, but not required.

If you are interested in being considered for a seat on the Drupal Association Board of Directors, please contact the Nominating Committee by Wednesday 27 July by submitting the application form. Potential candidates are individually interviewed, evaluated and selected by the Nominating Committee.

The Nominating Committee consists of the following members:

• Khalid Baheyeldin
• Dries Buytaert
• Greg Knaddison
• Bevan Rudge
• David Strauss
• Kristof Van Tomme
• Moshe Weitzman

If you're interested, apply now!

Evolving the Drupal Association's organizational structure

At the Drupal Association, we have been working on a number of important changes. One of these change is a refresh of our organizational structure. The Board of Directors has been working on this for months. Now there is buy-in from the Drupal Association's General Assembly, it is a good time to start informing the community at large.

I helped start the Drupal Association in 2006 because we needed a checking account for the 10,000 dollar or so required to produce a Drupal Conference and to support our infrastructure. Today, millions of dollars flow through the Drupal Association each year, mostly because the Drupal Conferences have gotten so big. In a short five years, the Drupal Association grew from a small non-profit to a pretty sizable non-profit and we would like to do more, much more. We would like to organize more Drupal conferences in different continents in the world, promote Drupal more actively, continue to invest in Drupal.org to support our growth, and more.

To make that possible, we have to continue to evolve the Drupal Association from a volunteer-run organization where the Board of Directors is a working board, to an organization with paid staff where its Board of Directors is responsible for setting policies as well as the long-term strategy for the Drupal Association. These and other changes are necessary in order to lay the foundation for our next stage of growth.

Based on guidance from consultants and research into other non-profit organizations, we plan to change the governance structure such that the Board of Directors, instead of the larger General Assembly, has full accountability over the Drupal Association. The Board of Directors would be a policy board that enables different working groups or committees that consist of volunteers, staff and/or Board Members. In addition, the Board is advised by an Advisory Board.

This structure is very common in non-profits around the world and the logical next step for the Drupal Assocation. We believe that in adopting this structure, the Drupal Association can accelerate fulfilling its mission to help the Drupal project flourish.

For some additional details, I recommend reading the announcement on association.drupal.org. We have more figuring out and streamlining to do; I plan to share more updates in the next couple of days.

Drupal.org redesign launched, and why it matters

A couple of days ago we launched the new Drupal.org website. If you haven't looked at the site, you might not think much of this announcement. However, this is an important milestone in the history of Drupal. Here is why.

Based on the results of a State of Drupal survey in 2007, the Drupal Association made the redesign of Drupal.org one of its top priorities. We felt that we had outgrown the old design of the site. We were eager for a visual refresh, in need of more effective tools for collaboration, as well as a better way to promote Drupal and to share our story.

In late 2008, the Drupal Association initiated the Drupal.org redesign effort and hired Mark Boulton and Leisa Reichelt. Mark and Leisa led an open redesign process. With the help of many people in the community, they uncovered problems with the old design and determined a new layout, an improved information architecture, new functionality and style guidelines for revamping the Drupal.org site.

Of course, we still had to implement the new design and the recommended changes. We started off by organizing various Drupal.org redesign sprints around the world. We took time from our other activities, met in person and remotely, and began the work. Along the way we had to upgrade the site from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, as well as add new functionality in preparation of the new design. This included rolling out Apache Solr and adding an underlying staging environment to enable dozens of people to contribute to the Drupal.org redesign. Since this was a massive project, one year in the Drupal Association decided to pay a small team of Drupal developers to complement the volunteers and to drive the redesign to completion.

The new Drupal.org site is the result of many years of hard work. It's marvelous when that work finally reaches completion, and when people are excited by what is produced. But it is more than that. The result is not just a better Drupal.org site, but a better way of working together and a stronger, more dedicated team. It's an excellent foundation on which to build.

It is truly a special moment in the history of Drupal. Not only did we complete collectively a monumental project, we also decided to get better at promoting Drupal. And for the first time, the Drupal Association hired a staff to augment the work of many volunteers. These were non-trivial decisions to make for us.

For all of this, I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to the Drupal.org site redesign project. I'd like to thank everyone for listening, for being open to change, for contributing money and resources, and for doing what it takes to get the redesign launched. We have more work to do, of course. You can see a list of issues with which we need help. If you want to be part of the excitement -- it's not too late. Still, I couldn't be more pleased with what we've done. Go team!

DrupalCon San Francisco wrapup

DrupalCon San Francisco ended a few days ago, so once again I'm sitting here with post-DrupalCon blues, trying to wrap my head around what just happened, digging out my backlog of work, and rediscovering my usual rhythm. It happens to me every time, and it is a sign of having had a great time. In short, DrupalCon San Francisco was 'fantastic', a word I use sparingly. It is best expressed in numbers, like Matt Cheney of Chapter Three did in his closing session:

• Roughly 3000 registered attendees at an average ticket price of $205 USD.
• 357 days of preparatory planning, including 31 general meetings and 105 daily phone calls. Unlike in the old days, I only participated in one such phone call.
• 408 proposed sessions of which 131 sessions were accepted and presented.
• Rented 37 conference rooms covering 750,000 square feet of the Moscone center.
• Organized a core developer summit with 150 attendees, 16 lightning talks, 11 breakout sessions and 1 Franciscan monk.
• Trained 495 people on Drupal using 20 Drupal training classes.
• 80 people sprinted on testing.
• 21 people sprinted on documentation.
• 120 people trained to be core contributors.
• 120 BoF gatherings across 11 rooms.
• 6000 people watched my keynote live, one big stage, and assisted by a backstage A/V team of 6 people.
• 2 amazing keynotes; one from Tim O'Reilly and one from the Whitehouse, who is now an Open Source contributor.
• Spent $25,000 USD on scholarship to sponsor 20 attendees.
• Recorded 131 sessions on video with 24 hour turnaround.
• Streamed 10 sessions live with up to 3000 simultaneous viewers thanks to Brightcove.
• Had up to 2200 people use the internet simultaneous consuming a 92 megabit pipe. Whoever did the wifi at Moscone needs a raise.
• 1100 t-shirts sold along with 320 Drupal umbrellas.
• Raised more than $400,000 USD from 50 sponsors. Thanks to Trellon, GravitekLabs, Chapter Three, Commerce Guys, Acquia, Phase2 Technology, Microsoft and Rackspace for being Platinum Sponsors.
• 50 volunteers helping with registrations on the opening day of the conference.
• One volcano and no volcano insurance.
• Had a 24/7 coding lounge named after Chx along with free ice cream.
• Free parties with open bar every evening.
• 0 IE6 users on the DrupalCon website, 43% Apple users.
• 60,000 unique visits and 30,000 unique visitors on the conference website during the conference.
• 15000 e-mails, 7650 tweets, 35 press hits, 5 press releases and 1 television spot on ABC.
• $691,677 USD estimated expenses, $1,004,470 USD estimated revenue, $312,793 estimated profit for the Drupal Association.
• $72,000 spent on coffee.
• A big thank you for Jennifer Lea Lampton, Stephanie Canon, Lauren Nicole Roth and Matt Cheney and hundreds of other people that helped.
• Two new Drupal conferences announced; one in Copenhagen, one in Chicago.

The main organizers of DrupalCon San Francisco: Lauren Nicole Roth, Stephanie Canon, Jennifer Lea Lampton and Matt Cheney. Picture of a projection screen, taken during the closing session of the conference.

Google to invest 90,000 USD in Drupal (again)

Google just announced that they will sponsor 18 Drupal developer stipends in this year's Summer of Code program (SoC). Google provides a stipend of 5,000 USD to each student developer, of which 4,500 USD goes to the student and 500 USD goes to Drupal Association (or to the mentors). With 18 accepted applications this adds up to a 90,000 USD investment over a three-month period, bringing the total investment made by Google in Drupal through SoC to over $450,000 USD.

The accepted students, their projects, and the mentors are listed on the official Drupal.org announcement. Congratulations to all successful applicants, and thanks to the Drupal Summer of Code organizers, the Drupal mentors, and last but not least, Google. The summer is of to a great start!