Acquia Inc. podcasts

Following her inspiring keynote on diversity, inclusion, and equality at Drupal Camp Costa Rica 2016, I got the chance to speak with Nikki Stevens on front of my mic and camera. Along with sharing some fun Drupal memories like the time young Nikki broke production when Steve Rude was out for the day, a lot of this conversation is about the benefits diversity brings and how we all can improve our own organisations and communities. One eye-opening moment for me was when Nikki talked about how many diversity surveys are themselves flawed by the assumptions of their authors. Seemed perfectly obvious to me once I got there. Nikki and Nick Lewis have been working on a better diversity survey by crowdsourcing the survey itself. Help write the diversity survey! Go to the Diversity of the Web community-drafted survey and make your own contributions and suggestions now! For more background information on the survey and the challenges of involvement, identity, and measuring it all, read its origin story on Nikki's blog: Nothing About Us Without Us. Interview Video - 19 min.

Following her inspiring keynote on diversity, inclusion, and equality at Drupal Camp Costa Rica 2016, I got the chance to speak with Nikki Stevens on front of my mic and camera. Along with sharing some fun Drupal memories like the time young Nikki broke production when Steve Rude was out for the day, a lot of this conversation is about the benefits diversity brings and how we all can improve our own organisations and communities. One eye-opening moment for me was when Nikki talked about how many diversity surveys are themselves flawed by the assumptions of their authors. Seemed perfectly obvious to me once I got there. Nikki and Nick Lewis have been working on a better diversity survey by crowdsourcing the survey itself. Help write the diversity survey! Go to the Diversity of the Web community-drafted survey and make your own contributions and suggestions now! For more background information on the survey and the challenges of involvement, identity, and measuring it all, read its origin story on Nikki's blog: Nothing About Us Without Us. Interview Video - 19 min. Transcript A full transcript of our conversation will appear here shortly!

In December 2015, I sat down with Michael Hanby-Director-and Tawny Bartlett-Website Coordinator-from Indigo Herbs in Glastonbury, England and dug into their history with Drupal and just how much of their business they run with it. Tawny is really inspiring: she learned Drupal and its component and supporting technologies--Git, Javascript, PHP, and much more--on the job at Indigo. She says she's fallen in love with Drupal. I say she's become a Drupalist to reckon with and should be a role model for others. Open source, #ftw! This interview, particularly the last third, is full of some great "Why Drupal?" soundbites from a sensible business perspective. Well worth listening to! A full transcript follows below as well. "If you are a small business and you want to develop a tech competency, I don’t know why you’ll do anything but Drupal because apart from the fact that it’s free, you’ve got this huge community that’s not just willing to give you the answers but wants to help you. What I think is one of the most awesome things about open source is that by asking a question, you are contributing to the project. It’s so cool. Just by asking the question that no one’s asked, you are contributing to the documentation that’s going to help someone else, it’s such a virtuous cycle." - Michael Hanby, Indigo Herbs In Drupal "everyone is so accepting and everyone’s so willing to teach people and help people grow within the community. It stands out from the crowd, it’s just a fascinating thing that everyone loves technology and everyone does it because they want to make this amazing thing and if something goes wrong, no one judges them for it. Everyone tries to help to get it working and to me that just sounds absolutely amazing, it’s missing from the world I think. The community of Drupal, if that was applied to everything, then it would be such a better place." - Tawny Bartlett, Indigo Herbs Mentioned during the conversation Indigo Herbs, according to Michael "Indigo Herbs is a manufacturer of natural health products. We make beautiful things that will make your life better. Come and check out www.indigo-herbs.co.uk and discover the natural lifestyle that we offer." Drupal Somerset Paragraphs module Heath Robinson, according to Wikipedia, "William Heath Robinson (31 May 1872 – 13 September 1944) was an English cartoonist and illustrator best known for drawings of ridiculously complicated machines for achieving simple objectives." Conversation video In the Indigo Herbs Common Room ... full transcription starts here. jam: We established that everybody – that the whole couch is fair game, right? Tawny Bartlett: Yes. Michael Hanby: Yes, it does seem to be. jam: It feels like a lovely Saturday morning and this place really, really feels like a university common room to me. It really – nice cinder block walls, a comfy couch and a warm cup of the brown stuff. It is really, really comfortable. So, please introduce yourself. Tawny Bartlett: To the camera? jam: Hello, camera. Tawny Bartlett: Hello, camera. My name is Tawny Bartlett. I am the Website Coordinator at Indigo Herbs. I do a lot of coding. I do HTML, CSS, PHP, Git, LESS and various other things. I have a growing love of technology and in all honesty I want to be a super hero in technology one day, that is my goal. I want to be an amazing Drupal developer, that is why I’ve made the decision for my life is that I want to be an amazing Drupal developer and I want to – I just want to be an expert and I want to help everyone else. I want to help people that used to be me three years ago to the Drupal. jam: My impression, having met you before, is that you’re already well down the road to being a Drupal super hero, so thank you. Tawny Bartlett: Got to be better. Michael Hanby: I am Michael Hanby and I’m a director at Indigo...

In December 2015, I sat down with Michael Hanby-Director-and Tawny Bartlett-Website Coordinator-from Indigo Herbs in Glastonbury, England and dug into their history with Drupal and just how much of their business they run with it. Tawny is really inspiring: she learned Drupal and its component and supporting technologies--Git, Javascript, PHP, and much more--on the job at Indigo. She says she's fallen in love with Drupal. I say she's become a Drupalist to reckon with and should be a role model for others. Open source, #ftw! This interview, particularly the last third, is full of some great "Why Drupal?" soundbites from a sensible business perspective. Well worth listening to! A full transcript follows below as well. "If you are a small business and you want to develop a tech competency, I don’t know why you’ll do anything but Drupal because apart from the fact that it’s free, you’ve got this huge community that’s not just willing to give you the answers but wants to help you. What I think is one of the most awesome things about open source is that by asking a question, you are contributing to the project. It’s so cool. Just by asking the question that no one’s asked, you are contributing to the documentation that’s going to help someone else, it’s such a virtuous cycle." - Michael Hanby, Indigo Herbs In Drupal "everyone is so accepting and everyone’s so willing to teach people and help people grow within the community. It stands out from the crowd, it’s just a fascinating thing that everyone loves technology and everyone does it because they want to make this amazing thing and if something goes wrong, no one judges them for it. Everyone tries to help to get it working and to me that just sounds absolutely amazing, it’s missing from the world I think. The community of Drupal, if that was applied to everything, then it would be such a better place." - Tawny Bartlett, Indigo Herbs Mentioned during the conversation Indigo Herbs, according to Michael "Indigo Herbs is a manufacturer of natural health products. We make beautiful things that will make your life better. Come and check out www.indigo-herbs.co.uk and discover the natural lifestyle that we offer." Drupal Somerset Paragraphs module Heath Robinson, according to Wikipedia, "William Heath Robinson (31 May 1872 – 13 September 1944) was an English cartoonist and illustrator best known for drawings of ridiculously complicated machines for achieving simple objectives." Conversation video In the Indigo Herbs Common Room ... full transcription starts here. jam: We established that everybody – that the whole couch is fair game, right? Tawny Bartlett: Yes. Michael Hanby: Yes, it does seem to be. jam: It feels like a lovely Saturday morning and this place really, really feels like a university common room to me. It really – nice cinder block walls, a comfy couch and a warm cup of the brown stuff. It is really, really comfortable. So, please introduce yourself. Tawny Bartlett: To the camera? jam: Hello, camera. Tawny Bartlett: Hello, camera. My name is Tawny Bartlett. I am the Website Coordinator at Indigo Herbs. I do a lot of coding. I do HTML, CSS, PHP, Git, LESS and various other things. I have a growing love of technology and in all honesty I want to be a super hero in technology one day, that is my goal. I want to be an amazing Drupal developer, that is why I’ve made the decision for my life is that I want to be an amazing Drupal developer and I want to – I just want to be an expert and I want to help everyone else. I want to help people that used to be me three years ago to the Drupal. jam: My impression, having met you before, is that you’re already well down the road to being a Drupal super hero, so thank you. Tawny Bartlett: Got to be better. Michael Hanby: I am Michael Hanby and I’m a director at Indigo...

Jozef Toth talks about the Drupal 8 CWI - I got the chance to follow up on my conversation with Dave Hall and Dick Olsson about the Drupal 8 Content Workflow Initiative (Podcast: Drupal 8 Content Workflow Initiative - Part 1). This post includes the video and full transcript of our conversation, as well as links to many of the people and topics we touched on! Mentioned in the conversation Drupal security release process infographic Acquia Podcast: Drupal 8 Content Workflow Initiative - Part 1 Dick Olsson Dave Hall Workbench Moderation Module Workflow Initiative community home: Drupaldeploy.org Video interview - 27 min. Full transcript jam: My standard joke in all the podcasts lately ... and I apologize because I’m doing it over and over again ... but welcome to glamorous Nové Zámky in the Slovak Republic. Jojo Toth and I just had quite a nice weekend in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, at the DrupalCamp CS. Among other hats, you’re the head of the Slovakian Drupal Association. Jozef: Yes. jam: Talk about who you are, what you do, and talk about DrupalCamp CS. Jozef: My name is Jozef and I work as a user experience designer at Pfizer, and as you said, part of what I do as my volunteering time is leading or trying to help with the organizing of DrupalCamps in Slovakia and also organizing the entire Slovak Drupal community. I’ve been working with this for about seven years now, and we had five camps total so far, and many good events, smaller meet-ups, trainings. jam: One of the really interesting parts of the Slovak DrupalCamp - so in real time, it’s June the 1st today that we’re speaking. The camp was at the end of May. One of the interesting things that happened at the camp was the launch of the Czech Drupal Association at the – well, the CS Camp is supposed to be unified, right? Jozef: Yes. jam: Is everybody still friends between the Czech Republic and Slovakia? Is it okay to do that sort of thing? Jozef: Yes. I would say that most people are still very good friends. Actually I think it’s more like brothers, and definitely to me it feels that way. Really, from the beginning when we started organizing camps, our two communities which are not really big, we cooperated a lot together, did a lot of events together. Slovaks have been active in Czech Drupal Forum. Czechs have been active in the Slovak Drupal Forum, so it was just natural that for the last two years, we’ve decided to do a joint event and now it’s officially not DrupalCamp Slovakia, but CS which is Czechoslovakia. Actually, what you have on your T-shirt is Drupal Without Borders, so we were sort of reuniting Czechoslovakia again through Drupal. jam: Okay. Are you going into politics next? Jozef: I might consider that. I’m so sorry. I can’t deny nor confirm that. jam: Now you and I have known each other for a number of years. I am absolutely certain that we worked together the first time in 2011. I’m not sure if we had met before that, but you used to run - among other things, you used to run a design agency, and we worked together to produce among other things a really fun infographic about the Drupal Security Process which I’m still really, really proud of and I’m going to link to again because it’s cool. jam: How and when did you discover Drupal? Jozef: That is a long story, so to make it short, and it was a long time ago, I think it’s like 11 years now. I was traveling on a train to my daily job where I was basically doing designs and trying to create some websites – some static websites, and my friends kept asking me, “Can you create a website for me?" then another friend, another friend ... I ended up looking for something which can help me to do it in a more sustainable way I would say, so I wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time when I create a website so I...

Jozef Toth talks about the Drupal 8 CWI - I got the chance to follow up on my conversation with Dave Hall and Dick Olsson about the Drupal 8 Content Workflow Initiative (Podcast: Drupal 8 Content Workflow Initiative - Part 1). This post includes the video and full transcript of our conversation, as well as links to many of the people and topics we touched on! Mentioned in the conversation Drupal security release process infographic Acquia Podcast: Drupal 8 Content Workflow Initiative - Part 1 Dick Olsson Dave Hall Workbench Moderation Module Workflow Initiative community home: Drupaldeploy.org Video interview - 27 min. Full transcript jam: My standard joke in all the podcasts lately ... and I apologize because I’m doing it over and over again ... but welcome to glamorous Nové Zámky in the Slovak Republic. Jojo Toth and I just had quite a nice weekend in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, at the DrupalCamp CS. Among other hats, you’re the head of the Slovakian Drupal Association. Jozef: Yes. jam: Talk about who you are, what you do, and talk about DrupalCamp CS. Jozef: My name is Jozef and I work as a user experience designer at Pfizer, and as you said, part of what I do as my volunteering time is leading or trying to help with the organizing of DrupalCamps in Slovakia and also organizing the entire Slovak Drupal community. I’ve been working with this for about seven years now, and we had five camps total so far, and many good events, smaller meet-ups, trainings. jam: One of the really interesting parts of the Slovak DrupalCamp - so in real time, it’s June the 1st today that we’re speaking. The camp was at the end of May. One of the interesting things that happened at the camp was the launch of the Czech Drupal Association at the – well, the CS Camp is supposed to be unified, right? Jozef: Yes. jam: Is everybody still friends between the Czech Republic and Slovakia? Is it okay to do that sort of thing? Jozef: Yes. I would say that most people are still very good friends. Actually I think it’s more like brothers, and definitely to me it feels that way. Really, from the beginning when we started organizing camps, our two communities which are not really big, we cooperated a lot together, did a lot of events together. Slovaks have been active in Czech Drupal Forum. Czechs have been active in the Slovak Drupal Forum, so it was just natural that for the last two years, we’ve decided to do a joint event and now it’s officially not DrupalCamp Slovakia, but CS which is Czechoslovakia. Actually, what you have on your T-shirt is Drupal Without Borders, so we were sort of reuniting Czechoslovakia again through Drupal. jam: Okay. Are you going into politics next? Jozef: I might consider that. I’m so sorry. I can’t deny nor confirm that. jam: Now you and I have known each other for a number of years. I am absolutely certain that we worked together the first time in 2011. I’m not sure if we had met before that, but you used to run - among other things, you used to run a design agency, and we worked together to produce among other things a really fun infographic about the Drupal Security Process which I’m still really, really proud of and I’m going to link to again because it’s cool. jam: How and when did you discover Drupal? Jozef: That is a long story, so to make it short, and it was a long time ago, I think it’s like 11 years now. I was traveling on a train to my daily job where I was basically doing designs and trying to create some websites – some static websites, and my friends kept asking me, “Can you create a website for me?" then another friend, another friend ... I ended up looking for something which can help me to do it in a more sustainable way I would say, so I wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time when I create a website so I...

Conversations about delivering business needs with digital tools, or "How to get Drupal into the conversation without talking technology." Acquia and several partners had a successful presence at the 2016 dmexco trade show for digital marketing and advertising. By "successful," I mean we spoke with hundreds and hundreds of people about how we can help them do better business and I think many of them will end up being happy users, consumers, and contributors to Drupal and our community. In this podcast (audio and video), I give a quick intro to the dmexco trade fair and speak with the following people about digital transformation, selling Drupal without selling Drupal, the state of Drupal in Germany in 2016, and more: Jim Bowes and Simon Bates from London-based Manifesto Michel van Velde, from Utrecht-based one shoe Manuel Pistner and Nico Sonnenberg from Darmstadt-based Bright Solutions Michael Heuer, Acquia Country Manager DACH Bonus! Acquia made it into the official dmexco wrap-up video. Great to see us representing Drupal alongside so many big names. Bonus 2! Check out my Buzzword Bingo video from the dmexco floor to get a feel for the magnitude of the show and its ecosystem and the sometimes confusing world of contextual cloud targeting, media data reach optimisation, customer brand implementation, storytelling growth and even more that I didn't make up!

Conversations about delivering business needs with digital tools, or "How to get Drupal into the conversation without talking technology." Acquia and several partners had a successful presence at the 2016 dmexco trade show for digital marketing and advertising. By "successful," I mean we spoke with hundreds and hundreds of people about how we can help them do better business and I think many of them will end up being happy users, consumers, and contributors to Drupal and our community. In this podcast (audio and video), I give a quick intro to the dmexco trade fair and speak with the following people about digital transformation, selling Drupal without selling Drupal, the state of Drupal in Germany in 2016, and more: Jim Bowes and Simon Bates from London-based Manifesto Michel van Velde, from Utrecht-based one shoe Manuel Pistner and Nico Sonnenberg from Darmstadt-based Bright Solutions Michael Heuer, Acquia Country Manager DACH Bonus! Acquia made it into the official dmexco wrap-up video. Great to see us representing Drupal alongside so many big names. Bonus 2! Check out my Buzzword Bingo video from the dmexco floor to get a feel for the magnitude of the show and its ecosystem and the sometimes confusing world of contextual cloud targeting, media data reach optimisation, customer brand implementation, storytelling growth and even more that I didn't make up!

Part 1 of 2 - I got the chance to talk with Dave Hall and Dick Olsson from Pfizer at DrupalCon New Orleans about the Drupal 8 Content Workflow Initiative. This post includes the video and full transcript of our conversation, as well as links to many of the people and topics we touched on! Mentioned in the conversation Dick Olsson Dave Hall Workflow Initiative official plan: Deploy - Content Staging Workflow Initiative community home: Drupaldeploy.org Workflow Initiative team members mentioned: Tim Millwood Andrei Jechiu Andrei Mateescu Jozef Toth Iceland's unpronounceable volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, that stopped Dick getting to DrupalCon San Francisco Deploy Module UUID Module Drupal's semantic versioning release process jam's session at DrupalCon New Orleans: "New and improved ..." Selling the value of new Drupal 8 technical features. Composer Drupal 8 Configuration Management Dries's DrupalCon New Orleans Driesnote Mike Lamb, Pfizer Workbench Module Conversation Video - 23 min. Transcript - Welcome to DrupalCon New Orleans! jam: So – yes. Looking around us (and my joke of the week), we are in beautiful, glamorous New Orleans. Home of great food, which I haven’t had time to partake of this week, and amazing music, which I haven’t heard at all either, but that’s why we called it work, right? We’re here at the New Orleans cConvention Center on the sprint day of the North American DrupalCon 2016. Dick Olsen, how many DrupalCons have you been to and how was DrupalCon New Orleans for you? Dick: DrupalCon New Orleans has been lovely for me, really. I’ve been at DrupalCon since Paris 2009. I’ve lost ... jam: The whole time? Dick: The whole time except San Francisco, which I missed due to the ash cloud. jam: That was a fun con. Dick: Yes, that was a – no, it wasn’t a fun ... jam: No. So I had made it. So we all – we live in Europe, you live in Australia. Dave: I made it. jam: You made it. I made it because I went early, but a whole bunch of people couldn’t come right until the end of the week because they weren’t allowing any airplanes to fly because of the unpronounceable volcano in Iceland that was going on. So you have been to several DrupalCons? Dick: Yes. I think I missed – maybe Washington in there. Was that after San Francisco or was it before? jam: No, that was 2009. That was before. Dick: Yes, that was before. Okay. So I’ve been more or less in all of them since 2009. It’s been a long journey. Meet Dick Olsson! jam: You’ve been in Drupal for ages as well, right? Dick: Yes. So I’ve been in Drupal since 2007 – 2008, yes. jam: Were you doing Drupal before you worked at NodeOne in Stockholm? Dick: Yes, I did Drupal as a freelancer. jam: What would you say your specialty is? What’s your Drupal thing? Dick: I worked a long time on just general contribution to core, but my thing has really been focusing on content workflow and various topics within that. So, Deploy Module has been something that I’ve been involved with since early days of Drupal 6. I took over maintenanceship of that module for Drupal 7. That ecosystem also includes the UUID module and a few other bits and pieces. So the content workflow, content staging, previewing, content type of thing, that’s been what I’ve liked to play with in the community. jam: UUID’s actually really great and important. That’s something that’s in Drupal 8 core now, and that means every piece of content that you create ever, has a unique identifier, which means that you can merge federated systems of sites, organize better search results, and you never get a conflict...

Part 1 of 2 - I got the chance to talk with Dave Hall and Dick Olsson from Pfizer at DrupalCon New Orleans about the Drupal 8 Content Workflow Initiative. This post includes the video and full transcript of our conversation, as well as links to many of the people and topics we touched on! Mentioned in the conversation Dick Olsson Dave Hall Workflow Initiative official plan: Deploy - Content Staging Workflow Initiative community home: Drupaldeploy.org Workflow Initiative team members mentioned: Tim Millwood Andrei Jechiu Andrei Mateescu Jozef Toth Iceland's unpronounceable volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, that stopped Dick getting to DrupalCon San Francisco Deploy Module UUID Module Drupal's semantic versioning release process jam's session at DrupalCon New Orleans: "New and improved ..." Selling the value of new Drupal 8 technical features. Composer Drupal 8 Configuration Management Dries's DrupalCon New Orleans Driesnote Mike Lamb, Pfizer Workbench Module Conversation Video - 23 min. Transcript - Welcome to DrupalCon New Orleans! jam: So – yes. Looking around us (and my joke of the week), we are in beautiful, glamorous New Orleans. Home of great food, which I haven’t had time to partake of this week, and amazing music, which I haven’t heard at all either, but that’s why we called it work, right? We’re here at the New Orleans cConvention Center on the sprint day of the North American DrupalCon 2016. Dick Olsen, how many DrupalCons have you been to and how was DrupalCon New Orleans for you? Dick: DrupalCon New Orleans has been lovely for me, really. I’ve been at DrupalCon since Paris 2009. I’ve lost ... jam: The whole time? Dick: The whole time except San Francisco, which I missed due to the ash cloud. jam: That was a fun con. Dick: Yes, that was a – no, it wasn’t a fun ... jam: No. So I had made it. So we all – we live in Europe, you live in Australia. Dave: I made it. jam: You made it. I made it because I went early, but a whole bunch of people couldn’t come right until the end of the week because they weren’t allowing any airplanes to fly because of the unpronounceable volcano in Iceland that was going on. So you have been to several DrupalCons? Dick: Yes. I think I missed – maybe Washington in there. Was that after San Francisco or was it before? jam: No, that was 2009. That was before. Dick: Yes, that was before. Okay. So I’ve been more or less in all of them since 2009. It’s been a long journey. Meet Dick Olsson! jam: You’ve been in Drupal for ages as well, right? Dick: Yes. So I’ve been in Drupal since 2007 – 2008, yes. jam: Were you doing Drupal before you worked at NodeOne in Stockholm? Dick: Yes, I did Drupal as a freelancer. jam: What would you say your specialty is? What’s your Drupal thing? Dick: I worked a long time on just general contribution to core, but my thing has really been focusing on content workflow and various topics within that. So, Deploy Module has been something that I’ve been involved with since early days of Drupal 6. I took over maintenanceship of that module for Drupal 7. That ecosystem also includes the UUID module and a few other bits and pieces. So the content workflow, content staging, previewing, content type of thing, that’s been what I’ve liked to play with in the community. jam: UUID’s actually really great and important. That’s something that’s in Drupal 8 core now, and that means every piece of content that you create ever, has a unique identifier, which means that you can merge federated systems of sites, organize better search results, and you never get a conflict...

A conversation from DrupalCon Asia DrupalCon Mumbai 2016 with members of Acquia's Pune, India office: Prassad Shirgaonkar, Prassad Gogate, Prafful Nagwani, and Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire in which we touch on Drupal and community in India, the history of the DrupalCon Prenote, Drupal's multilingual strengths, the Drupal Campus Ambassador Program in India, and more! jam: We are at the Contribution Sprint day of DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai, wrapping up a great few days for me. Prafful Nagwani, how was your DrupalCon? Prafful Nagwani: This is my third DrupalCon and this was fantastic. Even more so because this is happening in India, in our own backyard, it has been really, really great the way it’s been organized. The sessions, everyone coming in, meeting each other and stuff, it’s been fantastic. jam: So I would like to point out ... really a huge thank you to the Drupal Association and everyone involved in the organization because it was incredibly smooth and I’ve been to cons in Europe and America that were nowhere near as well-organized so: fantastic. Thank you Drupal Association. Prafful Nagwani: Thank you. jam: Prasad? Prasad Shirgaonkar: Yes. jam: How was your DrupalCon? Prasad Shirgaonkar: It was a dream come true for me. I first did a DrupalCon in London in--I think it was 2011 or 12--and I’ve seen you doing the Prenote. I had met Jacob [Singh] and Dries with whom I work now. From that time, I wanted to do a Prenote with you and I wanted to have that done in India and it happened. jam: Wow, that’s cool! So we did a Prenote in London called ... so there’s a Dickens’ story called A Christmas Carol and we did a parody of A Christmas Carol and we had the Ghost of DrupalCon Past and the Ghost of DrupalCon Present and the Ghost of DrupalCon Future and it was hilarious and we got chx, the contributor C-H-X to be the Ghost of DrupalCon Past and he was hilarious ... and the whole thing actually ...Prenote I’m so glad you were there! We never talked about this. So Prasad and I organized the Prenote which is a DrupalCon tradition now where it’s an opening introduction sort of a welcome to DrupalCon before Dries’ Driesnote. Prasad and I, as well as Adam Juran and Campbell Vertesi and Parth Gohil and Ashwini Kumar; we wrote it as a team together. We were very concerned frankly about making sure it would be funny in India, right? So Prasad and the Indian team hooked us up with great jokes and concepts and I think we rode the line really well of ... frankly, I don’t know everything that’s going to be offensive in India, right? Prasad Shirgaonkar: Absolutely, absolutely. jam: So we were really concerned.We wanted to be funny maybe even edgy, right, but not upset people. So how did you feel when we did tongue twisters with an India accent? Prasad Gogate: Absolutely that was amazing. I think everybody enjoyed that and people probably were not expecting that. So it was really a surprise for them which was obviously a good surprise. Overall, I think DrupalCon in India has been an awesome experience here now. I think it is a dream come true for the entire India community because – and most important is I think the India community has started getting recognized and it’s growing. That’s why – I think that is more important. jam: So we didn’t quite managed to do this yet. Please introduce yourself to everyone. Prasad Gogate: I am Prasad Gogate. I work from Pune for Acquia. Prasad Shirgaonkar: I’m Prasad Shirgaonkar. I work for Acquia from Pune from my home. jam: So you’re Prasad zero, right? Prasad Shirgaonkar: Yes. jam: You’re Prasad one? Prasad Gogate: Yes. jam: Okay. Prafful Nagwani: Hi. I am Prafful Nagwani and I work for Acquia from Pune office. I have been in Drupal since - eight years now since Drupal 6. Yes. jam: How did you discover Drupal? Prafful Nagwani: It happened...

A conversation from DrupalCon Asia DrupalCon Mumbai 2016 with members of Acquia's Pune, India office: Prassad Shirgaonkar, Prassad Gogate, Prafful Nagwani, and Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire in which we touch on Drupal and community in India, the history of the DrupalCon Prenote, Drupal's multilingual strengths, the Drupal Campus Ambassador Program in India, and more! jam: We are at the Contribution Sprint day of DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai, wrapping up a great few days for me. Prafful Nagwani, how was your DrupalCon? Prafful Nagwani: This is my third DrupalCon and this was fantastic. Even more so because this is happening in India, in our own backyard, it has been really, really great the way it’s been organized. The sessions, everyone coming in, meeting each other and stuff, it’s been fantastic. jam: So I would like to point out ... really a huge thank you to the Drupal Association and everyone involved in the organization because it was incredibly smooth and I’ve been to cons in Europe and America that were nowhere near as well-organized so: fantastic. Thank you Drupal Association. Prafful Nagwani: Thank you. jam: Prasad? Prasad Shirgaonkar: Yes. jam: How was your DrupalCon? Prasad Shirgaonkar: It was a dream come true for me. I first did a DrupalCon in London in--I think it was 2011 or 12--and I’ve seen you doing the Prenote. I had met Jacob [Singh] and Dries with whom I work now. From that time, I wanted to do a Prenote with you and I wanted to have that done in India and it happened. jam: Wow, that’s cool! So we did a Prenote in London called ... so there’s a Dickens’ story called A Christmas Carol and we did a parody of A Christmas Carol and we had the Ghost of DrupalCon Past and the Ghost of DrupalCon Present and the Ghost of DrupalCon Future and it was hilarious and we got chx, the contributor C-H-X to be the Ghost of DrupalCon Past and he was hilarious ... and the whole thing actually ...Prenote I’m so glad you were there! We never talked about this. So Prasad and I organized the Prenote which is a DrupalCon tradition now where it’s an opening introduction sort of a welcome to DrupalCon before Dries’ Driesnote. Prasad and I, as well as Adam Juran and Campbell Vertesi and Parth Gohil and Ashwini Kumar; we wrote it as a team together. We were very concerned frankly about making sure it would be funny in India, right? So Prasad and the Indian team hooked us up with great jokes and concepts and I think we rode the line really well of ... frankly, I don’t know everything that’s going to be offensive in India, right? Prasad Shirgaonkar: Absolutely, absolutely. jam: So we were really concerned.We wanted to be funny maybe even edgy, right, but not upset people. So how did you feel when we did tongue twisters with an India accent? Prasad Gogate: Absolutely that was amazing. I think everybody enjoyed that and people probably were not expecting that. So it was really a surprise for them which was obviously a good surprise. Overall, I think DrupalCon in India has been an awesome experience here now. I think it is a dream come true for the entire India community because – and most important is I think the India community has started getting recognized and it’s growing. That’s why – I think that is more important. jam: So we didn’t quite managed to do this yet. Please introduce yourself to everyone. Prasad Gogate: I am Prasad Gogate. I work from Pune for Acquia. Prasad Shirgaonkar: I’m Prasad Shirgaonkar. I work for Acquia from Pune from my home. jam: So you’re Prasad zero, right? Prasad Shirgaonkar: Yes. jam: You’re Prasad one? Prasad Gogate: Yes. jam: Okay. Prafful Nagwani: Hi. I am Prafful Nagwani and I work for Acquia from Pune office. I have been in Drupal since - eight years now since Drupal 6. Yes. jam: How did you discover Drupal? Prafful Nagwani: It happened...

Gregg Marshall contacted me while he was finalizing his book, Mastering Drupal 8 Views, for Packt Publishing. Flatteringly, he asked me whether I'd be willing to write a foreword for it, after having a look at a late draft. I had a look, I liked it, I wrote the foreword and was pleased to run into Gregg at DrupalCon New Orleans. Listen to the audio or watch the video of our conversation. Below is also a full transcript of our chat. jam: We are still in glamorous, beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana at North American DrupalCon 2016. This is Gregg Marshall. How was your Con, Gregg? Gregg Marshall: Great, much different from other ones. As I get more involved with the community, it becomes less about going to sessions and more about seeing the people and I help the people. jam: You help people a lot, right? Gregg Marshall: I’ve volunteered to be a mentor and I actually got into that by – I’ve showed up in my first couple of sprints and in those days setting up Drupal on a Windows machine was a unique skill that I had and so I found myself doing that more and more. I said, well, if I’m going to spend my whole day setting up other people’s machines, I might as well volunteer! jam: Right. Gregg Marshall: I started volunteering to do that. Now, it’s gotten - thanks to Dev Desktop 2, to the point we’re almost through with this. jam: We’ve made you redundant. I’m sorry. Thank you for your contribution. Gregg Marshall: ... My retirement party is next week ;-) jam: How many DrupalCons have you been to? Gregg Marshall: First one, I went to in the US was 2010, San Francisco. That’s when I made the decision to stop using Drupal and start actually developing using Drupal. Whitehouse.gov had been announced and that was a significant announcement. It became clear that the federal government was going to go that way because Drupal was going to become the IBM of CMS’s. No one will get fired for picking what the White House picked. Standing in line for coffee at the first coffee break, the people in front of me, lamenting the fact that they couldn’t hire developers, no matter how much they paid them. I went, “Okay. I’m a channel marketing consultant. I have to work really hard to convince people that they need me even though they really do, most of them.” With that, I said, maybe I should rethink my priorities and ... jam: Wait. Fast forward six years, what do you do now, Gregg and for whom? Gregg Marshall: I’m the senior architect for the State of New York. While I live in Denver, I work in Albany so it is a bit of a commute and I’m responsible for helping build a system that will house all 257 New York State websites. They’re standardized on Drupal. They did that about a year ago and they’re now in the process of building a common platform that will house everything and move everything off many different CMS’s and not CMS’s flat-HTML files into a Drupal environment that is big and Drupal-based. jam: Your job is Drupal now. Gregg Marshall: Yes. jam: The prediction in the first break coffee-line in 2010 in San Francisco, DrupalCon was essentially true? Gregg Marshall: Essentially true. I’ve thought it would be federal government. I did a project for the SBA but it accidentally ended up being the state in New York and it’s been interesting. jam: Why not. So, Gregg, please introduce yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do. Gregg Marshall: I’m Gregg Marshall and I’m a contractor that is working for the, - as we just said, the state of New York in Albany as a senior Drupal architect. I started a two-month contract 41 months ago. I was originally brought in to help with an upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7, that particular site was interestingly built. It had 800 nodes of PHP in it. So about two weeks into the project, I said, “Yes, we’re not upgrading. The best we could do is migrate.” It took them about a year...

Gregg Marshall contacted me while he was finalizing his book, Mastering Drupal 8 Views, for Packt Publishing. Flatteringly, he asked me whether I'd be willing to write a foreword for it, after having a look at a late draft. I had a look, I liked it, I wrote the foreword and was pleased to run into Gregg at DrupalCon New Orleans. Listen to the audio or watch the video of our conversation. Below is also a full transcript of our chat. jam: We are still in glamorous, beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana at North American DrupalCon 2016. This is Gregg Marshall. How was your Con, Gregg? Gregg Marshall: Great, much different from other ones. As I get more involved with the community, it becomes less about going to sessions and more about seeing the people and I help the people. jam: You help people a lot, right? Gregg Marshall: I’ve volunteered to be a mentor and I actually got into that by – I’ve showed up in my first couple of sprints and in those days setting up Drupal on a Windows machine was a unique skill that I had and so I found myself doing that more and more. I said, well, if I’m going to spend my whole day setting up other people’s machines, I might as well volunteer! jam: Right. Gregg Marshall: I started volunteering to do that. Now, it’s gotten - thanks to Dev Desktop 2, to the point we’re almost through with this. jam: We’ve made you redundant. I’m sorry. Thank you for your contribution. Gregg Marshall: ... My retirement party is next week ;-) jam: How many DrupalCons have you been to? Gregg Marshall: First one, I went to in the US was 2010, San Francisco. That’s when I made the decision to stop using Drupal and start actually developing using Drupal. Whitehouse.gov had been announced and that was a significant announcement. It became clear that the federal government was going to go that way because Drupal was going to become the IBM of CMS’s. No one will get fired for picking what the White House picked. Standing in line for coffee at the first coffee break, the people in front of me, lamenting the fact that they couldn’t hire developers, no matter how much they paid them. I went, “Okay. I’m a channel marketing consultant. I have to work really hard to convince people that they need me even though they really do, most of them.” With that, I said, maybe I should rethink my priorities and ... jam: Wait. Fast forward six years, what do you do now, Gregg and for whom? Gregg Marshall: I’m the senior architect for the State of New York. While I live in Denver, I work in Albany so it is a bit of a commute and I’m responsible for helping build a system that will house all 257 New York State websites. They’re standardized on Drupal. They did that about a year ago and they’re now in the process of building a common platform that will house everything and move everything off many different CMS’s and not CMS’s flat-HTML files into a Drupal environment that is big and Drupal-based. jam: Your job is Drupal now. Gregg Marshall: Yes. jam: The prediction in the first break coffee-line in 2010 in San Francisco, DrupalCon was essentially true? Gregg Marshall: Essentially true. I’ve thought it would be federal government. I did a project for the SBA but it accidentally ended up being the state in New York and it’s been interesting. jam: Why not. So, Gregg, please introduce yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do. Gregg Marshall: I’m Gregg Marshall and I’m a contractor that is working for the, - as we just said, the state of New York in Albany as a senior Drupal architect. I started a two-month contract 41 months ago. I was originally brought in to help with an upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7, that particular site was interestingly built. It had 800 nodes of PHP in it. So about two weeks into the project, I said, “Yes, we’re not upgrading. The best we could do is migrate.” It took them about a year...

Vladimir Roudakov and I sat down at DrupalCon New Orleans to talk about an event close to my heart: the 2016 edition of Drupal South. This year, it'll be held in Australia's Gold Coast. Knowing the Australasian Drupal community, this will be a very high quality event in terms of what you'll be able to get out of it. And knowing the location, right by the world famous "Surfers' Paradise" beach, if you're into sun, fun and Drupal, you'll be in for a treat! Below is a little information about the event and Vlad, plus video, audio, and a text transcription of our conversation. Drupal South 2016 Website: goldcoast2016.drupal.org.au When: 27-28 October, 2016 Where: Q1 Resort, Gold Coast, Australia What: 300-400 Drupal friends and experts sharing and learning Call for Papers: Submit sessions! Call for Sponsors: Become a sponsor! Meet Vlad Name: Vladimir Roudakov Work affiliation: Senior Engineer, Educator, Social Engagement - Technocrat Drupal.org: VladimirAus Twitter: @handle LinkedIn: Vladimir Roudakov Interview video - 14 min. jam: So Vladimir and I are in glamorous downtown New Orleans at DrupalCon 2016 in North America. How’s your Con been so far, Vlad? Vlad: It was pretty overwhelming. It’s my second Con in the US and third Con altogether and it’s been amazing. Everyone should try it. Everyone should try at least one DrupalCon in their life. jam: As you can hear from his accent, Vlad is from Australia. Vlad: Gidday! jam: You work for Technocrat, right? Vlad: That’s correct. Yes, I work for a company based in Sydney called Technocrat. Vlad meets Drupal jam: How long have you been doing Drupal? Vlad: I’ve been doing Drupal since 2009. I actually kind of gave up on enterprise back in the day and went to a small company that was run from a basement. The owner came to me with a pile of paper like that and said, “Do you know Drupal?” I said, “I worked with Joomla! before” and he said, “Well, here are all the passwords of my clients. Can you fix the sites?” It was a few Drupal 5 sites and majority of them were Drupal 6 sites. So that’s how I met Drupal. In the basement of the Queensland – well, it’s actually called “Queensland” there – the house. So it’s like in a basement of the house back in Australia. jam: So your introduction to Drupal was a hundred rescue projects. Vlad: About 50, yes - not a hundred. jam: So what did you think about Drupal after opening those up? Vlad: Well, I don’t think I had time to think about it. I was actually trying to learn it for quite a bit. So just doing it all myself. Yes, it took quite a while and again, was overwhelming but the interest and bit--and still today ... So it was – I guess almost seven years to-date. I keep learning every day, which is – I guess – the most exciting part. jam: Have you been paying attention to Drupal 8? Have you been excited about that? Vlad: Yes, I actually just certified as Drupal 8 Acquia certified developer and we just released two projects as a part of Technocrat with at least two Drupal 8 projects into the wild. jam: Wow! So what are you most excited about, technically in Drupal 8? How is it going to make your job better? Vlad: Well, it’s already doing it. The fact that it packages a lot of stull than before – we used to use as the modules. So making it more stable is one thing. The second – and I guess the most exciting bit that it kind of comes with hidden gems like a backbone frontend library and Symfony. It’s invisible for a naked eye – for a person who starts doing Drupal 8 or just get introduced for Drupal, but for us as the developers, that brings enormous amount of stuff hidden that we actually can leverage and use. So that’s very, very exciting. jam: What would you say your favorite thing about Drupal is in...