Summary: 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...
