Summary: Welcome to the first of six podcasts I recorded in Mumbai as DrupalCon Asia 2016! It pleasure to record this conversation with an old Drupal friend and Acquia podcast guest--Hussain Dehgamwala (aka Hussain Abbas)--and a new Drupal friend and guest--Parth Gohil--both from Axelerant. And it was my privilege to be the first guest on their new podcast, The Geek Voice! We’re releasing this conversation together. Be sure to go check out Episode Zero of their show to see what else they have up their sleeves ... and what they said about me when I wasn’t around ;-) In my part of the audio and video of this recording we touch on how Drupal and IT in India are evolving, and the many facets of contribution on today’s Drupal and open source landscape. When The Geek Voice takes over and turns the microphone on me, they ask me about my activities as Acquia’s Developer Relations Evangelist, we talk about the Drupal 8 Module Acceleration Program, and my Acquia origin story. Thank you, Indian Drupal Community I have been to a lot of DrupalCons in the last decade ... wow, yes, feels funny to say it, but I have actually been going to DrupalCons since 2006 ... and I’d honestly say DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai was my personal favorite. I was impressed with the Indian Drupal community and I see great things in the future of this group of young, diverse, and dynamic people. Thank you for everything you do, Drupal India people! Can I be on your team? :-) Interview video - 28 min. What’s going on with Drupal in India? jam: Can you talk about what’s going on in Drupal and Open Source in India a little bit? Hussain: Sure. For what you say about excitement definitely we have been waiting for this Con for years, actually years. We’re so happy it’s finally here. Well in India a lot of great things are happening in Drupal since forever, I think. I mean we had our first meet up in 2005 in Ahmedabad. Am I right? Parth: Yes. The first camp happened around 2009, but yes. Hussain: Yes. In Bangalore we have been having regular meet ups camps. We had a great camp last year and I know Deli, Mumbai, Hyderabad, they have been having camps since 2011. jam: So, in a lot in Europe and places in America, a great camp, has 80 people, 200 people, 300 people, right? There aren’t very many that are above 350. Let’s say BADCamp--the NYCamp in New York City. London, 600-700 people. What’s a normal average size of a camp in India? Parth: Five hundred plus :-D Hussain: Otherwise it’s not called a camp. It’s a big meet up. We had a mini camp and we saw about, what? We had about 100 registrations and I don’t remember how many turned up but--yes. Parth: I think about 80. jam: Eighty is a really nice size though. One of the reasons why I love going to camps--DrupalCon is very important and obviously, I like it but for me so much more of the grassroots stuff happens at the camps now. When you spend two or three days with 80 people, you get the chance to talk with so many more people directly and on a personal level and really spend time with people you want to talk to. Hussain: Yes. That’s why we pay a lot of attention to meet ups. We keep it--we treat it as a very important thing. We have it monthly at least we try to. A lot of companies sponsor it also. About the minicamp, yes, you’re completely right definitely. The last minicamp we had, like I said, around 80 people turned up. There’s this person who turned up and since then he has been a regular contributor to all the events. In fact he has pulled together the community like we have not been able to in a few years. He has created WhatsApp groups and he’s pulling people from different companies and like asking them to follow up. So, our WhatsApp Group is like around 200 people now. Code and beyond - All contribution counts jam: We were in a panel discussion yesterday about the transformation of Indian IT and Open Source and what have you. One thing came up and I think this is...
