The Acquia Podcast: Recent Episodes
Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire - Evangelist, Acquia
The Acquia Podcast: Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire and guests in conversation on topics in and around Drupal, open source, technology, community, and business. Meet people and hear stories at the interface between the digital and the real. Hear about challenges, successes, and how open source thinking and practice is changing the world.
At DrupalCon Baltimore, I got the chance to chat with David Porter and David Stinemetze from Rackspace. Listen to this conversation to learn a little more about the Daves, Drupal at Rackspace, and the value of Acquia's certification program to individuals and organizations. If you can make it, don't miss your chance to get a 10% discount on taking an Acquia certification exam by taking the Drupal 8 certification crash course at Texas Camp 2017!
The Texas Camp 2017 Drupal 8 Certification Crash Course: a full day of Drupal 8 learning goodness on June 2nd!
"We're hoping to get as many people certified as possible" - Dave Porter
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/256-drupal-8-certification-crash-course-texas-camp-2017
Episode 255: Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire - keynote address, Drupal Camp London, 2017
See the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/255-no-one-wants-website-dont-sell-drupal-move-value-chain
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Thank you, Drupal community - I want to express my sincere thanks to everyone who helped me prepare this presentation, sharing their insights into how Drupal fits into bigger and better ways of doing business. The fact that we can all talk about this so openly while competing for business is one more sign of how special the Drupal community is. I’m so glad you all choose to “open source” some of the ways you are succeeding and help the rest of us along the way! And thank you Drupal Camp London organizers for the invitation to give a keynote address at your conference, and thanks to the audience for your presence and warm reception despite the early hour on Sunday.
Drupal isn’t enough anymore 10 years ago, just having a website was transformational. But pretty much every business has one nowadays; they're a commodity. You need something especially good looking, functional, or powerful for it to be special. Your skillset--the ability to make functional, powerful websites--was also transformational, a good base for running a business. Now that is largely a commodity, too. Competitors like Wordpress.com, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, and others offer solid, attractive, basic websites with lots of useful functionality. And they are only getting easier to use with every release.
So don’t sell Drupal! What's the answer? How do you stay relevant and build a sales pipeline today? Don't sell Drupal. Move up the value chain. If you simply receive instructions to put a banner here and a slideshow there--to turn someone else's plan into code and nothing more--you're not where you need to be on that chain.
Placing yourself and your business higher up the value-creation chain means offering more than writing code, more than offering to build Drupal websites. You need to offer more: business value. You might have special insights or expertise. You might be able to solve the problems of a particular industry or vertical especially well it. You could deliver value through something you build with Drupal. Drupal might be one of your weapons of choice for facilitating digital transformation, or marketing, or what have you ... and you have a choice: specialize or diversify ...
Session Takeaways * Why hanging out the Drupal slate isn't enough anymore. * Questions and problems that businesses need help with today ... That you may be able to answer. * Examples of Drupal-based businesses delivering more value than just Drupal code.
My Thanks ... My thanks once again to all of the following people and everyone else whose ideas and actions helped inspire me and help our community:
- Florian Lorétan - Wunder
- Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg - Zivtech / Probo.ci
- Tim Deeson & Christiann Jansen - Deeson
- Megan Sanicki - Drupal Association
- Lukas Fischer - NetNode / OpenInbound
- Dave Ingram And Andrea Rosi - Acquia Lift
- Adrian Rollet & Ronald Ashri - Roomify
- Dominique de Cooman - Dropsolid / Cooldrops
My trusty microphone, camera, and I recorded a few great conversations at DrupalCon in Mumbai that have never been released until now. Today, a conversation with Rakesh James, who credits Dries for giving him a way to live and support his family with Drupal. Rakesh is an extraordinary and generous person; he's personally paid that forward, giving others in India the chance to change their lives, too, by teaching hundreds of people Drupal and giving them a shot at a career, too. He's also a top 30 contributor to Drupal 8 core.
Rakesh told me about the moment he both discovered and fell in love with Drupal. His manager gave him permission to check out Drupal for a project, "I started it with Drupal 5. I got a big error. My senior [colleague] said I could post on Drupal.org because he was sitting far away and could not debug for me. I posted the error ... After one hour somebody from the community replied that it would be better if you started with Drupal 6. That was amazing. If you post it, somebody from the [other side] of the planet replied to me, 'You should do this.' From that amazing [moment] till now, I have that feeling. All the time when you go to the community and post something, you'll be getting the right answer. In an hour's time. That is so amazing."
"I feel like when I have gotten something, I should give back to others who are struggling. If they have a little education, know how to play with the computer, I should teach them Drupal. That is the best way of doing it. I spread the word because I got something. The people are around, this magic should be with them also ... So they will have a better life. They'll have a better salary. It's a better way to do that; teach the kids in pre-university colleges. We should teach them. I volunteer my time for that. Two Saturdays a month, we go out to the colleges. Every first Saturday, we have a community meet-up; the other Saturday we go to a college and teach them Drupal."
If you have any doubts about Rakesh's sincerity in all this, watch how moved he is in the video from about 10:30 to 11:50 :-)
DrupalCon Asia Mumbai 2016 was almost exactly a year ago now. Of all the conferences I have been to, Mumbai was probably my favorite. I met an incredible, active, enthusiastic Drupal community that welcomed everyone with open arms, incredible food (!), and a LOT of selfies :-)
See the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/254-mumbai-memories-meet-rakesh-james
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My trusty microphone, camera, and I recorded a few great conversations in Mumbai that have never been released until now. Today, talking about full-time contribution to Drupal 8 while building the Acquia Lightning distribution, passion for community and paying it forward in open source, and Drupal in India with Abhishek Anand.
At the time of recording, Abhishek had been a Drupalist "for seven years and two months." He started using Drupal to prepare for a job interview for an internship while he was still studying and said he wished he'd discovered it sooner. It would have saved him a lot of coding to make websites for his college. Later on, Abhishek even turned down jobs at bigger companies to stay where he was and doing Drupal, "I just loved this job. And seven years later this journey in Drupal has been exciting."
Though he is a capable coder, Drupal's toolset made his life and work easier, "For doing anything else, you had to write a lot of code, even for small things. With Drupal, I can sit with someone who knows nothing about PHP or coding and they can build a website. At the same time, the biggest thing was that I can also be a part of this community that's built this. Whatever I'm building, can go back to the Drupal community. Having code written by me on Drupal.org is exciting for me. Someone else will use my code ... When someone files an issue [on one of my modules], I know that they are using it. It's a great feeling knowing other people are using the code I am writing. It's an amazing feeling."
DrupalCon Asia Mumbai 2016 was almost exactly a year ago now. Of all the conferences I have been to, Mumbai was probably my favorite. I met an incredible, active, enthusiastic Drupal community that welcomed everyone with open arms, incredible food (!), and a LOT of selfies :-)
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See the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/253-mumbai-memories-abhishek-anand
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My trusty microphone, camera, and I recorded a few great conversations in Mumbai that have never been released until now. Next up in “Mumbai Memories”, taking Drupal 8 from awesome to super-awesome with Neetu Morwani!
Neetu landed a Drupal-related job right after graduation, as she explains: "Accidentally, I started working in Drupal." In the nearly four years since then, she has become an enthusiastic member of the community and made a lot of code contributions to Drupal (thank you, Neetu!). She's now a Drupal developer at Acquia's New Delhi office and was a speaker at DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai. Listening to Neetu talk about the significance of DrupalCon coming to India, how it is changing people's lives in India, her excitement is palpable. This energy was everywhere at DrupalCon in Mumbai. The Indian Drupal community is a wonderful (large!) group of men and women who are bursting with energy and ideas about how to improve the world.
DrupalCon Asia Mumbai 2016 was almost exactly a year ago now. Of all the conferences I have been to, Mumbai was probably my favorite. I met an incredible, active, enthusiastic Drupal community that welcomed everyone with open arms, incredible food (!), and a LOT of selfies :-)
See the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/252-mumbai-memories-taking-drupal-8-awesome-super-awesome-neetu-morwani
My trusty microphone, camera, and I recorded a few great conversations in Mumbai that have never been released until now. So lets’ get started with a little thing I’m calling “Mumbai Memories”.
Meet Ujval Shah from the state of Gujarat in India. He’s been doing and evangelizing Drupal for a long time — he’s worked with every version of Drupal from 4.6 to 8! Ujval was part of the first-ever Indian Drupal Camp in Ahmedabad in 2008, and he’s been generously speaking, training, and contributing to open source software for a decade.
DrupalCon Asia Mumbai 2016 was almost exactly a year ago now. Of all the conferences I have been to, Mumbai was probably my favorite. I met an incredible, active, enthusiastic Drupal community that welcomed everyone with open arms, incredible food (!), and a LOT of selfies :-)
See the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/251-mumbai-memories-ujval-shah
Suchi Garg is an IT professional through and through and happened upon PHP and Drupal essentially by accident at work. As of 2017, she has been working exclusively in Drupal for a decade and is still very passionate about code, contribution, the community, and passing on her knowledge through training. She is Technical Services Manager at Acquia.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/250-suchi-garg-career-makes-community
DrupalCon Dublin keynote community voices - In Acquia podcast 248, Acquia Office of the CTO Multimedia Designer, Alena "ASH" Heath and I talked about helping capture stories of contribution and change from the Drupal community. In this quick follow-up, here are the soundbites that were featured in Dries Buytaert's "Driesnote" address at DrupalCon Dublin, 2016.
A warm round of thanks to Vijaya Chandran Mani, Zsófi Major, Drew Gorton, Franck Seferiba Salif Soulama, Suchi Garg, Ronan Dowling, Jack Holding, Sheena Morris, and Crispin Read. Thanks for all your help, contributions, and being part of the Drupal community!
See the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/249-changing-lives-changing-world-voices-dublin-driesnote
Acquia Office of the CTO Multimedia Designer, Alena "ASH" Heath and I collaborated in 2016, collecting stories about contribution and changing lives from members of the Drupal community. Soundbites from some of those conversations were included in Dries Buytaert's "Driesnote" keynote address at DrupalCon Dublin. In this podcast, we talk about ASH's history in Drupal, this project and what we learned along the way!
See the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/248-whats-driesnote-ash-n-jam-talk-community-stories
While passing through London in late 2016, I sat down with Tim Deeson, lead at the Deeson agency. We talked about the history of his company, delivering value with Drupal is more than delivering code, and Tim's revelations and action regarding diversity at his company and in the tech industry.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/247-diversity-differentiation-values-tim-deeson
A conversation about the event and why you should be there, too, this time around with Ben Wilding and Waliur Rahman, members of the 2016 Drupal Camp London organizing team.
Come along March 3-5, 2017, to Europe's biggest (best?) community event on the calendar!
Tickets and information here: http://drupalcamp.london
See the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/dont-miss-drupal-camp-london-2017
Acquia Podcast 57 rebroadcast + commentary - Kenny "webkenny" Silanskas passed away in late 2016. Kenny was a Drupalist, a colleague at Acquia, a musician, and a good, funny person who touched my life and the lives of many others. Godspeed, Kenny. We miss you and your huge laugh. Here, Robert Douglass and I listened to the podcast I recorded with Kenny in 2012, reminisced, and talked about the early years at Acquia and the origins of the DrupalCon Prenote. The second half of the podcast is my conversation with Kenny from 2012 and the audio version of his performance in the DrupalCon London Prenote in 2011.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/57-godspeed-webkenny-episode-57-rebroadcast-and-commentary
In this podcast and video, Megan Sanicki, Executive Director of the Drupal Association, and I talk about what the DA Board is all about and why you might want to run for a community directorship. The 2nd half of the podcast is also a chance to get to know Megan. Megan fell in love with the intersection of tech and community work and has been with us in the community since 2009 (or 2010, she's not sure ...).
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/245-drupal-association-board-community-elections-2017-meet-megan-sanicki
This conversation with Beth Tucker Long (@e3bethtl) is the one of a series of interviews Campbell Vertesi (@CampbellVertesi) and I carried out in preparation for DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai. Now, we're sharing all the good stuff we captured but didn’t have time to cover in 40 minutes in Mumbai.
Our session, Meet PHP-FIG: Your community just got a whole lot bigger, Drupal is about Drupal 8’s membership in the new, interoperable PHP community. We’re covering the basics of what the PHP Framework Interoperability Group (PHP-FIG) is, what the various PSRs are and do, talk about testing and dependency management, and what it means to be a part of the new PHP community — including having better architecture, cleaner code, and more interoperability. All of this adds up to a big move to get projects “off their islands,” saving developers a lot of code, and companies a lot of money, among other benefits.
I apologize for the poor audio quality in this recording and hope the quality of the conversation makes up for it.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/244-php-fig-unsplintering-php-us-all-meet-beth-tucker-long
Rebroadcast: Drupal launch interviews, one year on. 18 minutes audio & video with Dries in Antwerp, visiting the dorm room where he invented Drupal for the first time in 15 years.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/210-visit-dorm-room-where-drupal-was-born-rebroadcast
A conversation with our newest community representative to the Drupal Association Board, Director at Large, Shyamala Rajaram, recorded walking to the New Orleans Convention Center during DrupalCon NOLA 2016.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/243-walk-through-new-orleans-shyamala-rajaram
I sat down with Drupal Social Media Lead, Paul Johnson at Drupal Camp London 2016, a few weeks after DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai. Paul runs the official community social media accounts on Twitter and elsewhere. I feel Paul is a kindred soul, since he and I both love highlighting and celebrating the Drupal community's stories and achievements.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/242-meet-paul-johnson-drupal-social-media-lead
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.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/241-nothing-about-us-without-us-diversity-web-nikki-stevens
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.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/240-how-indigo-herbs-runs-almost-everything-drupal
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!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/239-drupal-8-content-workflow-initiative-22
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.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/238-personalization-happens-acquia-dmexco-2016
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!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/237-drupal-8-content-workflow-initiative-12
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!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/236-live-drupalcon-mumbai-meet-acquia-pune
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.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/235-mastering-drupal-8-views-meet-gregg-marshall
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!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/234-come-down-drupal-south-2016
I met 15-year-old serial entrepreneur--CEO of goCreative--and budding Drupalist Brandon Relph at the inaugural ThinkNation event in Canterbury, in December 2015. In this podcast, we talk about how he got to know Drupal 8 and what he thought of it. And I was surprised to learn that there is a world of professional Minecraft out there, in which Brandon runs two professional ventures and employs a couple dozen people around the world.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/233-drupal-8-beginners-meet-brandon-relph
Doris Wong and I sat down at Acquia's Boston HQ to talk about her interesting journey through HTML and frontend work, to UX, to fitness, and finally to Drupal and Acquia, and how even at Acquia it took time, Acquia U and three jobs (!) to really settle in. Here, we talk about that path and what she got out of Acquia U.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/232-acquia-u-and-career-changers-meet-doris-wong
Michael Schmid, Group CTO at Amazee, sat down in my Cologne office in March 2016 with the idea of comparing the promise of Drupal 8 to the real life experience of him and his teams. The conclusion? It's already great and will keep getting better. With so many Drupal 8 projects now underway, I expect to be hearing a lot more of this sentiment in the near future! Below is a full transcript of our conversation.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/231-so-how-it-working-drupal-8-every-day-michael-schmid
I sat down with Ally Gonthier the first time I visited Acquia's then-new downtown Boston headquarters in mid-2015. At the time, she was preparing to leave her job as Support Coordinator at Acquia to enter Acquia's Drupal/tech bootcamp, known as Acquia U. When I returned to Boston in the spring of 2016, I took the chance to talk with her again about her experiences at Acquia U and what had become of her in the meantime. Below is a transcript of our before and after conversations.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/230-acquia-u-and-after-meet-ally-gonthier
Wim Leers, Senior Software Engineer in the Acquia Office of the CTO (aka “OCTO”), has been busy in the last few years making Drupal 8 amazing! His contributions include working with Fabian Franz on aspects of Drupal’s new caching and rendering systems to make Drupal 8 performant. Today’s podcast is a conversation he and I had about who he is and what he’s been up to following our own collaboration preparing my own post on BigPipe.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/229-bigpipe-drupal-8-better-perceived-performance-free
John Kennedy and I spoke about two exciting Drupal 8 projects he's running at Acquia in 2016. He's the Program Manager of the $500,000 US dollars Acquia is investing upgrading important modules from Drupal 7 to 8 as part of the Drupal 8 Module Acceleration Program. He's also the Product Manager of Acquia's Enterprise Authoring Drupal 8 distribution, Lightning.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/228-drupal-8-lightning-distro-and-module-acceleration-program
Laura Caraker's remarkable journey at Acquia. In this podcast, she and I talk through how she joined Acquia Sales, wanted to know more about Drupal and ended up joining the technical side of the house via her stint at Acquia U, Acquia's Drupal and tech boot camp.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/227-how-laura-moved-sales-tech-drupal-story
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 ;-)
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/226-co-podcast-mumbai-introducing-geek-voice-parth-and-hussain
How does the Instant Runoff Voting system actually work? How could we make the Board elections better for the Drupal community?
Thanks to everyone who put yourselves out there and ran in this election and congratulations to our newest board member, Shyamala Rajaram! I’m certain you will use this power for good :-)
I sat down with Michael “Schnitzel” Schmid in my office in Cologne to talk about the 2016 election for a Director at Large Drupal Association Board position. Schnitzel was a candidate and the election had just concluded when we spoke.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/225-drupal-association-director-large-2016-election-commentary
I spoke with Matt Dooley and Colin Packenham at Acquia headquarters in downtown Boston about Acquia's tech bootcamp program, Acquia U. Both are career changers and were more or less new to Drupal when they got started with the program and I was interested to see what motivated them to make the change and dive into Drupal headfirst.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/224-so-how-was-it-recent-graduates-talk-about-acquia-u
Part 2 of 2 - Sebastian Bergmann, the maintainer of the PHPUnit testing framework, came to our office in Cologne, Germany to talk with Campbell Vertesi (@CampbellVertesi) and me about PHP, PHP FIG and the PSRs, and of course testing. It is another in the series of interviews we carried out with important and interesting people from the PHP community in preparation for DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/223-benefits-testing-php-fig-drupal-8-sebastian-bergmann-22
Part 1 of 2 - Sebastian Bergmann, the maintainer of the PHPUnit testing framework, came to our office in Cologne, Germany to talk with Campbell Vertesi (@CampbellVertesi) and me about PHP, PHP FIG and the PSRs, and of course testing. It is another in the series of interviews we carried out with important and interesting people from the PHP community in preparation for DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai. Now we're releasing those to you!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/222-drupal-meet-php-fig-and-phpunit-sebastian-bergmann-12
Erica Schroder joined Acquia in 2012 as a graduate of the Acquia U Drupal training bootcamp and is an inspiration to me as a successful career-changer. As part of running arts and dance businesses, she's had a hand in with Drupal since Drupal 5 days, but Acquia U and her subsequent experience has made her a real Drupal pro. We got the chance to sit down together in 2015 at Acquia's Boston headquarters.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/221-acquia-u-takes-you-good-cook-restaurant-chef
PHP FIG? PSR Standards ... What are they? What are they important? This conversation with Lorna Mitchell is another in a series of interviews Campbell Vertesi (@CampbellVertesi) and I carried out in preparation for DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai. We are building the world’s longest DrupalCon session and packing all 6+ hours of it with information and personalities you won’t want to miss! So actually ... For our one hour in the spotlight in Mumbai, we’ve been doing a lot of preparation. Our “session” will include a lot of additional materials like podcasts and blog posts about what we’ve learned along the way.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/220-drupal-meet-php-fig-psr-what-2016-lorna-mitchell
Listen to Drupal developer, contributor and businessperson, Enzo Garcia talk about how he is traveling around the world for 120 days in 2016, spreading the word in India, Asia and Australasia about building community and identity, the importance of Drupal 8 in the developing world, and the Drupal Console.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/219-around-drupal-world-120-days-enzo
This conversation with Larry Garfield (@crell) is the first in a series of interviews Campbell Vertesi (@CampbellVertesi) and I carried out in preparation for DrupalCon Asia in Mumbai. We are building the world’s longest DrupalCon session and packing all 6+ hours of it with information and personalities you won’t want to miss! So actually ... For our one hour in the spotlight in Mumbai, we’ve been doing a lot of preparation. Our “session” will include a lot of additional materials like podcasts and blog posts about what we’ve learned along the way.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/218-drupal-meet-php-fig-larry-garfield
Part 2 of 2 - Amy Parker, the Director of Acquia University, and I sat down in Acquia's downtown Boston headquarters to talk about Acquia's technology boot camp, affectionately known as "Acquia U". In this podcast we talk about the diversity of candidate backgrounds, the candidate selection process, and go into what makes a successful Acquia "Ubie." We also talk about measuring the success of a program like this in human terms.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/217-acquia-u-making-world-better-place-one-drupalist-time-amy-parker-22
Amy Parker, the Director of Acquia University--aka Acquia U--and I sat down in Acquia's downtown Boston headquarters to talk about Acquia's technology training program. The course covers much more than Drupal; the curriculum is designed to produce people able to work in tech companies: Besides a whole lot of Drupal and related technologies, it includes agile methodologies, project management tools, troubleshooting tickets, presentation skills, and a whole lot of Drupal! Listen to our whole conversation to learn more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/216-acquia-u-jump-and-own-it-kickstart-your-career-meet-amy-parker-12
Part 2 of 2 - Sharing is good for business. Ambrosia Vertesti, Global VP Human Resources at Hootsuite, and I sat down to talk about how open source models are spreading to human resources and other, non-code parts of business today. In part one, I strove to understand HR's needs, terminology, and perspective and what drew Ambrosia and her peers to open source. In part two, our conversation moves on to how open source values like sharing and contribution are helping human resources and a lot more about #HROS.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/215-what-geeks-got-right-hros-ambrosia-vertesi-22
Part 1 of 2 - Getting beyond the talent war. I was thrilled to have the chance to sit down and have a conversation with Ambrosia Vertesti, Global VP Human Resources at Hootsuite. It's part of my exploration of how open source thinking and practices are spreading beyond the world of code to influence and improve the businesses and cultures around them; in this case, to HR practice and what has become #HROS.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/214-open-source-beyond-code-hros-ambrosia-vertesi-12
I sat down with Rebekah Simensen & Beau Simensen as SymfonyLive Berlin 2015 was wrapping up. Beau is the maintainer of the Sculpin PHP static site generator and was until recently a voting member of PHP-FIG. Rebekah is the artist known as ninjagrl, whom I had heard of because of her #ossart, open-source-inspired work. Beau has promised to come back on the podcast soon to explain all about the PSR 7 HTTP message standard interfaces, but I didn't want to pass up this chance to meet such interesting people!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/213-art-php-sculpin-more-symfonylive-berlin-2015
Something a little different this week: In cooperation with the Swedish "Drupalsnack" ("Talking Drupal") podcast, Leander Lindhal, Robert Douglass, & Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire get together at the 2015 Internetdagarna in Stockholm.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/212-drupalsnack-interview-internetdagarna-stockholm-2015
Jeffrey A. McGuire explains why Drupal is the open source, community software powering successful digital government around the world.
I had the honor of speaking about Drupal and government to a packed room at the Internetdagarna in Stockholm, in November 2015. I used the opportunity to highlight Drupal’s success in helping governmental organisations and public bodies and went into some detail about the Australian government’s Drupal-based govCMS solution, as a shining example of good policy meeting good software. In conversations following my presentations, members of the Nordic Drupal community shared thoughts and frustrations with me about public policy and open source adoption in Scandinavia. I’ll attempt to address some of those in my post on the Acquia Developer Center.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/211-building-digital-government-services-drupal-proven-choice
Part 3 of 3 - VIDEO! Spend 18 minutes with Dries Buytaert and Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire behind the scenes in Antwerp as we drive back to the dorm room where Drupal was invented and Dries seeing it for the first time in 15 years.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/210-drupal-8-release-mega-episode-33-bonus-behind-scenes
Part 2 of 3 - I got to spend a half a day with Drupal Project Lead, Dries Buytaert, in Antwerp recently. This was a rare pleasure, given the success of Drupal and Acquia in recent years and how busy we both are. In between shots for some professional video material, Dries and I sat down in front of my tiny cameras and microphones to talk about Drupal 8. In parts one and two, we touch on how we got here and lessons learned along the way, what Drupal 8 brings to the table, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/209-drupal-8-release-and-happy-birthday-dries-mega-episode-23
Part 1 of 3 - I got to spend a half a day with Drupal Project Lead, Dries Buytaert, in Antwerp recently. This was a rare pleasure, given the success of Drupal and Acquia in recent years and how busy we both are. In between shots for some professional video material, Dries and I sat down in front of my tiny cameras and microphones to talk about Drupal 8. In parts one and two, we touch on how we got here and lessons learned along the way, what Drupal 8 brings to the table, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/208-drupal-8-release-and-happy-birthday-dries-mega-episode-13
Keith Donaldson and I spoke in Keith's 9th week as a Drupalist--he's done Django and run several startups in the past--and he'd already been using Drupal "in the wild" to win a hackathon and more. I was impressed! In this podcast, we talk about Keith's background, impressions of Drupal, how the Acquia U training program supports and creates new Drupal talent, our mutual conviction that it is one of the best tools to get a minimum viable product up and running for someone with a startup idea, and more!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/207-drupal-fastest-way-idea-mvp
jam's Dev Camp is back with Alick Mighall, Managing Director of miggle in Brighton. He and I have a chat about Drupal and running your own business in the podcast interview part of this session. He goes on to do a very interesting presentation about the road to Drupal for himself and his agency, including some of the detours through proprietary and in-house software along the way. If you're wondering what Drupal can do for you and your company, listen to our conversation then watch Alick's presentation. Slides and full session video below!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/206-how-and-why-we-use-drupal-business-owners-perspective
All about govCMS - An interview with and presentation by Adam Malone--Acquia Solutions Architect, based in Canberra, Australia. In the podcast interview, we start off learning about Adam's background and history in Drupal. We touch on how Drupal has gone from being very specifically a content management system in the Drupal 6 days, to the power and flexibility of Drupal 7, to being a powerful framework, still with a great user interface, in Drupal 8.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/205-government-service-architecting-govcms-australia
jam's Dev Camp is back with something a little different this week: Rick Donohoe, Account Manager at Microserve in Bristol, presents a case study about how his company delivered six sites on a fixed budget, 5-site contract. He gives some great general and specific tips on making a project like this successful. I saw Rick do a shorter version of this at Drupal Camp Bristol 2015 and thought that the information he has to share is valuable and that many of us could benefit from it. Thanks to Rick and Microserve for sharing!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/204-drupal-case-study-roman-baths-bath-uk
One dev shop: Talking with Richard Moger about the success of his small-scale agency, Claritis, and how reuse of open source tools like Zurb Foundation and Drupal allow him to work efficiently and grow with his clients.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/203-small-agency-success-reusability-zurb-drupal-and-more
Beyond websites: Drupal as a rapid development and deployment platform for enterprise applications - Behavioral Science + Analytics + Collaboration + Drupal = OnCorps. I spoke with Laura Lafave and Peter Hallett, two-thirds of the founding team at OnCorps, after meeting them at the business day of Drupal Camp Bristol, 2015. I find their product concept--apps to improve team performance at companies--very interesting, but at least as exciting is how they are using Drupal to make it all happen.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/202-nudge-nudge-drupal-pluggable-enterprise-resource-oncorps
The first Drupal 8 book on the market was Drupal 8 Configuration Management, by Anja Schirwinski and Stefan Borchert from undpaul in Hannover Germany. Anja is Co-Founder and CEO of undpaul. I ran into her and undpaul's other Co-Founder/CEO, Johannes Haseitl in early May at the re:publica 2015 in Berlin, where I gave a presentation on open source and the economy.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/201-drupal-8-configuration-management-we-wrote-book
This week’s podcast: Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire’s virtual, mini-keynote at Drupal Camp Cape Town 2015. This is a short talk that includes ideas from the “Idealism as Code” presentations that jam has given at a few events in recent months. Watch the video to see the slides jam refers to.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/200-idealism-and-what-successful-open-source-looks-drupal-camp-cape-town-2015
The co-founder of Blue-Bag, George Boobyer, has been in the business of making websites and online applications longer than Drupal has been in existence. In this conversation, we talk about why Drupal is his toolset of choice and how happy he is that PHP and Drupal 8 are catching up with object oriented code, interoperability, and other factors that will make his work for his clients even better.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/199-constantly-not-reinventing-wheel-drupal-and-agency
Josh Holmes tells some of the story of how open source--and even contribution--came to Microsoft. Worth a listen.
"My full-time job is writing open source software ... at Microsoft." Josh Holmes, Director of Architecture, Microsoft Partner Catalyst Team, has one of the coolest jobs I can think of in the IT and startup worlds. He runs a large team of top notch engineers whose mission it is to help startups with hard technology problems. And they help them by fixing, improving, and contributing to open source tools that they need. Yes, this is a Microsoft job. Yes, everything they work on is contributed back to open source projects. Really.
https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/198-embracing-and-contributing-open-source-microsoft
David Bishop from NinetyOne Consulting and I sat down to chat at Drupal Camp Bristol 2015. The sailing charity, Bart's Bash, invites you for a day out on the water in Barcelona harbor on September 20th! Bart's Bash is an amazing charity in honor of a respected British Olympian, Andrew "Bart" Simpson, who died young in a tragic sailing accident. While organizing what they thought would be a small fundraising effort, the charity singlehandedly kicked off a new movement and inspired a new, international movement and community in sailing. And a great Drupal scalability and functionality story: David Bishop built the small, 2-page brochure site to support the initial funding effort and then ended up building it out to include mapping, community sign-ups and groups, real-time data-ingestion and -processing. In 2014, the site collected sign-ups and processed race data for 30,000 sailors in 17,000 boats from around the world - wow!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/197-easy-scaling-brochure-massive-hub-drupal-barts-bash
Part 2 of 2 - In a recent conversation with Tom Erickson, Acquia's CEO, we got to talking about Acquia's "Drupal 8 All-In", what it is and what it means for the Drupal world and those we have yet to convince ... Acquia has drawn a line in the sand, saying, this thing is so great, we are confident we can deliver the kind of help and experience that we've been guaranteeing with Drupal over the last 7 or 8 years. This thing is ready enough. And all of the rough edges that we find along the way; this is the perfect opportunity to sand them off. This thing, Drupal 8, is ready for real business. In short: Acquia is running customer sites on Drupal 8 already, supporting all of Drupal 8, helping get the last rough edges off it for general release, and would love to talk with you about your next project and whether Drupal 8 is a good fit!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/196-drupal-8-all-acquia-ready-d8-tom-erickson-22
Part 1 of 2 - I recorded an audio-only conversation I had recently with Tom Erickson, Acquia's CEO. In this podcast, Tom and I talk about how he met Acquia's founders Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson, why Drupal looked like a good bet even back in 2007, how Drupal has changed and grown, the advantages and challenges of running a business in the open source world, the Drupal community, how Acquia Cloud Site Factory helps businesses manage hundreds of sites in a cost-effective way, Acquia's contributions to Drupal over the years, "community open source", and what Tom is excited about in Drupal 8. Tune in next time for the down-low on what Acquia's "Drupal 8 All-In" effort is all about.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/195-excited-about-drupal-8-meet-acquia-ceo-tom-erickson-12
At a recent Acquia all-company meeting, I was glad to hear that half of the current group of Acquia U students and 7 out of 12 of the latest "BDR" hires in Sales were women. Acquia's CEO, Tom Erickson added that this was the result of some "objective, data-driven" hiring practices. I had to know more. I got Acquia Senior Manager of Business Development and Sales, Chris Hemberger on the line to talk about all of this.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/194-gender-balance-through-data-driven-objective-hiring-acquia
Part 2 of 2 - I spoke with John Faber, Managing Partner with Chapter Three, on March 17th, 2015.
In part 1 to talk about the business advantages of contribution and sustainability when basing your business on open source software. We also touch on Drupal 8's potential power as a toolset and for attracting new developers, doing business in an open source context, and more!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/193-sustainable-contribution-22-giving-back-same-making-money
Part 1 of 2 - Drupal user number 5622, John Faber, has been involved with Drupal since late 2003. He is a Managing Partner with Chapter Three, a San Francisco-based digital agency. Their slogan sums up well what a lot of us think about Drupal: "We build a better internet with Drupal." John and I got on a Google Hangout to talk about the business advantages of contribution and sustainability when basing your business on open source software. We also touch on Drupal 8's potential power as a toolset and for attracting new developers, doing business in an open source context, and more!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/192-sustainable-contribution-12-how-drupal-has-solved-and-evolved
Ani Gupta, Drupal Mumbai community lead, StartupNext lead, formerly at Axelerant in India, and I got the chance to continue the conversation I began with Piyush Poddar at Drupal Camp London about the changing face of IT and open source in India. Under the heading "from consumption to contribution" we talk about India's move from being perceived as being good for cheap, outsourced code to being a place rich with brands and startups in their own right and the home to much open source contribution. We also talk about old versions of Drupal, the Drupal community and its mentoring culture, open source acceptance in business and government, and more!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/191-consumption-contribution-drupal-business-india-22
When Tom Feichter told me he only gets to one Drupal event a year, I wanted to know why. When he told me it's because he runs a Drupal shop–mspiral creative media–in Yangon, Myanmar, I had to know more! We talked about Tom's history in Drupal, how Drupal's multilingual capabilities have helped him, how excited he is about Drupal 8's architecture, his history working with NGOs on the Thai/Burmese border and how that has flowed into ethical digital agency work, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/190-drupal-helping-ngos-civil-society-myanmar-and-beyond
Michelle Sanver–developer at Liip–and I sat down and talked at SymfonyCon 2014 in Madrid. Michelle and I have a number of interests in common (community, FTW!) and I really enjoyed getting to know her better in a conversation in front of my microphone and camera. We covered her long history in PHP, her SymfonyCon presentation (Life After Assetic: State of Art Symfony2 Frontend Dev) the PHP Renaissance bringing communities together, Michelle's "open source addiction", building PHP applications that touch the lives of almost everyone in Switzerland, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/189-real-world-change-php-and-community-skys-limit
I was happy to talk with two major contributors to Drupal 8 at the same time at Drupal South 2015 in Melbourne Australia. At the time we recorded our conversation in March 2015, Hussain Abbas from Bangalore, India and Jibran Ijaz from Lahore Pakistan had both contributed well over 100 patches to D8. In this podcast we talk about their history in Drupal, open source software as a force for good in society, the benefits of contribution, Drupal as the 1st project of the PHP-FIG era, Drupal 8 for developers, the incredible energy and size of the Australasian Drupal community, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/188-drupal-8-1st-product-php-fig-era
In April 2015, I was excited to talk with John Doyle, General Manager Technology & Solutions Architecture at the Australian full-service digital agency Komosion, to explore their decision to adopt Drupal to replace other technologies, including an in-house CMS they'd invested 10 years of work in. In this podcast, John very clearly lays out what Komosion's priorities were in making this decision, the benefits for the agency and its clients, and the future he sees using Drupal as the basis for future work.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/187-drupal-replaces-house-cms-digital-agency-meet-john-doyle
At Drupal Camp London 2015, I spoke with Piyush Poddar, Director of Drupal Practice at Axelerant. We talked about Piyush's history in Drupal, Drupal as a business-ready solution, India's coming of age in open source culture, and how that is driving business value.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/186-karma-and-journey-consumption-contribution-drupal-india-12
The European Acquia Global Support team had an onsite week in Reading the week after Drupal Camp London 2015. I got the chance to see a number of them there and sit down with two of my friends from "Supporta!"–Daniel Blomqvist and Henk Beld. We talked about remote teams and helping others succeed with Drupal, while also paying it back/forward by sharing and teaching what they learn and what they know.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/185-building-great-remote-team-helping-clients-giving-back
It was great to get the chance to sit down and talk with Jordi Boggiano at SymfonyCon Madrid 2014. Jordi is responsible for Composer, one of the most important pieces of technology that is driving PHP interoperability and the PHP "renaissance" of the last couple of years. He's also on the Symfony2 core team, "and bad about telling things about myself."
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/184-php-reset-php-renaissance-unify-everything-php-composer
If only non-Finns could easily pronounce it, I think "yhteisöllisyys" would be a perfect motto for Drupal. To explain what it means, I dragged Lauri Eskola, Drupal Craftsman from Druid.fi, away from the contribution sprints at DrupalCamp Brighton 2015 long enough for him to fill me in on that, as well as his trip to Drupal Camp Delhi 2015, what he's excited about in Drupal 8, and how doing business in the Drupal world–based on values like sharing and openness–must seem strange and different to outsiders.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/183-yhteisollisyys-and-global-drupal-friendships-beyond-business
I sat down with Karen Grey at Drupal Camp Brighton 2015 to find out more about who she is and what she does with Drupal. I apologise for taking her out of the code sprints for that time! Since we spoke, Karen has taken on a position as Senior Drupal Developer at i-KOS in their Brighton office.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/182-drupal-fun-use-meet-karen-grey
Beth Tucker Long, PHP Developer and Advocate at Code Climate, and I got in front of my cameras at the 2014 PHP World conference and got to talk about her history and priorities in development, PHP, and open source; her welcome into the PHP community, the culture of sharing and teaching in PHP, her work and the mission of Code Climate ... including how she got hired as a Perl programmer right out of college and was handed a PHP codebase to fix. "So I had to learn PHP really, really fast." When she had to ask some questions the weekend she learned PHP, the welcome the PHP community gave her convinced her to stay and inspires her to this day to give other just as warm a welcome to the project.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/181-php-entire-world-your-development-team-beth-tucker-long
Ronald Ashri, former CTO at BlueSpark is now a Founder at Roomify - a Drupal-centric startup focusing on online reservations. Here, Ronald presents an enjoyable and valuable session about content strategy and Drupal, full of practical and actionable advice – worth watching in full for all strategists, site builders, and anyone who wants to know how to build a better content-oriented site.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/180-content-strategy-drupal-site-building-connecting-dots-ronald-ashri
Looking back on 2014, it was a great year of events and conversations with people in and around Acquia, open source, government, and business. I think I could happily repost at least 75% of the podcasts I published in 2014 as "greatest hits," but then we'd never get on to all the cool stuff I have been up to so far in 2015!
Nonetheless, here's one of my favorite recordings from 2014: a terrific session that will help you wrap your head around developing for Drupal 8 and a great conversation with Frederic Mitchell that covered the use of Drupal and open source in government, government decision-making versus corporate decision-making, designing Drupal 7 sites with Drupal 8 in mind, designing sites for the end users and where the maximum business value comes from in your organization, and more!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/155-2014-greatest-hits-30-awesome-drupal-8-api-functions-you-should-already-know-fredric
While speaking with Melissa Anderson about behavior driven development (BDD) at BADCamp 2014, she suggested I get John Bickar from Stanford Web Services in front of my cameras to talk about his experience during last year's "Drupalgeddon" security vulnerability. The result is this podcast and some great insight into how this kind of testing can significantly improve initial, ongoing, and emergency delivery of software. As John puts it, using BDD means: "delivering better software, delivering it faster, and knowing that it is delivering the value that we have promised to our partners." I would have named this episode of the Acquia Podcast more in the spirit of Dr. Strangelove: "Behat tests mean death to Linky-Clicky or how BDD helped Stanford Web Services recover fast during Drupalgeddon," but reason won out.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/179-deploying-better-software-confidence-behat-bdd-meet-john-bickar
PHP security expert and member of the Global Cybersecurity Group at Hewlett Packard, Chris Cornutt and I had the chance to meet in person at PHP World 2014, in Washington, D.C. We compared notes on the "PHP Renaissance", looking over other projects' shoulders, sharing code, and PHP security basics.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/178-writing-secure-php-meet-chris-cornutt
Tips and tricks for getting the most out of simplytest.me – Patrick Drotleff is a passionate contributor to the Drupal project whose work – including simplytest.me, pareview.sh, and the tongue-in-cheek BreakingHead card game – often centers around building tools that help others contribute to Drupal. Within minutes of Drupal 8 beta being announced at DrupalCon Amsterdam, I saw a tweet saying it was available to try out on simplytest.me. Though I had used the service before, I wanted to know how it actually worked and Patrick was kind enough to agree to show it off here on jam's Drupal Camp.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/177-working-simplytestme-and-drupalorg
Eric Mandel, CEO of infrastructure provider Blackmesh, and I got the chance to speak at PHP World 2014 (where I was also a keynote speaker). We spoke about his history with development, open source, and Drupal. I also had the chance to ask Eric about how Blackmesh has become a leader in the area of corporate contribution to Drupal, employing Cathy Theys to work on Drupal core, mentor new Drupal contributors, and help out at code sprints around the world.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/176-4-benefits-hiring-dedicated-open-source-contributors
Part 2 of 2 – I ran into Elia Albarran, Four Kitchens' Operations Manager at BADCamp 2014. She mentioned she'd read my blog post 10 Tips for Success as a Remote Employee; we started exchanging tips and ideas until I basically yelled, "Stop! I need to get this on camera for the podcast!" She graciously agreed and brought along two Four Kitchens developers for the session, too: Taylor Smith and Matt Grill, whom I spoke with in part 1.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/175-remote-team-success-22-manager
Presenter Brad Czerniak caught my eye with a blog post entitled "10 things I learned using Drupal at a hackathon," based on his experiences taking part in the #hackDPL (Detroit Public Library) competitive hackathon. In our podcast interview we talk about that – before moving on to Brad's session about the Drupal development best practices he and his team use at Commercial Progression in Michigan.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/174-development-based-drupals-fundamental-particles-brad-czerniak
Part 1 of 2 – I ran into Elia Albarran, Four Kitchens' Operations Manager ... ahem "Funmaster", in the inspiring atmosphere of BADCamp 2014. She mentioned she'd read my blog post 10 Tips for Success as a Remote Employee; we started exchanging tips and ideas until I basically yelled, "Stop! I need to get this on camera for the podcast!" She graciously agreed and brought along two Four Kitchens developers for the session, too: Taylor Smith and Matt Grill.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/173-remote-team-success-12-developers
I met Ian Read, Front End Development Team Leader at TSO/Williams Lea Public Sector at Drupal Camp Brighton, where I found out that he has recently been involved in a subject close to my heart: Drupal and government. He was part of the team that designed and built the attractive, responsive, and very functional London Borough of Croydon's new council website. In our conversation, we touch on the value that the Drupal community provides to everyone involved; Drupal and innovation in government digital services; the thought process, needs, design and more that went into the new Croydon Council Drupal website; and more!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/172-digital-government-services-and-drupal-meet-ian-read
Lorna Jane Mitchell is back to show us some great reasons for upgrading your projects to PHP 5.3 or newer. Drupal 8's minimum version requirement is already up there at 5.4.5 (as of 2015.Feb.02), so we're doing well! Lorna and I have a quick chat about her history and experience, open source versus proprietary software development ("Projects and companies that work in that open source technology space make much better use of tools ... and they are wonderful, free, and well-supported tools!") ... specifics of how and why the PHP "Renaissance" is happening, and Drupal 8 as a PHP meta-project before she gets down to her jam's Drupal Camp presentation.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/171-new-wave-php-lorna-jane-mitchell
Dustin Whittle, Developer Evangelist at AppDynamics, and I sat down at SymfonyLive Berlin 2014 to get to know each other. We touched on PHP's past and potential futures through HHVM or PHP7, how competition and collaboration both improve open source software and how business benefits from that, Drupal 8, and more. This podcast is some extracts from that conversation!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/170-meet-dustin-whittle-get-more-done-better-faster-together
Sally Young, Senior Developer at Lullabot, let me take her away from the DrupalCon Amsterdam sprints to talk with me. I was thrilled to finally get her in front of my podcast microphone and camera. She is a smart and interesting developer involved in innovations including headless Drupal and mobile applications. More importantly to me, I've been figuratively dying to get her story on tape about her mother's misunderstanding of her first job ever since I first heard it a couple of years ago. Listen on and you won't believe what happens next! ;-) ... We also touch on the beauty of her job, CMS v Framework, the Drupal community, being an open source developer, why Drupal 8 will be nice for developers and clients.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/169-drupal-and-power-flight-sally-young
Stephan Hochdörfer from bitExpert AG and I got the chance to sit down and chat in the event hotel lobby following his session (and my keynote address :-) at SymfonyLive Berlin, 2014.
Warning: Surprisingly, this podcast contains "the s-word" once.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/168-php-getting-job-done-really-easily-meet-stephan-hochdorfer
David Aponovich knows the web content management business far beyond just the "Drupalsphere". I was thrilled when he joined Acquia from Forrester Research in 2014, since I believe his voice, experience, and insight can help convince more businesses of the benefits of using Drupal, especially given the upcoming release of Drupal 8. He and I sat down at DrupalCon Amsterdam – David's first Drupal community event – and talked about digital transformation from the "information superhighway" to today, corporations and open source software as a pragmatic choice, and how the definitions of cooperation and competition are changing in business today.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/167-explaining-drupal-pragmatic-choice-meet-david-aponovich
I am looking back on a great year of events and conversations with people in and around Acquia, open source, government, and business. I think I could happily repost at least 75% of the podcasts I published in 2014 as "greatest hits," but then we'd never get on to all the cool stuff I am lining up for 2015! Nonetheless, here's a recording from one of my favorite moments from 2014: Drupal Dev Days in Szeged Hungary, where more than 300 contributors went wild working together on Drupal, I was honored to be the keynote speaker, and where Adam Juran and Campbell Vertesi debuted their now-legendary "Coder v Themer" ultimate smackdown grudge-match. In this podcast, Michael "Schnitzel" Schmid and I talk Drupal 8 from his perspective as a service provider.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/145-drupal-8-means-better-business-2014-greatest-hits-rebroadcast-michael-schmid
Part 2 – Larry Garfield and I had a long chat in front of my camera at DrupalCon Amsterdam to warm him up for writing "Building Bridges: Linking Islands" in the Future of PHP guest blog series on Acquia.com. In this second part of our conversation, we touch on Drupal's specialist value-adds over and above straight PHP, what defines community, sustainable contribution and services v products businesses, rebuilding Drupal's foundations to make a better project for everyone, the php[world] conference and Drupal 8 itself as manifestations of all the good changes coming with PHP interoperability, how communities are building bridges between their islands and sharing innovation, and how to do the Drupal Hug™.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/166-drupal-php-linking-islands-22-larry-garfield
Part 1 – Larry Garfield and I had a long chat in front of my camera at DrupalCon Amsterdam. Part of the idea was to help Larry prepare his thoughts for writing the blog post that has turned into "Building Bridges: Linking Islands" in the Future of PHP guest blog series on Acquia.com. In this part we cover Larry's start in Drupal, some project history, what Drupal can teach (and needs to learn) about contribution and community ("celebrating the newbie" and the power of "thank you"), The New PHP, fuzzy project boundaries and inter-project collaboration.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/165-drupal-php-linking-islands-12-larry-garfield
Chris Jolly, CTO Ontraq Europe, and his company have a strong technical background, going back to "old school" (pre-internet) IT. Their main focus until now has been eCommerce, Symfony, and solving hard problems like legacy-system integrations. Now, thanks to its use of Symfony framework components, they've started using Drupal 8 as their content management technology of choice! Chris and I talked at DrupalCon Amsterdam about getting there and what they're up to now.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/164-symfony-shop-embraces-drupal-8-gets-down-business
At the 2014 Government ICT 2.0 conference in London, I gave a presentation on Drupal and open source software as an essential facilitator in the practice of good digital government today, "Code for a Better World: Open Source Drupal + Government." (presentation slides embedded below). Hugo Pickford-Wardle, Chief Innovation Officer at Matter Digital, helped me out by speaking for ten minutes about Matter's activities and experience on the front lines of government transformation in the UK today. Afterward, we got the chance to sit down and talk in front of the camera about all this and a lot more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/163-digital-government-and-content-moon-hugo-pickford-wardle
Voices of the ElePHPant / Acquia Podcast Ultimate Cage Match Part 2 - I had the chance to try to pull Cal Evans out of his shell at DrupalCon Amsterdam. After a few hours, he managed to open up and we talked about a range of topics we have in common. In this part of our conversation we talk about 'Getting off the Island', inter-project cooperation in PHP and Drupal's role in that; the reinvention and professionalization of PHP core development; decoupled, headless Drupal 8; PHP and the LAMP stack as tools of empowerment and the technologists' responsibility to make devices and applications that are safe, secure, and private by default.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/162-cal-evans-22-lets-talk-open-source
Voices of the ElePHPant / Acquia Podcast Ultimate Showdown Part 1 - Cal Evans and I got the chance to sit down and talk (a lot!) at DrupalCon Amsterdam and talk about a range of topics we have in common. In this first part of a 2-part series, we talk Drupal, PHP convergence and the "PHP Renaissance", open source communities, proprietary v open source business and the ethics of helping, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/161-meet-cal-evans-12-meet-jeffrey-jam-mcguire
I met Vinita Rathi at the recent Digibury Weekender, where she gave a presentation entitled "Why we all need women in tech." Her presentation was thought- and audience-question provoking and I was thrilled when she agreed to sit down with me and talk about women in technology. In this conversation, among other things, we touch on how businesses with more women in leadership tend to be better performers financially; motherhood and maternity leave as a business advantage; perspectives on problem solving; and how to move technology companies and industries towards gender balance and diversity.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/160-women-technology-better-business-better-world-meet-vinita-rathi
Kalpana Goel - web developer with Forum One - and I sat down to chat at DrupalCon Amsterdam. We discussed the topic of Dries Buytaert's Amsterdam keynote: the potential benefits of "gamifying" and rewarding companies for supporting contributions, especially to Drupal core; Kalpana's discovery of Drupal; her contribution to the Drupal 8 web services initiative and Drupal's culture of sharing, and some of the benefits that are coming with Drupal 8.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/159-meet-drupal-core-contributor-mentor-kalpana-goel
"Like a lot of people, I did both sides of technology; working on paid, proprietary systems [and open source]. There is a big difference. I can't imagine myself going back to any proprietary system where I have to pay; I can't share the code I am doing with anyone; I have to ask a company about the right tool to use. I love the way that everybody contributes to the same piece of code, trying to make it the best ... and for free!"
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/158-drupal-philippines-own-your-own-code-more-luc-bezier
Part 2 of 2 – Kris Vanderwater (EclipseGc), Acquia’s Developer Evangelist, and I got together in a Google Hangout to catch up on our impressions of DrupalCon Amsterdam. We prepared a list of our top ten sessions from the Con for you to catch up with at home (technically nine sessions and one “other cool thing”). In our list, there’s a little something for most everyone, from coders, to themers, to site builders, to those of us who pitch sell Drupal to clients – but we would recommend all of these sessions to anyone involved in Drupal. See how the other side lives!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/157-drupalcon-amsterdam-top-ten-22-kris-vanderwater
Part 1 of 2 – Kris Vanderwater (EclipseGc), Acquia’s Developer Evangelist, and I got together in a Google Hangout to catch up on our impressions of DrupalCon Amsterdam. We prepared a list of our top ten sessions from the Con for you to catch up with at home (technically nine sessions and one “other cool thing”). In our list, there’s a little something for most everyone, from coders, to themers, to site builders, to those of us who pitch sell Drupal to clients – but we would recommend all of these sessions to anyone involved in Drupal. See how the other side lives!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/156-drupalcon-amsterdam-top-ten-12-kris-vanderwater
Apart from presenting a terrific session that will help you wrap your head around developing for Drupal 8, Fredric and I had a great conversation that covered the use of Drupal and open source in government, government decision-making versus corporate decision-making, designing Drupal 7 sites with Drupal 8 in mind, designing sites for the end users and where the maximum business value comes from in your organization, and more!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/155-30-awesome-drupal-8-api-functions-you-should-already-know-fredric-mitchell
DrupalCon Amsterdam was something of a family outing for me. My wife Francesca attended all week and my kids were able to come out Thursday evening to attend Trivia Night and the Friday sprints. My daughter Victoria had sewn a dress and a cape to appear as Drupal Girl on Thursday evening. Her weeks of work on that really paid off; she was a big hit. She also got to meet her Drupal idol, MortenDK, who was the inspiration for her brand new Drupal.org and Twitter username: Drupal_Princess. There's a great photo of her meeting Webchick floating around online, too.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/154-1st-drupalcon-1st-contribution-oliver-and-victoria-mcguire
"Why should I come to BADCamp?" you may be asking. Well, if you can get to San Francisco, one of the biggest and free-est tech events on the calendar awaits you: free training, free food and drink, free summits, free sessions, amazing keynotes (free), a party (entry fee ... probably zero), "fancy coffee", and opportunities galore all await you!
https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/153-come-badcamp-2014-biggest-and-baddest-tech-camp
Meet Ruth Fuller, she's here to help businesses get more out of Drupal by helping them engage more effectively with the Drupal community. She'd like to help you with effective Drupal and open source sponsorship, how to engage with the community, planning, coordination, presentation preparation, and public speaking coaching.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/152-drupal-community-engagement-businesses-ruth-fuller
Part 2 of a 2-part conversation with Angie Byron in front of the cameras at NYC Camp 2014, held at United Nations headquarters in New York. In this part of our conversation, we talk about improvements in the Drupal developer- and learning-experience thanks to the major changes under the hood in Drupal 8; the "PHP Renaissance"; and about being welcomed "back into the fold" of the greater PHP world thanks to the nature of Drupal 8 being a sort of "meta project" (my words) that includes parts of many others.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/151-drupal-8-dx-wins-php-renaissance-angie-byron-2014-22
Every modern framework nowadays provides a scaffolding tool code generator for speeding up the process of starting a new project and avoiding repetitive tasks. Now Drupal does, too! In this session you can build a module while following along with the live demo. You will learn how to take advantage of the Symfony Console Component to provide a CLI tool that automates the creation of Drupal 8 modules, automatically generating the module directory structure, controllers, forms, services, plugins, and required configuration files.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/150-introducing-drupal-8-console-jesus-manuel-olivas
Michael E. Meyers, VP Large Scale Drupal at Acquia, knows better than most how contributing to the open source project you are relying on to build or improve your business will pay off. He and his team did just that when they successfully built and sold NowPublic.com – the first venture capital funded, Drupal-based startup – while making massive contributions to the Drupal project along the way.
He and I invite you not only to use Drupal, but also to make it better and to get involved with its community. If you're only using it without giving back, you're not getting the full benefit it could be giving you. Come to DrupalCon Amsterdam or an event near you and make a difference!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/149-help-drupal-and-it-will-help-you-contribute-mike-meyers
This week: Meet Adam "phenaproxima" Hoenich! Learn what the Drupal Module Upgrader can do for you! And what you can do for it! Come to Webchick's BoF at DrupalCon Amsterdam! Contribute!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/148-help-adam-and-angie-build-drupal-module-upgrader
Part 1 of a 2-part conversation with Angie Byron in front of the cameras at NYC Camp 2014. In this part of our conversation we go over some of the inspiring and thought-provoking ideas we encountered there, and then jump to some of the benefits to users of the technical improvements built into Drupal 8.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/147-drupal-8-empowerment-angie-byron-2014-12
With DrupalCon Amsterdam and The Prenote right around the corner, it seemed like a good time to revisit this recording from when I had the tables turned on me at DrupalCon Portland and got interviewed by Ray Saltini from Blink Reaction. He asked me some great questions about Drupal, and especially why you should come to Drupal community events like DrupalCon. See you in Amsterdam!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/96-why-should-i-go-drupalcon-rebroadcast-benefits-being-there-person
Fixed! The version originally posted on August 5, 2014, got cut short by technical difficulties in production. Here are the complete audio and video versions of that conversation for you!
Drupal 8 theming layer co-maintainers Joël Pittet and Scott Reeves sat down with me at NYC Camp 2014 at United Nations Headquarters in New York City to talk about how Twig and the new theming layer in Drupal 8 empowers front- and back-end developers, convergence and contribution in PHP, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/146-drupal-8s-new-theming-layer-joel-pittet-and-scott-reeves
Michael Schmid, CTO of Amazee Labs, and I got the chance to talk in front of my camera during the Drupal Developer Days in Szeged, Hungary. As the technical lead of a successful and growing Drupal shop, I was keen to get his perspectives on how the technology of Drupal helps him do business and how Drupal 8 might help him and his clients even more than ever before.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/145-michael-schmid-drupal-8-means-better-business
Thomas Seidl and Nick Veenhof took a few minutes out of the Drupal 8 Search API code sprint at the Drupal DevDays in Szeged, Hungary to talk with me about the state-of-play and what's coming in terms of search in Drupal: one flexible, pluggable solution for search functionality with the whole community behind it.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/144-search-drupal-8-thomas-seidl-nick-veenhof
Bojan and I chatted at Drupal Dev Days 2014 about one of the newest and most important weapons available in Drupal's eCommerce arsenal: recurring billing for digital commerce in Drupal Commerce.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/143-drupal-digital-commerce-bojan-zivanovic
Brant Wynn, Acquia Solutions Architect, and I covered some interesting ground in our conversation preceding his jam's Drupal Camp session on selling Drupal to potential clients via beautiful, out-of-the-box demos. Listen to hear about working as a professional open source software developer, the potential wins from having migration tools built into Drupal 8, how Drupal 8 is bringing so many open source technologies and communities together, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/142-brant-wynn-acquia-demo-framework-how-we-pitch-drupal-potential-clients
Drupal is the perfect tool for building SaaS and product businesses. A late night hotel room conversation about Drupal's agility, power, and flexibility above and beyond powering great websites with Bálint Kléri during Drupal DevDays 2014 in Szeged, Hungary. Bálint is the technical lead of Indivizo, "The fastest way to the perfect candidate", an online HR tool built on Drupal for interviewing job applicants.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/141-indivizocom-using-drupal-build-your-agile-saas-product-business
Gábor and I sat down for a chat at United Nations headquarters at NYCCamp in April 2014. We talked about the very productive contribution sprints at the NYC Camp; effecting positive change in the world with technology and how Drupal 8 will enable anyone to communicate using tools in their own language; and the incredible energy and quantity of contributors at the Drupal DevDays in Szeged Hungary.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/140-gabor-hojtsy-22-devdays-szeged-and-new-wave-contribution-drupal
More than 800 (yes, eight hundred) people participated in the issues around improving multilingual features and APIs in Drupal 8 for the past two and a half years. Almost 500 issues have been resolved in this initiative as of this submission making Drupal 8 a truly outstanding release for everybody looking to create even single language non-English sites but especially those making multilingual sites. This session aims to show you around all the great improvements and give tips as to how to best utilize the new solutions.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/139-gabor-hojtsy-12-whole-new-world-multilingual-sites-drupal-8
The Executive Director of the Drupal Association, Holly Ross, and I sat down to talk at NYC Camp 2014 at United Nations Headquarters. Roughly one year on from her appointment to the Drupal Association job, I got the chance to ask her about her Drupal "origin story", what she thinks about the community now that she's in the thick of things (we're a welcoming and diverse bunch), and the role of technology and especially Drupal in making the world a better place.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/138-holly-ross-conversation-nyc-camp-2014
Every DrupalCon, there's a moment I especially look forward to: the First-Patch "ritual". This time around, a patch written by Matt Moen, Technical Director at Kilpatrick Design, was selected for fast-track testing, approval, and was committed to Drupal 8 core in front of a few hundred of us at the Austin convention center. In this podcast, I talk with Matt about becoming a core contributor; we hear from Angie "webchick" Byron about how it takes a village to commit a patch; and I've included a quick refresher on how version control works with the Gitty Pokey from the DrupalCon Austin pre-keynote. You can see the full patch approval and commit process in the 2nd video embedded on this page.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/137-first-patch-matt-moen-drupalcon-austin-and-village-contributors
Kris Vanderwater (eclipseGC), and I got together in a Google Hangout plagued with technical difficulties to discuss DrupalCon Austin and Kris's new job as Acquia's Developer Evangelist. In the sections I could save and keep reasonably useable after editing, we talk about Drupal 8 and the incredible energy present in the Drupal community recently; a couple of hot topics DrupalCon Austin; and Kris's new job as "a developer for the community".
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/136-kris-vanderwater-drupalcon-austin-and-his-new-job
In a massive Cathy Theys double-header this week, hear parts rescued from our conversation at SyfonyCon Warsaw, which was plagued by technical difficulties and check out Cathy's insightful session, 'Patch Reviews: Get good reviews, give good reviews. Faster.' It is full of practical advice to take your contribution to Drupal and open source software to the next level. In the podcast interview, we talk about the opportunities Drupal has given Cathy; some of the benefits of the refactoring that has gone into Drupal 8; joining up with the Symfony community: mutual learning, different styles of contribution, Drupal's new relevance; and the business case for open source contribution and sustainability.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/135-cathy-theys-double-header
I got the chance a while back to speak with Amitai Burstein, CTO of Gizra - a boutique development shop in Tel Aviv creating advanced web applications using Drupal, along with Node.js, Jekyll and other technologies. Amitai is the maintainer of key Drupal modules such as Organic Groups, Message and Entity Reference, and contributes to Drupal core. He showed off Gizra's intriguing solution to content deployment in Drupal in this jam's Drupal Camp session: Zariz. I was impressed! You might be, too.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/134-amitai-burstein-zariz-continuous-deployment-content
In the podcast, Marek and I talk a little about his history in Drupal and technology and I introduce the idea of jam's (virtual) Drupal Camp. In his presentation, Marek Sotak, founder of Inline Manual and longtime Drupal developer, talks about giving your clients and site visitors the help they need without sacrificing all your productive time in the very first session of jam's Drupal Camp! "What's this jam's Drupal Camp all about?" I hear you ask? Read this kickoff announcement and call for sessions!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/133-marek-sotak-get-phone-helping-users-through-better-ux-and-tools
During the 2014 Drupal Devs Days in Szeged Hungary, Bram Goffings (aka aspilicious) and I had a chat about his experience upgrading Display Suite early on and maintaining it during the ongoing Drupal 8 development cycle. He says it was a great learning experience and that it is time for everyone else to start their upgrades in preparation for the Drupal 8 beta release.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/132-upgrade-your-modules-drupal-8-now-bram-goffings
Part 3 of 3: Paul Wander, co-founder and VP Sales and Marketing at the UK PHP service provider Inviqa – the co-parent company of SensioLabs UK – was kind enough to give me an hour of his time recently to talk about some interests we have in common. In this podcast, we talk about several aspects of Drupal 8 and SensioLabs UK's experiences as early adopters and contributors to Drupal 8, some ways Drupal 8 will help developers and businesses alike, and Drupal in the UK public sector.
In part 1, we talked about when Paul discovered open source software, Inviqa and SensioLabs UK's history, Symfony and open source software in the enterprise.
In part 2, we went over the gap between human beings and machines, behavior driven development, the Gherkin syntax, and how good communication and BDD can help drive business value for clients.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/131-meet-paul-wander-33-drupal-8-and-business-opportunities
Part 2 of 3: Paul Wander, co-founder and VP Sales and Marketing at the UK PHP service provider Inviqa – the co-parent company of SensioLabs UK – was kind enough to give me an hour of his time recently to talk about some interests we have in common. In this podcast, we cover the gap between human beings and machines, behavior driven development, the Gherkin syntax, and how good communication and BDD can help drive business value for clients.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/130-meet-paul-wander-23-how-sensiolabs-uk-drives-value-bdd
Part 1 of 3: Paul Wander, co-founder and VP Sales and Marketing at the UK PHP service provider Inviqa – the co-parent company of SensioLabs UK – was kind enough to give me an hour of his time recently to talk about some interests we have in common. In this podcast, we talk about when Paul discovered open source software, Inviqa and SensioLabs UK's history, Symfony and open source software in the enterprise. In parts 2 and 3, we cover Symfony2, Drupal 8, behavior driven development, open source in the public sector, and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/129-meet-paul-wander-13-php-and-open-source-enterprise
Part 2 of 2 - I spoke with Richard Miller and Tom Kitchin, software engineers at SensioLabs UK and its parent company Inviqa respectively, via a Google Hangout on Air recently. Here, I learn the inside story on one of the first Drupal 8 sites online, www.sensiolabs.co.uk, what their goals were, how they built it and have kept it running since May 2013, and how Drupal 8 will change the way they design applications for clients going forward.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/128-lessons-and-chances-drupal-8-early-adoption-sensiolabs-uk-22
Part 1 of 2 - I spoke with Richard Miller and Tom Kitchin, software engineers at SensioLabs UK and its parent company Inviqa respectively, via a Google Hangout on Air recently. I wanted to learn more about PHP and Symfony from their perspective and how they think the Drupal 8 and Symfony2 are going to affect each other. In part 2, I learn the inside story on one of the first Drupal 8 sites online, www.sensiolabs.co.uk, what their goals were and how they built it and have kept it running since May 2013, and how Drupal 8 will change the way they design applications for clients going forward.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/127-what-open-source-all-about-drupal-8-symfony-sensiolabs-uk-12
The DrupalSouth code sprint was a huge success and a standout feature of an already excellent conference. I put this down to some ingenuity and some great preparation. I interrupted two of the people who made it all happen, Dan "dman" Morrison and Heike "HeikeT" Theis from Wellington, New Zealand, to get to know them better and talk about how they put together the code sprint at DrupalSouth.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/126-getting-most-out-code-sprint-drupalsouth-shows-us-how
At SymfonyCon Warsaw in December 2013, I spoke with Fabrice Bernhard, co-founder of Symfony service provider Theodo and President of the French PHP Users' Association, AFUP ("Association française des utilisateurs de PHP"), and we compared notes on Drupal, Symfony, and all things open source.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/125-fabrice-bernhard-symfony2-and-drupal-working-together-working-better
Part 2 of 2 - I had the great pleasure of speaking with Lukas Smith at SymfonyCon Warsaw in December, 2013. Lukas is a major contributor to open source and is involved in a range of projects, including the Symfony framework, Drupal, and many more. He is one of the 50 most active contributors on GitHub. Thank you, Lukas!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/124-lukas-smith-22-how-drupal-and-symfony-mutually-benefit-cooperating
Part 1 of 2 - I had the great pleasure of speaking with Lukas Smith at SymfonyCon Warsaw in December, 2013. Lukas is a major contributor to open source, touching a range of projects, including the Symfony framework, Drupal, and much more. He is one of the 50 most active contributors on GitHub. Thank you, Lukas!
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/123-meet-lukas-smith-12-open-source-communication-phpcr-and-more
Ryan Weaver is the single biggest contributor to the Symfony2 framework's documentation (which is excellent, check it out!), a self-described Symfony evangelist, and lead at KnpUniversity.com, makers of fantastic PHP tutorial screencasts like this one on using Composer to include PHP libraries in Drupal 7.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/122-ryan-weaver-and-jeffrey-mcguire-compare-notes-open-source-22
Part 1 of a 2-part conversation with Ryan Weaver from SymfonyCon Warsaw 2013 in which we touch on the great Symfony documentation and its team, discovering the power of community in open source (instead of doing it all yourself), Symfony2 components in Drupal 8 bringing the two communities together, the advantages (present and future) of loose coupling in Drupal 8's architecture, the next big thing, and more!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/121-meet-ryan-weaver-synergies-drupal-symfony2-and-php-12
This week's podcast is parts of a fun conversation I had with Ruben Teijeiro at Drupal Camp Vienna in December 2013. I "borrowed" him from mentoring Manuela Hutter at the code sprint to talk with me, but in the end, they both still managed to get a lot done that weekend. Thanks for your contributions, folks!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/120-ruben-teijeiro-explains-why-drupal-easy
I spoke with Slovenian Drupalist-extraordinary Janez Urevc at Drupal Camp Vienna 2013. Alongside being a Drupal developer at examiner.com, he is also a major force in everything media+Drupal. Janez is slashrsm on Drupal.org, Twitter and "all the other online services you can imagine." He's on the team planning Drupal Camp Alpe-Adria 2014, which will be in the beautiful Slovenian resort town of Portoroz in May. Knowing the wonderful Drupal community in Slovenia (and the region around it) and the fantastic location, I highly recommend this camp!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/119-janez-urevc-media-drupal-8
Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 3 - Today we wrap up this mini series with Larry Garfield, Kris Vanderwater, and me answering the question "Do I need to learn Symfony to develop for Drupal 8?", getting the lowdown on plugins, and doing a wrap-up on the important points from our whole, 3-part conversation.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/118-drupal-8-wins-avoiding-dead-hook-blues-33
Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 2 - In today's conversation, Larry Garfield, Kris Vanderwater, and I go over the Go PHP 5 project as the first seeds of cooperation between different PHP projects, how the Symfony2 framework became part of Drupal 8, why we aren't building Drupal 8 on Symfony full-stack, CMI, abstraction in Drupal, and the future of Features in Drupal 8.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/117-drupal-8-wins-avoiding-dead-hook-blues-23
Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 1 - In August 2013, I spoke with Larry Garfield and Kris Vanderwater in a 90+ minute live Hangout on Air about the origins, details, and implications of the big architectural changes coming in Drupal 8. Today's video and audio podcasts are the first set of "curated" excerpts from that long conversation. We cover Larry and Kris's Drupal backgrounds, early Drupal memories, compare Drupal 4 to Drupal 7 and 8, some pragmatic reasons to choose Drupal, and how to get your head around the Symfony2 framework.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/116-drupal-8-wins-avoiding-dead-hook-blues-13
I met Anthony, aka @ircmaxell, for the first time at the PHP BeNeLux conference in early 2013. He was among the first people I spoke with on mic about PHP. Our conversation about PHP being secure was one of the seeds that grew into the "Power of PHP" series on Acquia.com, though you'll notice we were still calling it "PHP Myths" at the time. The series will be continuing in 2014, stay tuned to the Acquia podcast and the Acquia blog for more!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/69-2013-greatest-hits-php-secure-any-other-major-language-rebroadcast
Angie and I were at Acquia headquarters in Massachusetts at the same time in the spring of 2013. This gave us the chance to sit down and chat in front of the camera about all things Drupal. Highlights from our conversation became two podcasts with accompanying video. In this part of the conversation, Angie talks about how she got into Drupal and more.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/80-2013-greatest-hits-meet-angie-byron-now-i-break-other-peoples-modules-rebroadcast
One of my favorite Drupal moments in 2013 was meeting Gaelan Steele in person at DrupalCon Portland. This was eclipsed very quickly by being present when Gaelan and Dries met for the first time - and having my podcast microphone on! This was probably also eclipsed by Gaelan schooling Dries on how he learned to use Drupal ... see his answer below and in the podcast.
Thank you for contributing! I think this is some kind of proof of the appeal of the Drupal project and welcoming nature of our community: Manuela Hutter came to Drupal Camp Vienna – her first Drupal Community event – and was already working on a patch at the sprints on day three, mentored by the inimitable Ruben Teijeiro.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/115-first-camp-first-patch-thank-you-manuela-hutter
I got the chance to catch up with Alan Burke at DrupalCon Prague. He and I go back a long way; we met at one of the first Drupal events I ever attended, DrupalCon Brussels in 2006. In the meantime Alan and his co-founder Stella Power have built up the successful Drupal agency Annertech in Ireland and they have an impressive list of contributions to Drupal to their names. Here, we speak about Drupal's technical history over the last 8 years and the exciting improvements coming in Drupal 8, the business climate for Drupal in recession-plagued Ireland, and the Drupal community's culture of teaching, learning, and sharing.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/114-drupal-history-learning-business-d8-meet-alan-burke
Dan Callahan is part of the Identity Team at Mozilla who are trying to solve some of the problems of privacy and security on the Internet that have been hitting the headlines recently. Dan works on the Mozilla Persona project, a system to both replace passwords with verified identities and put that verification under user control, rather than the control of large corporate entities.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/113-meet-dan-callahan-mozilla-persona
Part 2 - In this podcast, Yves Chedemois, aka yched, and I cover some changes to Drupal 8 core – CMI, the plugin system, and how they (and object oriented code) benefit developers.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/112-meet-yves-chedemois-22-drupal-8-cmi-plugins-oo
In part one of my conversation with Yves Chedemois, we talk about his time working on Drupal, being part of the Drupal community (and the "Hey!" moment), Drupal development sustainability, and how the Drupal community stepped up to help him when he needed it recently.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/111-meet-yves-chedemois-11-drupal-community-funding
Part 2: I spoke with the Top Shelf Modules team – Susan Rust, Ryan Cross, Rik de Boer, and Karl Scheirer – on November 4, 2013. In part two, we go into more depth about TSM's mission and discuss the sustainability (or otherwise) of Drupal's volunteer-based development model and the various efforts and experiments underway to change, improve, or "fix" it, some more pragmatic – like TSM and drupalfund.us, some more idealistic, like Gittip sponsorships and similar.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/110-meet-top-shelf-modules-22-volunteering-sustainability-dries-day
Part 1: I spoke with the Top Shelf Modules team – Susan Rust, Ryan Cross, Rik de Boer, and Karl Scheirer – on November 4, 2013. In part one, we go over the concept behind TSM, the quality and challenges in the Drupal contrib. module space, Drupal 8 and why it is time to upgrade your modules now (!). In part two, we go into more depth about TSM's mission and discuss the sustainability (or otherwise) of Drupal's volunteer-based development model and the various efforts and experiments underway to change, improve, or "fix" it.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/109-meet-top-shelf-modules-12-drupal-contributed-module-quality
In this podcast, I have a chat about Drupal with Josh Waihi, Enterprise Architect for Catalyst IT, and also find out why you should attend Drupal South in Wellington, New Zealand in February 2014 if you possibly can (Submit your session proposals now!)
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/108-come-drupal-south-2014-meet-josh-waihi
I spoke with Thijs Feryn, Technical Evangelist at Combell, at the Portland Convention Center while DrupalCon and Symfony Live were both happening there in May 2013. This conversation gives some background and context to Thijs's Acquia.com guest blog post, "Why PHP is for Real".
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/107-why-php-real-meet-thijs-feryn
Part 4 of 4 – On October 4/5, 2013 (depending on your time zone), I hosted a live Hangout on Air with three major Drupal core contributors: Lee Rowlands (larowlan), Tim Plunket (tim.plunkett / @timplunkett), and Daniel Wehner (dawehner / @da_wehner). We talked about what's going on in Drupal 8 and how you will benefit from all the new stuff. This post is the last of four that cover the details of that conversation.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/106-drupal-8-wont-kill-your-kittens-44-module-upgrades-and-more
iKOS is a digital agency specialising in eCommerce and Drupal. I caught up with Myles Davidson, Managing Director and Richard Jones, Technical Director, at DrupalCon Prague where they had been busy getting up to speed on developments in Drupal 8.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/105-give-receive-drupal-and-digital-agency-meet-ikos
Part 3 of 4 – On October 4/5, 2013 (depending on your time zone), I hosted a live Hangout on Air with three major Drupal core contributors: Lee Rowlands (larowlan), Tim Plunket (tim.plunkett / @timplunkett), and Daniel Wehner (dawehner / @da_wehner). We talked about what's going on in Drupal 8 and how you will benefit from all the new stuff. This post is the third of four that cover the details of that conversation.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/104-drupal-8-wont-kill-your-kittens-34-why-fear
Part 2 of 4 of the "Drupal 8 won't kill your kittens" live Hangout on Air with Lee Rowlands, Tim Plunkett, and Daniel Wehner. Here, we discuss the incredible improvements that have gone into Drupal 8's entity and plugin systems and how you will benefit from these as a developer.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/103-d8-wont-kill-your-kittens-24-drupal-8-wins-unified-entities-n-plugins
On October 4/5, 2013 (depending on your time zone), I hosted a live Hangout on Air with three major Drupal core contributors: Lee Rowlands (larowlan), Tim Plunket (tim.plunkett / @timplunkett), and Daniel Wehner (dawehner / @da_wehner). We talked about what's going on in Drupal 8 and how you will benefit from all the new stuff. This post is the first of four that cover the details of that conversation.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/102-drupal-8-wont-kill-your-kittens-14
Inside Acquia, the Client Advisory Team is something special. These are the people who are on the front lines of helping others succeed with Drupal 24 hours a day. They go way out of their way for anyone who needs help and for other members of the team. In July, I spoke with five Acquia Client Advisors about their work and their team.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/101-supporta-meet-acquia-client-advisory-team
While the Acquia Podcast is busy at DrupalCon Prague, here's a flashback to DrupalCon Portland. I went around the exhibitors' area and through the halls of the Oregon Convention Center asking two vital questions to our community: What is your favorite thing about Drupal? Why should other people come to DrupalCon?
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/87-best-things-about-drupal-drupalcon-portland-rebroadcast
I spoke with two members of the Bay Area Drupal Camp (BADCamp) 2013 organising team, Anne Stefanyk and David Hwang.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/100-low-cost-high-value-come-badcamp
I ran into PHP consultant, Lorna Jane Mitchell at DrupalCon/Symfony Live Portland this May. She and I had a great talk about PHP for building secure, modular, high availability applications in the enterprise; where newer versions of PHP (5.3, 5.4, 5.5 ...) are headed; and the business value inherent in open source software. This conversation was the seed for Lorna's Acquia.com guest blog post, "The Future of PHP is ... Here Already", which compliments this podcast perfectly!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/99-php-taking-care-business-meet-lorna-jane-mitchell
I spoke with Kevin Miller, lead web developer at Cal State Monterey Bay. He's been working with Drupal for more than six years and is making great contributions, especially in the area of accessibility.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/98-accessibility-testing-tools-and-quail-meet-kevin-miller
I recently spoke with the Managing Director of Deeson Online, Tim Deeson about how choosing and using Drupal has given his agency the tools it needs to provide great, large scale digital experiences for large, multinational organizations.
The sound quality is not the best at some points during this recording. I am still figuring out how best to produce these "video podcasts"; apologies in advance. The things that Tim has to say are very much worth your while, nonetheless! I've included extensive excerpts in the notes below, too.
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/97-drupal-digital-agency-meet-tim-deeson
I had the tables turned on me at DrupalCon Portland and got interviewed by Ray Saltini from Blink Reaction. He asked me some great questions about Drupal, and especially why you should come to Drupal community events like DrupalCon.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/96-why-should-i-go-drupalcon-benefits-being-there-person
Acquia Cloud Engineer, Tim Hilliard, and I sat down at Acquia headquarters this spring to talk about ... what else? Drupal and helping people succeed with it.
I find Tim's job interesting. He is part of the client advisory team at Acquia, but isn't specialized in front-line client support. He describes his role as part of the onboarding team for the Acquia Cloud platform, as "support enablement," ... "Enabling Support to do a really stellar job is one of the things that I really love and I focus on."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/95-support-enablement-through-automation-meet-tim-hilliard
Kevin Hankens, Acquia Engineer, discovered Drupal 5 when he was looking to build a highly personalized eCommerce visitor experience for his then-employer's website. I was fascinated to hear an origin story of the very beginnings of the sorts of digital experiences everyone is talking about today* (see below), 6 years later.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/94-drupal-digital-experiences-and-best-module-ever-meet-kevin-hankens
In our first "video podcast", I recently spoke with prominent PHP developer Michelangelo van Dam (aka @DragonBe) about PHP, its history, current trends toward convergence and compatibility, use in the enterprise, and where Drupal fits in the picture. This conversation is a follow-up to Michelangelo's guest blogpost on Acquia.com: "The power of PHP: The Swiss Army Knife of Digital".
Read the full post and see the conversation video at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/93-power-php-meet-michelangelo-van-dam
Jeff Beeman, Acquia Professional Services consultant, talks about how far Drupal has come in the last 8 years, what it's like to be on a team of people specialised in joining other teams, and the satisfaction of making Drupal really sing when it counts.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/92-meet-jeff-beeman-embedded-drupal-consultant
This is the second part of a two-part conversation with Acquia's Chief Marketing Officer Tom Wentworth. In it we discuss Tom's understanding of data-driven marketing, the rise of the "Chief Digital Officer", and choosing a future friendly digital platform for your business.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/digital-marketing-embrace-change-or-play-russian-roulette
Acquia's Chief Marketing Officer Tom Wentworth is a great fit for a technology company. He has a computer science background and has been working with web content management since it was a concept. Tom wasn't interested in marketing until a few years ago, "What really got me excited about Marketing was seeing the intersection of marketing and technology, because technology is where my passion is."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/you-can-bet-your-career-and-company-open-source-meet-tom-wentworth
In this interview from the Oregon Convention Center, where both DrupalCon and Symfony Live were taking place, Juozas "people call me Joe" Kaziukėnas talks about PHP's unique combination of ease of implementation, speed, and scalability.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/89-running-ecommerce-big-data-php
Balazs Dianiska, Acquia Professional Services Consultant, has a lot of insight about the needs of enterprise businesses. Whenever he can, he shares that insight with the Drupal community at events and meet-ups.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/88-meet-balazs-dianiska-honorable-module-and-drupal-enterprise
It's the DrupalCon Portland Floor Show! I went around the exhibitors' area and through the halls of the Oregon Convention Center asking two vital questions to our community: What is your favorite thing about Drupal? Why should other people come to DrupalCon?
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/87-voices-floor-drupalcon-portland
Short, but sweet this week in the Acquia podcast: Drupal 8 Accessibility Maintainer Mike Gifford, and accessibility contributor Vincenzo Rubano talk about DrupalCon Portland and say thanks for all the help that allowed Vincenzo to attend DrupalCon Portland and begin to make a difference in person.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/86-vincenzo-rubano-follow-impressions-drupalcon-and-thank-yous
Gaelan Steele was the youngest delegate at DrupalCon Portland. Since I had had the pleasure of meeting him and his father Douglas Urner while leading the Drupal Association scholarship committee earlier this year, I really wanted to meet this extraordinary 5th-grader in person. Dries himself showed up while we were talking and asked Gaelan how he uses and contributes to Drupal. The result of the interview hijack is really worth checking out!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/85-gaelan-steele-meets-dries-perspectives-drupal
Here is one more conversation I had at Drupal Camp Alpe-Adria in April, 2013. Ranko Marinic is from Croatia and has some great perspectives. He works as an IT consultant with a wide range of technologies and with Drupal "by night". He is studying economics and has become interested in the economic effects on local communities of implementing open source software. Ranko also talks about the moment he really started believing in open source as a social movement.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/84-open-source-and-local-economies-meet-ranko-marinic
Here are the highlights from a few of the conversations I had with attendees of the 2013 Drupal Camp Alpe-Adria, held in April in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The camp was a wild success and attracted a large, international crowd. I'll post a couple more interviews I did at this event in coming weeks.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/83-voices-drupal-camp-alpe-adria-2013
This week's podcast features two Drupal Scots: Duncan Davidson (recorded live in a back alley right after Drupal Camp Scotland 2013) and Brian Ward (recorded via Skype, post-event). Duncan is the Scottish regional manager and UK Professional Services Manager for i-KOS and Brian is a developer at heehaw.digital in Edinburgh.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/82-drupal-camp-scotland-2013-double-header
Shannon Vettes is the Partner Manager at Commerce Guys in Paris; the company leading the way in making Drupal the platform of choice for eCommerce. Among other things, she has the rewarding job of coordinating adding modules and services to the Commerce Marketplace and getting integrators involved in the platform, too.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/81-project-management-fortune-teller-must-die-meet-shannon-vettes
In this episode – "Meet Angie Byron, Part 2: The Return of the Webchick" – we cover how Angie got into the Drupal project, how to hide under blankets, and how to break other people's modules.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/80-now-i-break-other-peoples-modules-meet-angie-byron-22
I recently sat down at Acquia HQ with my friend and colleague, Angela "webchick" Byron. She is a Drupal core co-maintainer, book author, Drupal Association board member, public speaker, equality advocate, and all-around powerhouse contributor. Angie works with Drupal Lead, Dries Buyteart, in the Acquia Office of the CTO (OCTO): "My job is to make Drupal awesome. We figure out together what's the biggest thing holding Drupal back right now, and whatever it is, we just tackle it."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/79-my-job-make-drupal-awesome-meet-angie-byron-12
If you can, I would like you to make a donation to this IndieGoGo campaign to help Vincenzo Rubano DrupalCon Portland. What's this all about? Read on.
Lately, some people on the web have been making arguments like "It doesn't matter if a CMS is open source or proprietary. It's about features and service. I promise my (proprietary, license-fee charging) CMS will do what you need. Nobody cares about the rest." I call BS.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/78-accessibility-there-usability-meet-vincenzo-rubano
Matt Edmunds, UX Interaction Designer at Acquia, talks about his 9+ years of working with Drupal ... since version 4.3! This gave us the chance to reminisce about the days when we felt we could keep an eye on roughly the whole project on any given day or week. This was probably not truly the case back then and it certainly isn't now.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/77-drupal-ux-and-design-ninja-matt-edmunds
Kyle Browning, the Director of Mobile WorkHabit, talks about developing for Drupal as a mobile platform and the open-sourcing of the new Drupal Create app for iOS.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/76-kyle-browning-open-sourced-drupal-create-ios-app
Erica Ligeski, Acquia U graduate, now full-time Marketing Engineer on the Acquia.com website is another of the many Drupalists with a non-technical background. Her path took her from performance and dance, to arts management, to total geekery! Just like me, at some point along the way she needed a website for an arts project and fell in love with Drupal. The rest is history.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/75-meet-erica-ligeski-drupal-training-means-jobs
New shows, new gear - The Acquia podcast crew has been hanging out at HQ in Burlington, Massachusetts this week recording a bunch of new material. The newest member of our team is the appropriately named Deadkitten wind protector by Røde microphones. I can't think of a better one for Drupal podcasts!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/74-what-drupal-4-answers-and-more-come
I also thought of calling this episode of our Four Freedoms podcast series "The interesting journey of a company producing proprietary software being involved in an open source project," ... not so catchy. Or maybe "Why business and openness do not have to be enemies." The point is that on February 12, 2013, Opera Software announced that it was dropping its own, proprietary rendering engine in favour of the open source WebKit engine. I wanted to know more about that decision and the consequences going forward. What I discovered is a company with a commitment to open standards, knowledge sharing, liberal licensing, and a long-term history of actions to back those claims up.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/73-opera-proprietary-software-company-doing-open-source-right
Robert Douglass, Director of Products at Commerce Guys, the originators and maintainers of Drupal Commerce sat down with me this week. We talked about how content, community, and commerce relate and help each other and why Drupal is the best platform to provide you with the digital elements of your users' experience of your online presence. Commerce Guys, in partnership with Acquia also has the support mechanisms that you need to succeed with Drupal and Commerce: from architecting your site, to training your developers, to the ongoing enterprise support that you would need for a serious store in the long term.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/72-robert-douglass-talks-content-community-and-commerce-drupal
Heather James, Acquia's Manager of Learning Services, has been in and around Drupal since the version 4 days. She says people new to Drupal "have an easier time at this stage coming to Drupal" than they did 6 years ago. Nonetheless, her early experiences learning how to use Drupal are still reflected by the questions people ask learning Drupal today. This, combined with her excitement about Drupal's potential and her background as an educator, motivated her to become a Drupal trainer. She is passionate about education ("When you're teaching, you're building a bridge from what people know to what they don't know.") and says about her job at Acquia, "I feel like I have a patron who helps me do the things I like to do, which is get out there and teach people."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/71-meet-heather-james-building-bridges-drupal-through-training
Mark Sonnabaum, performance engineer at Acquia, comes to open source on a straighter path than some ... despite his university degree being in music composition! He was a systems administrator at the University of North Texas and chose Drupal – in the Drupal 4 era – as the replacement for a mish-mash of legacy, static systems at the university. Today, he is a contributor who has made significant improvements to how Drupal performs for all of us.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/70-meet-mark-sonnabaum-musician-sysadmin-performance-fanatic
This is part three of a conversation I had with Anthony Ferrara – PHP core contributor, security expert, and Senior Architect at NBCUniversal – at the PHP BeNeLux '13 conference. In part one of our conversation, we talked about open source as an ethos and how it affects business. In part two, we talk about what the Four Freedoms mean to us as IT and web professionals, and the growing impact and influence of open source software.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/69-php-secure-it-if-you-do-it-right-anthony-ferrara
PHP core contributor, security expert, and Senior Architect at NBCUniversal, Anthony Ferrara and I sat down to talk at the PHP BeNeLux '13 conference. In part one of our conversation, we talked about open source as an ethos and how it affects business. In this part, we talk about what the Four Freedoms mean to us as IT and web professionals, but also the growing impact of open source software outside the world of software development.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/68-trickle-down-ripple-out-4-freedoms-anthony-ferrara
I met PHP core contributor and security expert Anthony Ferrara at the PHP BeNeLux '13 conference. He is a Senior Architect at NBCUniversal on a team that works a lot with Drupal. In this first part of a three-part interview, we sat down to talk about open source as an ethos and how it affects business. In the next two parts of our conversation, we talked about the consequences and practice of the Four Freedoms that define open source software, and the security of PHP as a programming language.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/67-meet-anthony-ferrara-only-people-who-win-are-everybody
Moshe Weizman is Acquia's Director of Research and Development in the Office of the CTO. Over the years, he's built many of the development tools that have been instrumental in Drupal's growth and success. Now, alongside his ongoing contributions to Drupal itself, he works with Acquia's product teams from conception, through architecture and prototyping, to helping coordinate ongoing development.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/66-meet-moshe-weitzman-developer-tools-product-development-drupal-history
Erik Webb – aka "Southern Gentleman" within his team – Senior Technical Consultant with Acquia's Professional Services group helps some of the "biggest Drupal users" in his job. In any given week, he might be doing anything from training people brand new to Drupal, to performance tuning and everything in between to make projects succeed. "I helped a Fortune 100 company move their entire web presence to Drupal." At this scale, Erik's job is about how to take Drupal to that next level and making it something that works for millions of people," day in and day out. "The Drupal community is really about trying to make an experience and make something that people want to come back to."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/65-meet-erik-webb-southern-gentleman-helping-drupal-projects-succeed
Andrew Melck, Solutions Architect on the Pre-Sales Team in Acquia Europe is the subject of the first Acquia podcast of 2013.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/64-meet-andrew-melck-drupal-means-best-breed-solutions
Chris Pliakas is a solutions architect at Acquia. He works closely with the Acquia sales representatives and potential clients "to help people who might not know about Drupal or might be considering a proprietary solution see how Drupal can help them. It's really great to be out on the front lines helping people to see Drupal the way we do."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/63-meet-chris-pliakas-open-software-and-open-data-make-better-decisions
Michael Hofmockel is a technical consultant at Acquia, based in Ames Iowa. Like many Drupalists, Michael's background wasn't in computer science, but led him to Drupal nonetheless. As he puts it, "Drupal's great because you can come at it from almost any angle ... and we do!" Michael was building databases as a soil chemist at Duke University. When he needed a web interface for a database, "I decided not to build it for myself, tried Drupal and I never needed anything else again!"
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/62-meet-michael-hofmockel-getting-speed-drupal
Sam Lerner is an Acquia Client Advisor with something of a specialty in search technologies; he is the co-maintainer of the Google Search Appliance and Apache Solr Drupal projects. His job is to use his own knowledge and take advantage of Acquia's "deep bench" in all things Drupal to help clients make their websites successful. He calls working at Acquia "fuel injected knowledge".
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-sam-lerner-acquia-fuel-injected-knowledge
Hernâni Borges de Freitas, a Technical Consultant at Acquia, specialises in "Doing lots of things with Drupal at scale: training and helping people go the right direction in Drupal. Acquia is bringing Drupal to different markets and perspectives, to big companies who want to use it to achieve better results. We make sure they go in the right direction. When they choose Drupal, we help make sure they choose the right solution, adapted to their needs, and that can grow with their business, instead of some closed solution that dies after a while."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: :https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-hernani-borges-de-freitas-drupal-scale
As Senior Director of Solutions Architecture at Acquia, Christian Yates makes sure that Drupal is able to compete head-to-head with any and all competing technologies. He translates organizations' business needs into a vision of how Drupal can solve the large-scale, complex problems that large organizations face. Since showing and doing is always better than saying, he also builds proofs-of-concept in working code to help get them on board with Drupal.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: :https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-christian-yates-heres-how-drupal-can-do
Kent Gale, Senior Director of the Client Advisory Team is on the front lines of keeping Acquia's clients happy and productive: "Every day is a pretty intensive exercise in making customers successful ... one way or the other ... either helping them develop, or deploy or maintain and manage their site."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-kent-gale-making-drupal-successes
Kenny Silanskas, Acquia's Tier 1 Team Manager, has a passion for getting Drupal right that rubs off on his team – Acquia's crew of frontline Client Advisers. They are in the happy position of being able to train client-developers in best practices, choosing and using the right Drupal modules, how to use the open source process, and more. Kenny says, "The Support Department gives Drupal sites the TLC they need." All of this results in happier and more successful Drupal users and a healthier Drupal project.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-kenny-silanskas-fire-drupal
In 2004, Peter Wolanin, then a full-time scientist, discovered Drupal while volunteering on a political campaign and building its website. As he puts it, the road to becoming a full-time software engineer at Acquia started when he discovered that "pretty soon, I got more interested in fixing the bugs than building the site ... "The satisfaction of fixing things sort of drew me in."
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-peter-wolanin-we-are-changing-world
As a result of Randy Fay's blog posts and Drupalcon Denver core conversation on Drupal governance (see show notes for links), Dries Buytaert convened a working group to define the first steps in the refinement of Drupal governance. In this episode, I sit down with the working group members to talk about what they have been working on, what they have accomplished, and what the next steps are in defining what governance in the Drupal community should look like.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/improving-drupal-governance
Michael Cooper, Engineering Director for the Acquia Network ("If it's broken, it's probably my fault."), brought a vision with him when he came to Acquia: a tool to manage, optimize, and secure large numbers of Drupal websites easily. This has turned into one of the Acquia Network's crown jewels, Insight, which monitors hundreds of metrics on live Drupal sites and offers not only alerts for more than 170 kinds of potential problems, it also proactively suggests ways you can improve your site' performance, SEO optimization, and more.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-michael-cooper-insight-improving-drupal-performance-and-security
Katelyn Fogarty, Manager of Online Marketing at Acquia, is a great example of the kind of Acquian who brings a variety of skills and experience to the table – in her case Drupal development and configuration, online marketing, and management – and combines them to perform a unique function uniquely well at Acquia.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-katelyn-fogarty-i-speak-marketing-and-engineer
Alex Bronstein talks at DrupalCon Denver about how his job in the Acquia OCTO (Office of the CTO) lets him make a difference to the development and ongoing improvement of Drupal 8.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-alex-bronstein-open-source-mind-shift
The Finnish national broadcasting company, YLE, must be one of the earliest institutional adopters of Drupal. They go all the way back to 2004 and Drupal 4.3! At the time, the YLE wanted community websites and commissioned Carl-Magnus Dumell, through the IT company he was working for at the time, to find a PHP-based product to launch their social web presence.
Bonus in this episode: the Organic Groups origin story!
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-yle-drupal-finnish-national-broadcaster
Before Drupal, Chris Strahl had a successful career running his own company, doing multi-million dollar implementations with proprietary software, but he always had a private fascination with open source. Finding himself unwilling to sell an "antiquated, technically unsound, incredibly expensive" SAP eCommerce product to his clients, he and his colleagues developed and sold a Drupal-based platform solution.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/peddling-lsd-meet-chris-strahl-and-large-scale-drupal-project
Ezra Barnett Gildesgame is the Technical Lead of Acquia's Distribution Team. He is in charge of maintaining and developing Acquia's two distributions, COD (Conference Organizing Distribution) and Commons, the social business and collaboration distro. His work goes into maintaining and improving these two Drupal products. The direct improvements made to the code go back to the repositories on Drupal.org, of course, but Ezra's work also helps the Drupal product landscape by helping other people working on other distributions.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/making-drupal-products-meet-ezra-gildesgame
Closing the Drupal talent gap 2 ... with Addison Berry, Director of Education at Lullabot. Addison is also the Product Manager of Drupalize.me, a video training portal that offers training resources for helping folks improve their Drupal. Some companies are using these resources to hire junior developers and help them get up to speed faster and more efficiently. A theme Erich Ludwig also addressed in Acquia Podcast 46.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/closing-drupal-talent-gap-2-meet-addison-berry
In this podcast, I talk with Peter Wolanin and Thomas Seidl, the primary maintainers of the two primary suites of modules for Solr search: Apache Solr Search Integration and Search API modules. We discuss the history of the modules, their different approaches, and recent enhancements that make them more powerful than ever.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/apache-solr-drupal-nuts-and-bolts
Erich Ludwig, Acquia's Director of Learning Services talks about his road to Acquia and Drupal, community building and the importance of hiring and training new Drupalists.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-erich-ludwig-closing-drupal-talent-gap
At the European Drupal Business Days 2012 in Vienna, I spoke with Josef Dabernig (dasjo), Nico Grienauer (grienauer), Christian Ziegler (criz), and Wolfgang Ziegler (fago). These good people are part of the team running the Drupal Austria Road Show, a promotional tour for Drupal conceived and run by the Austrian Drupal community. They've got some great and inspiring ideas that we can all learn from for promoting Drupal wherever we are in the world.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-drupal-austria-roadshow
Drupal is a major presence at Stanford University, one of the world's premiere educational and research institutions. Since the creation of Stanford Web Services and its in-house Drupal hosting platform in 2011, the number of Stanford Drupal sites has more than tripled and 2-3 Drupal sites are created there every day.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/drupal-tool-building-tool-drupal-stanford-and-beyond-zach-chandler
Chris Porter talks about the satisfaction of helping people solve the hard problems that will let them run their Drupal installations and their businesses better.
He says he feels like a hero sometimes, because he's welcomed by people who have invited him to come and help, rather than being the consultant who shows up because someone is forced to buy help for a proprietary system.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/meet-chris-porter-drupal-hero
Bryan Hirsch comes from a background of software engineering and political activism. He originally joined Acquia as an engineer on the Drupal Gardens team thanks to his expertise and interest in software-as-a-service products. His new position at Acquia as Senior Technical Consultant Acquia Government Practice Department allows him to leverage his longstanding interest in using open source software in government to save taxpayer dollars, improve civic engagement and government services.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/bryan-hirsch-helping-federal-government-solve-public-sector-problems-drupal
I just got back from a fantastic weekend with a couple hundred members of the Bulgarian Drupal community at Drupal Camp Sofia 2012. There was a lot of Drupal going on all weekend; some great sessions, lots of hallway track and an evening with the best-dancing Drupal community I have met so far at a little place called Veseloto Selo. A seemingly calm taverna-stye restaurant basically exploded from family-style eating to people dancing on the tables ... well, standing on the chairs at least.
Read the full post at the Acquia Developer Center: https://dev.acquia.com/podcast/acquia-podcast-41-drupal-camp-sofia-2012