Drupal Association Public Board Meeting

This session features a panel discussion with various members of the Drupal Association board as they introduce themselves and share their backgrounds. The conversation quickly shifts to addressing community questions and topics relevant to Drupal's future. One prominent topic is the international federation of Drupal associations, which aims to strengthen global collaboration and address the geographical limitations of the current organization. The panel discusses the upcoming marketplace initiative designed to provide preconfigured site templates for newcomers to Drupal, enhancing accessibility and easing the learning curve. Additionally, there is significant emphasis on outreach efforts to raise awareness about Drupal beyond its existing community, focusing on reaching potential users in diverse sectors, including higher education and digital technology. The session highlights the importance of collaboration within the community to advocate for open-source principles and explore new opportunities for events and growth.

So, let me So, welcome to This is not a DA board meeting. This is a meeting of the DA board. So, we're not going to take minutes. It's not, you know, we're not going to make official votes or on decisions, but it's going to operate the way we usually do these, which is we're going to take lots of questions from you and answer what we can. >>

Yes. So, I think we could start with introducing ourselves. And we are very happy to see here Matias from Typo 3 in the room. >> I won't ask any questions. >> No, you don't. Please do not ask a hard questions. No, ask all the questions you have. Uh but let's just maybe start um to the on my left. Glenn, you want to start just introducing you? >>

Hi, I'm Glenn, CEO of Image X. This is my first year on the the uh Drupal Association board. Super happy you folks have come out and looking forward to interacting with you in this next session. Hi, I'm Sachiko. I'm the chair of Open Forum Europe, Brussels based organization promoting open technologies. It's my second year uh and my second Drupal Con North America. So, I was here in

Atlanta as well and uh in Vienna and so yeah, overall very excited to be part of this community. >> Please share both from where you are, from what country you come from. I'm from Sweden. >> I'm from Vancouver, Canada. >> Yes. And I'm uh Ira from Holland. Uh I was CEO of a digital agency, React Online in the Netherlands until recently and we joined 1X Internet now

uh our company. Um I'm on the board of the Drupal Association for three years. Actually, this is my third year. Uh and I was uh chair of the board of the Dutch Drupal Association for eight years. I started the Splash Awards in 2013, so I've been around. >> Hi, I'm Nikil Desh Pande. I'm the chief digital and AI officer with the state of Georgia. Um being a

Drupal end user since 2009 and um honored to be on the board. This is my second term. >> And second term means that uh you need to roll off after that because of bylaws. Yes. So after after the end of this term I will be rolling off. >> Yeah. >> Or we need to change the bylaws. >> We need him always to be in every single board

meeting. U yeah my name is Bati. Uh I come from Iceland live in Germany and I have been involved in Drupal since 2007 but in the community since 2013 and been in the board for two terms. Then I rolled off and now I'm on my next first term. No. Yes. And uh Yeah. And then over to my fellow um country. >> Yes. Hi, my name is Maya

Schaefer. I'm from Germany originally. I live in Montreal, Canada. I'm the community lead at Evolving Web. Have been doing that for four years. That's also when I was introduced to Drupal. So I'm pretty new still, I would say. But I feel very welcomed here and I'm honored to be on the board since November and I hope to bring more new users into Drupal. And uh yeah, I

lead the marketing uh initiative or the I'm the chair of the marketing working group. So if you want to be part of that, reach out to me. >> And this is always a bit weird because I [clears throat] was just on stage for an hour. At the same time, I don't want to assume that people um watched my keynote, but very briefly, I'm Dre. I started the

Drupal project, co-founded the Drupal Association. I'm also on the board, obviously, and uh >> for life. >> For life. Well, that's not true. >> Once a year, we have to >> Yeah. So, actually, my role is a little bit different. So, maybe this is a fun fact. So, when the board was created, there's a special like I don't have two-year terms like the others. I have an

annual term and so every year I have to be re-elected and the and everybody votes. So I could be removed from the board but I can be on the board technically like more than two terms. So >> um I'm Alex. Um I'm elected member of the board which means that after 20 something years working for this amazing technology and this amazing project it feels really a huge

honor to be here. I'm really excited to be to see the Latino community. Can you raise your hand and yeah really excited to be here and celebrate 25 years. >> Right. Uh Tim Doyle staff with the Drupal Association. Uh that's your board um of of of the Drupal Association. Really the Oh, Tiffany, I'm sorry. Well, we have four members that aren't here, you know. Um Tiffany Ferris,

uh who's preparing for the GA tonight. Uh Pew, who's from India, uh couldn't make it. Stella Powers with Anert, uh from Ireland, uh who couldn't was unable to make it. And Dominique Tumman with Drop Solid who was in Europe and couldn't make it. Um the >> and threes is also from Belgium. I just wanted actually to I asked uh because there's often been talked about that you

know it's all US and you know US uh organization. Yes, we are an US organization. We are a 501c3 organization. That's the type. Uh and the board members come from all over. not all over but uh we we recently had Oven and he's from Australia. we don't have anybody from Australia or that continent anymore and also >> right but he's a yeah he's a non- voting member

as the former past chair but yes um yeah we only have uh two members from the US um so we are a even though we're incorporated in the US we're a global not for-p profofit like many international not forprofits that happen to be incorporated in the US and our board definitely reflects the diversity of the Drupal community in terms of geography >> okay so we want want

to open up uh we because we want to actually just answer the questions that you have and if you don't have any questions we can bring topics uh so we would really love to hear and see maybe to start with if everybody here has already a question because Bill I see him raising his hand there is a microphone here in the middle >> and and don't worry

we we can talk or like you know ask us anything you have on your mind. >> Uh so this one kind of going back to the fact is a a North American organization. Has there been any progress on the the notion of a federation of Drupal associations? Um >> yeah, thank you for the international federation topic. So this came up in the community summit yesterday. We had

a a sess like almost an hour conversation about the international federation. Um and we can tell you a little bit more about that. There is going to be a buff tomorrow. >> Wow. at two o'clock if you're really interested in like an hour conversation about uh or 30 minutes an hour about that. Um so what is the international federation um and what is it about? Um I

think I can just start from describing it very briefly. We uh sat down in Atlanta and I I cited like this in the community summit yesterday that we in Atlanta we thought that maybe we need to have a plan B because things are just going a little bit crazy in the world and what if and this is how it started a little bit. What if suddenly European

companies cannot or other companies outside of the US can for example just not call servers in the United States? What if you know we need some kind of a you know what if we want to apply to grants in other countries? Are we limited of being an organization how we are set up today? What if there were a couple of ifs that we asked ourselves and uh

and you can look at it on drupal.org org/pro the national >> thank you if wg exactly that's where you can go and you can actually read up on what it was that we were trying to answer we we got together uh again here this was just to be able to like look at that and see like do we need to change the structure do we need to

like you know if something happens how could that look like? Um we brought together local associations, people from MOSA here in um uh the United States, we brought uh people from Japan, from South America. We tried to get everybody together on the table and help us to answer those questions. Uh we don't have an answer yet. [laughter] So uh the let's say that uh we are very

we have limited resources to work on this uh we need to really get going again and I think that we are going to start the the to sit down together um and work on it and see like if there's anything that we should do but this is something that I I wanted to impress talk about from the community summit summit yesterday that this is not just about

like hey let's just now set up another organization and change the structure. You know we have a really vibrant community. We have an infrastructure that is running uh very you know well being managed by the Drupal association. We have this event here. Um we should really think very closely if we are going to make any larger changes than that. And uh so I do want to tell

everyone just to take a little bit time with you or how how you would say that like I don't think that there's going to be any decision made tomorrow and potentially also not in one year from now but we are starting to think about a plan. We are starting to have conversations with with other open source projects how they are doing things. We have been seeing I

think Sachiko you might know more more about it but there have been open source projects starting up entities in uh Europe but maybe just to do one thing right you want to do you know anything about it or anything that you can share such >> well I mean it's not a direct parallel but I think there are um you know driven by similar concerns about threats to

global collaboration and potential trade restrictions around that um it's clear that this is what uh motivated the Eclipse Foundation for example to move to to Europe and before that risk five move to Switzerland uh Eclipse is in Belgium. So I think there are and I have also heard that there are other you know other such moves being discussed uh etc. So I think that you know it's

clear that other foundations have seen um you know similar have had similar concerns and have actually moved on on those things. Of course you had an LF set up an organization in Europe that's a bit different. Um you know they continue obviously to operate mainly as a as a US-based not for profofit but within sort of a European operation. Anybody wants to add to this from the

group for the board? Did we answer your question? Okay, thank you. Thank you for bringing it up. And we also have Carlos here who's member of the the group and um Kevin's here too. Anyone else from the people questions for us. >> Any more questions? This was a good topic to start with and come to the buff tomorrow. We are going to talk about it more there.

Yes, please. Talking about the marketplace, what is your maybe the ideal persona or ideal client you are looking for in this initial launch of the marketplace? Is there for newcomers to Drupal? for people that is trying Drupal for the first time or is mostly pointing to developers to be to make an easier websites to start with or I I have this question maybe which is persona that

you are pointing to right now with the marketplace. >> So if I understand you correctly are you asking from for whom what is the main persona of the marketplace? Yeah, you you are you should be pointing to an specific customer or or a specific audience. So maybe I I want to know what which is that audience that you are looking for in the marketplace. >> Yes. Um

I think it was a good question to Three. >> So the the target audience of the marketplace is that the question? >> Yeah. So the the way we're thinking about it is that the marketplace would have solutions. So like preconfigured um you know site templates are basically um combination of recipes um a theme a Drupal canvas uh theme specifically as well as um preconfigured and default content

and it's kind of a out ofthe-box solution. I would I would say the target um audience is really people that are evaluating Drupal. And so today the experience is you install Drupal core or Drupal CMS and you kind of have a blank canvas and so if you then need to figure out how do you go from a out ofthe-box Drupal core installation to let's say a websites

for schools that that is a very very difficult journey for people that have never used Drupal like the amount of things you need to learn you know which how does how do the content types work and views and what modules might I use. What are some of the best practices? If you think about it, that is like an incredibly steep learning curve. And we probably lose if

a if a hundred people try it, maybe one person might succeed or something. And so the goal of these site templates is that u they're way better starting points so that people can have a better initial impression of what they can do with Drupal and that it's built by let's say Drupal agencies that have experience building uh those things and that they can encode if you will

their best practices um on how to build you know a solution like that. Um, and so what we envision it to be is like when people come to drupal.org, they want to learn about Drupal, that we would drive them to the marketplace. We would help them discover um something that looks like what they might want to build and that they can have a positive evaluation experience and

maybe they'll maybe it's very close to what they want to have and launch, which would be great. Um, but chances are they want to make customization. Like, you know, no two websites look the same, right? Because you always wanted to have your own custom brands. Um, like even when you start with a site template, it's like you're going to want to change the colors, the logos, like

make it like your own. Um, and potentially add some additional features or remove some things. And so then what we want to do is we want to actually drive those people or connect those people with the makers in the Drupal community and specifically the maker of the site template. So hopefully it will then drive some business to the digital agency. So, for example, you saw in the

the Dre note we were selling, there was like one commercial site template right now, but let's say probably most Drupal agencies aren't going to sort of like sustain themselves from selling $400 site templates, but maybe they will, but chances are they won't. But if one of those transactions could lead to um being introduced to a customer that wants to do a 30 40 $50,000 project, now that's

interesting. So I would say long story short, I think a secondary audience like the primary audience is people new to Drupal evaluating Drupal. A secondary audience is definitely the agencies and trying to drive uh leads to them, you know. Um, of course we have to prove this out to see how well it will work, but you know, we basically decided to do like an MVP, like build

a basic marketplace and test it out. And, uh, we're going to learn, I think, a lot the next maybe year or so and see if it works. Um, I'll say one more thing. Sorry, I'm going on and on here. Um, but so, think of it as like we're we're broadening the top of the funnel. like we want to get more people exposed to Drupal and um have

a better conversion rate of of people that try Drupal and then stick with Drupal. >> okay, thank you for explaining this. Um I want to just make it really clear about this. What Dre is explaining now is of course uh a direction that the project take you know sets and Dre and and the team uh the Drupal association is then here to act to to help that

to make that happen and so as a board member you know I I can only answer that because I heard it from him but what we do here when these ideas come up and uh this came up as an idea we had to sit down together as a board together with and see like can we actually make the marketplace because somebody needs to create that somebody needs

to build the solution and there was a a a group put together uh from that Tiffany Ferris was uh leading together of course a lot of meetings I think with Drees and there were other people Tim was in the meeting here Tim Lennon and they came up then with a plan of like okay how can we fund that and can we can we put our resources and

put them somewhere else and then it comes to the board as a question of like should we now invest in this new thing how much can we actually invest what other things do we need to put on the side maybe there's some other engineering work that needs to be done then that comes to the board so again here just explaining it for those who don't know like

uh and that's what then we are trying to solve how can we make that happen and I think the said a really good thing on the weekend we met on the weekend and and he said like okay now I'm going to be announcing this and showing it and uh and he of course keeps us in the loop. Uh we have a first version of a marketplace. The

first version is for example if you want to buy something on the marketplace today you'd go to the website. So we don't have any commerce or you know the marketplace today is not like a real marketplace where you can really buy it there and then the money then goes to the you know we we maybe keep 10% of managing that or something like that. So now is

actually going to be the next question that the board will have to solve together with the staff. It's like how much do we need to invest in that and do we need to hire more people to actually do all of this work? What about support when something doesn't work out? Um how can we build up capacity at the Drupal Association to actually do this? Um and and

trust me, this is not the only idea that is always coming on the table. Um and and the DA staff is like they they they only also only have 24 hours in the day. Um so we just need here more support from uh our community to help us to make this happen and quicker. So Angie, you we're next. >> Um Dre, in your Dre note, you had

talked about the Drupal growth initiative and how there's kind of three prongs. There's enterprise Drupal growth, Drupal CMS adoption and AI leadership. Whoops. Sorry. Um, and I had a question about when you get even so top of funnel to conversion. Yes. But then there's like a bunch of people out here who don't even know Drupal exists. And some of them are business leaders, some of them are

developer types, some of them are site builders, some of them might be vibe coders who, you know, like whatever their their thing is. And I was just wondering like if you could frame up what is your strategy for outreaching those people the Drupal unaware people who who need to even understand Drupal exists before they get into the funnel. >> Great question. Um actually one of the things

that we feel pretty strongly about I think I I can think I speak on behalf of others is that we need to go where those people are. Like we can't just keep talking about it in our own spaces on drupal.org or a Drupal con, you know, like we need to go to where the web developers are or you know, the people that might be interested in Drupal.

So, we've already started doing some of that. Um, so like it was a year ago, we went to web summit as an example, um, which is like what 40,000 people or something and we had a booth there. And um more recently we've done like AI Drupal AI summits at uh large AI conferences and we're like a small a small part of a larger conference. And I think

that's the way you know we need to get the word out. Um because it's interesting like when we do these events a lot of people come to the booth and it's like oh I didn't know Drupal still existed. And it's like well actually we do you know. Um, and so that's a good sign that people, you know, I think about it like it's almost like every web

developer knows about Drupal, like most people would, I think, but the impression that they have of Drupal is very outdated often. And um, I mean, they're definitely not paying attention to us. So, we need to make sure we're kind of um, yeah, where where they are. Um, I can talk to this one too. Oh, I want to go first. Maya, >> maybe. Yeah, thank you, Glenn. Um,

yeah. So, for example, besides the web summit, I don't know if you've been around the exhibition hall, but there's also digital collegium here. So, we've started Tim initiated that partnership with digital collegium, which is a they are organizing a digital collegium higher ed conference every year. We are going there. We have a booth there. I think it's free for the DA to to be there and represent

Drupal and increase awareness there. And they come here. Um, and this is our partnership. So, we want to do that more. We want to encourage the community to do that for you guys to go out and attend non-technical conferences and help bring Drupal to those. And we do have a initiative. I don't know um Ryan was talking about that in the community summit. We will um what

was it called? The Drupal booth >> booth program $10,000. >> Yeah. So we have a $10,000 pilot where we want to get banners to you. If you tell us that you will go to a conference and you're willing to represent Drupal there, we'll send you a backdrop, a Drupal banner, whatsoever, t-shirt, swag to bring Drupal to that new community and and we rely on everybody. It's it

can't beat the DA. We don't we can't you know how many people are in the st like there's eight people. We can't they have to do work in the back end too, right? So, um, if you're interested in that, please talk to Ryan and talk to me or anyone really. Um, that's one thing. And then I think Glenn was going to talk probably about the tracks, so

I'll let you do this. >> Sure. Yeah. Thanks very much, Maya. First off, this is Angie Byron. If you guys don't know her, Angie was the co- co-maintainer of Drupal 7. Huge contributor in the community for many years and a real rock star. So, great to see you here. So nice to have [applause] folks. Angie's mom came with her which is great and so great to see

some of the folks here for the 25th gala. That's awesome. So to answer your question too Angie this is something that you know Dre has been talking about in the Dre note for a number of years the need for more marketers and u we were just having a marketing bath just before this. Ryan was leading it and we sat at one small little table and the table

was full but that was it. And when you look at how many people show up for hackathons and for sprints, uh, we have hundreds of people. But when it comes to marketing, there isn't very much. And so that needs to change if we need to move this thing forward. Brian was just citing off statistics of the numbers of what Wix is putting in in the hundreds of

millions of dollars into marketing. And this is what we're up against. So we as a board have, you know, rolled out this new initiative. Ryan, he's a rock star. He's going to make this happen. He's gonna start working with us. He's he's got a plan. He's he's laid it out. Um and it's already happening. Paul, who's with 1x Internet, has been uh leading the marketing initiative for

the Drupal AI project, and that just started. I mean, we're sitting down in in Louven, Belgium last April, and already what's been put together on that front has been utterly amazing. And he's broken it down. He's got it structured. He's got leads in what is it uh 12 different realms that we have leads in and each of those leads in the AI initiative will have different areas

on our team at IMEX. Rosy's heading up case studies. So anybody who needs case studies for AI come to Rosie. She's working along with Jitka who's on the uh Drupal Association staff side who's getting those case studies out because we need to get great stories out and there's many different facets of that. Paul's got that all down and Ryan's going to be rolling that out for two

other areas, two other facets that we need to get out to. So, we've got Dre was talking this morning in the in the in the Dre note about Drupal Pivot, which is coming up at the end of May. We need to get those agencies there to this event and those agencies have marketers and we need to get some time from each of those marketers. The leads are

going to be given, you know, eight to 16 hours of time each week. The next layers, what is it? Three to four hours a month. U Ryan. Yeah. >> Yeah. And then the the layer after that is whatever you can contribute. So there's going to be multiple layers, but we're going to need strong marketers and people to be able to help us make this happen. So we're

getting out there, Angie. We're starting to get out there. They just did an event, an AI event in Paris. We got another one coming up in New York next month. And I think >> and in London in June. >> Another one in London in June. So, this is us getting out there and making Drupal known and it's going to take an army of people to participate to

help with that, but it's going to happen. And maybe I'll add something real quick and you you've said it really well actually, but I think and I've said this before, but if you think what we've done on the engineering side, we built this very very impressive machine, if you will, where you know 10,000 people every year can contribute to, you know, our code and like we've we

have tools and processes. And if you think about it, it's kind of magical. you know 10,000 people every year somehow can work together on building like really robust software but on the marketing side we don't have that and we want to kind of basically do a little bit the same and I think it's actually very exciting because um it's not going to be easy but it's exciting

because in a way we would be you know pioneering sort of like how does an open source community build a very largecale marketing machine just like we stuff on the engineering side. So, it's not a small task, but uh I think we can do it because guess what? A lot of us work at digital agencies that are good at marketing. So, I feel like we have proximity

uh to people that can actually make this happen. We just somehow need to, you know, organize it with tools, processes, coordination, vision, you know, all the things that that you know, uh and we do well in on the technical side. So this this is a topic I'm feel very strongly about it and I've made a mission for myself to go to every single Drupal Drupal camp that

I can to talk about the bubble. You may have heard or read my my article but I think we live in this bubble where we talk about how amazing is our technology but you know what only as Drupal developers are kind of receiving that message. We need to leave this bubble and start talking to other people to other events to the point of this let's this is

amazing. is a great place to meet and know about the news and the technology and see all friends, but we need to go out there and and send the message. And every time I was in England a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to be in France in uh Portugal and every time I go to one of these events and I ask how many end customers do

we have in the room in England? I think I was one or two. And I think it's going to happen the same in in France and in Portugal. I was asking as well 90 something% of people here are agencies which is great but at the same time we need the customers right and I don't know if they are going to come here but you have we have

the power of the community we have a lot of agencies interested on this topic so my message is going to be I'm sure you know local events in your area where you can go use some help from uh the Drupal association to bring the pullup banner whatever you can you can do go and bridge about Drupal because we need we need that. >> Um I just wanted

to to um thank the people who organized the Drupal for Gov before Fosdom earlier in the year. I think that I I wanted to thank the uh before Fosdom this year. I think that was a great initiative. Um and I think that that it's been wonderful to have Drupal there um as a as a to have a table. Um but again it's useful to have this as

a regular thing particularly since there's so much policy discussion happening in um in Europe at the moment around open source. Um but here in the US there's also all things open that takes place in the fall. I don't know if anyone has thought about organizing a similar smaller Drupal event. I'm part of a a group that's looking at accessibility as a as a um a a related

event with all things open. So I think there's definitely opportunities for that. But it would be interesting to go off and make sure we're there on the stage for that. Um, but the question I have is really more about um procurement and what is the Drupal Association doing to try and shape procurement. I know that there's a um the RFP that was out there that was was

put on the the website a little while ago. I think that was a good first step, but I don't know if that has gone any further or if there's been any evaluation of that um or if there's been other efforts to try and look at procurement because um there's the the the old saying that that uh um that that the culture eats the the processes. Well, incentives

eats the culture eats the the processes. So if we if we want we have to figure out what the incentives are to go off and to create change and often that is tied to um to procurement. We've got to follow the money. >> So good thank you. Good question. Um I want to just uh make a one um I would say a clarification on the events. Um

all of those events that we have been talking about including Drupal forgov in in Brussels. uh they were all made by the community and what the DA is capable of doing is actually to support that by putting out the message that that you are going there you know allow you to go and use the Drupal brand and actually go there together as Drupal. So I really encourage

you and then send you also banners and and things that you can use uh and swag and and material. So if you have any event in your neighborhood that you think that Drupal should have a booth at, what you then need to do is that you as for example just as an agency, you need to then maybe get a couple of agencies to gather around you. That's

how we are doing it for London and for New York is that we are just a couple of companies that are just all pitching in. I think it is like 5,000 per company or maybe it depends on your location or something like that and then we are sending our staff. That's how that happens. Um, so hopefully we can coordinate that. We can we can help with the

coordination of that. But the Drupal association is not going to say we are going to go to this event and that event. Websummit was done exactly the same way. We actually bought a booth there that was really expensive and we were very lucky to get really large uh companies in our ecosystem here uh to support that. And we even got a keynote or um we managed to

we were also on stage to talk about Drupal and this type of aid and set it today in the in the trees note we are collaboring to collaborating today in a way that we have never done before as companies and that's because we need all Drupal to win. Um so that is why we are now today collaborating while we were maybe a little bit in the past

just competing. So that was towards your first part of your comment. So thank you for bringing that on. And regarding the uh RFP, I just want to bring that probably over to to Tim because I see that he has the So we have a program called Drupal Certified Partners and that program is only valuable if other people outside of our Drupal bubble know about that program. So

how what are we going to do about that? >> That's right. So uh Mike, you referenced we do have on our website an RFP. We have a model RFP that we published that um promotes open source and as and as a buy and promotes um awarding contracts to companies that contribute back to open source. Now what we have now is a awareness program. We're trying to grow

the awareness of the Drupal certified partner program. So the other thing we've done for our Drupal certified partners is if they are responding to a RFP, they will can include a letter from the Drupal association that indicates that that company is a Drupal certified partner. It explains the program and it encourages uh the um the tender offerer, the bidder or the uh the biddy to um to

select a a Drupal certified partner. We try to do that in order to get the the word out. Um, the other thing we're willing to do is if a company is responding to an RFP and they tell us, we won't tell anyone else, but we will contact that that organization directly and say, "Hey, uh, we understand you're putting out a tender for uh, these services. Have you

thought about Drupal? Drupal's awesome. If you think about Drupal, think about a Drupal certified partner because they come back." And third, uh, if you choose Drupal, you're entering into an awesome community and welcome. So, we're just trying to get the word out given the limited resources we have and right now we're relying on our um certified partners to tell us where we need to go and communicate

that to. We're willing to do that anywhere. Um and then at the board uh retreat this past weekend, there was a session where they started talking coming up with more ideas of how we could um uh funnel our effectively funnel RFPs and make sure they're being awarded to companies that are contributing back. Uh, and so we're this is going to be a a work in progress, but

these are things that we're already doing right now. And if we can get the awareness out there, we just need people talking about and and I the last thing is we're meeting with like uh end users that are already on Drupal. So tonight I met with or today I met with uh higher ed uh 15 universities uh that are on Drupal now. They're here um had lunch

with them and it's a way of us talking to them exactly about why it's important for to choose Drupal certified. These are mostly believers anyway. they get it, but I'm trying to get the word out to them about, you know, we have this RFP and this is what you should do to to support Drupal. Hi. Uh, well, my name is Rona Laglar. I'm from the Costa Rican

Drupal Uh, well, first of of all, thank you for all your hard work, you know, in the board. I think it's not a little work you are doing. And then I know that uh well I had this conversation several times with several people including Do and Alex you know uh I think that the problem we had in Drupal for several years is we build Drupal for Drupalists

right so we didn't build Drupal for the other people outside of Drupal right now we are building Drupal for people outside of Drupal what is an special momentum I feel like is uh really good because we are going in the right right direction at the right time. Uh so my question is uh for example uh well we know that in Latin America we have uh you know

privilege um uh situation right now we are a technology hub for example I know Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica we have a lot of technology companies in there for example Costa Rica is smaller than the Lake Michigan behind us and we have more than 1,000 technology companies in there. So we as a local association we want to promote Drupal as well. So what is the way how we

can help you to promote Drupal and work closer with the I'm going to give this to Maya. >> I think what you guys are doing in Costa Rica is already great with your Drupal camp inviting the universities or going there. Like that's a great way. I know you did a training for beginners to Drupal for new people introducing them to Drupal. So that's great. >> 45 people

that's even better. So that's the right way to do it. I would say where everyone can or what everyone can do is maybe to get even more people to come look at other organizations and reach out to them personally or stop by and talk to them and find out what they're doing. We just need to talk to people more in person um or virtually I guess but

setting up meetings and not just messaging messaging them. The events obviously we talked about that is one aspect as well going to other events but the personal outreach is so much more important and maybe they can tell who else might be interested in learning more so then it becomes a how do you say it like a waterfall basically you know and for the cams just as an

example I would say try to get also new speakers in from different industries like a marketer who could talk about something AI related or bring them together and combine give them a session and ask them can you co-present with somebody your topic is similar to another topic and then you build a case study around that as an example so I think speakers is a great way when

it comes to cams to amplify them use them to bring more new people into the community Um this is just on top of my head right now what can be done anymore. >> I'm sure there are business organizations as well in Costa Rica. So just pass the bubble. Go to those uh business and tell them that you are going to show them so amazing solution. Don't talk

about Drupal straight away because no one is interested in Drupal outside of our bubble but then show them the solution and make them excited. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I want to tell you a little bit about the uh how did Drupal con uh n for example happen. Um so we had we have a very great a great uh in Australia, New Zealand and uh they have been

setting up this camp called Drupal South and they've just been doing that very successfully. They've been having more than 500 people coming every year. a lot of excitement and uh that was that group of people that just said like hey maybe we can do this uh they did Singapore first and then they did N what about if we just replicate that and do it in a little

bit of a larger scale and and how they did it and I'm just trying to like tell you how you could do it so they um that is an event Drupal con is a trademark that the Drupal has. So if anybody wants to do a Drupal con that then needs to be organized through the DA and then what you do is in the case we you know

you need somebody to be the L like to give the license to uh in Europe it's Kui and in this case it was the Lenos yeah Lenos >> that then was the fiscal sponsor and the the company then behind collecting the the you know ticket uh you know paying the venue and all of that. There was then a a local regional committee put together and of course

like u staff from the Drupal association was heavily involved in guiding and making sure that like everything is done correctly according to the agreement that they then have on how to hold the Drupal con. Um it was all because of the success of Drupal South for so many years and Drupal South started off as a small event and then it just grew and grew and grew until

they just said hey now it is maybe time to to start doing something larger. Um we have of course the great community in India which is uh now also having the conversation hey can we now maybe next do Drupalcon 2 um and I would love to see Drupalcon happening in South America. Um I'm not sure if Dre can do these type of Dre notes many times per

year. [laughter] >> Uh but what he did in in N he he came uh met with the community and he did instead of doing a Dre note he did a Q&A um where Pam was asking him about a lot of things and I think that that would you know I think I think actually Dre should probably maybe only do one one big T snow per year but

we love the two but maybe four is too much. [laughter] So continue doing what you're doing and uh and like you know let make sure that you do these events and continue uh asking us to come all of us in the room. >> Yeah. Matias you have to go there. I said I wasn't going to ask a question so I'm not going to ask a question. I've

been to Drupal South. It's really great. Um but we were talking about doing booths and going around at conferences and things like that. And in addition to rollups and you know actually going there and having something to give away, there's one more thing that hasn't been mentioned and that is the narrative. You have to tell a story that's bigger than Drupal. You have to put Drupal in

context. And therefore I wanted to ask for an encore uh of what Bi said uh in Brussels on stage about uh you know the made in the US or made in Europe thing and how open source has a different narrative on on that. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh yeah, I was lucky to be on stage in Brussels uh for the open forum policy event together with a

head of uh digital unit at the European Commission uh Daniel from Kurl was there as well, Apachi and and so and before we went on stage there was a politician that came on stage and what the woman said from the Europe European Parliament and the woman said we need to make sure that we buy only European technology and only stuff that is European like we came on

stage afterwards and I said the words open source should not have to choose its home open source is global and needs to continue to be global and but we need to educate those policy makers and the politicians that that is because I fear that it's going to come into some kind of a a rule from the European Commission and saying like you can only do things in

Europe with European in software with European projects. Uh so we are fighting that fight together with you in typo 3. We WordPress as well. We have you know we are trying really to work together and uh make sure that they will not do a mistake of saying that the open source project needs to only be having contribution from that continent. Uh so thank you for bringing that

up and I think Satiko is going to add to it. >> Oh my favorite topic. Um uh well public procurement was my favorite topic but I kept uh kept quiet. It's so important because digital sovereignty is opening doors for open source but we there's also a risk in Europe that this becomes not open source but uh by European um and I think that it's not good for

Europe it's not good for open source it's just it's it's the wrong path right and then there's a third option by European open source and I think indeed we have to get the narrative right because by European sounds good if you're a politician um and you know we want freedom from big tech etc foreign big tech but it's Drupal is is a great example to talk about

because I think we should at the same time take digital sovereignty seriously. We should as Europeans take you know European capabilities seriously. Um and the you know digital uh autonomy doesn't come from buying offtheshelf any type of you know proprietary software but you have to have probably in the current geopolitical situation you have to think about capabilities but I think what we want and the message is

really that there's a way to leverage a global community uh and at the same time support European jobs show that you have a strong contributor base in Europe etc. And again Drupal is such a good example but we shouldn't just talk about Drupal as well but I agree but it's a good example showing this a global technology with a significant contributor base in in in Europe and

this is the by European doesn't lead anywhere either because how do you define it you know uh the headquarters of a company can be moved overnight um etc. So it doesn't solve any questions but I I think we need to go out there and have the right message and the right examples. Now >> yes >> open UN open source >> the UN open source week. Yes. I

think focusing also on the international, the global instead of focusing on the current focus kind of pits Europe against China, against the US and there's a whole other world out there as well and we can't just close down global collaboration because um there's also this um responsibility to bring digital transformation also to the global south etc. And so um that's a good message to be to be

bringing to the UN. Yeah. So, how are we in time? I think we are think >> we got to wrap up like three minutes. >> We have So, Carlos, we don't have time. No, I'm joking. [laughter] >> That was just We are We are friends. >> One more. [laughter] >> So, you know what I'm talking here. You already mentioned it. Uh last year I asked the board

if we could do a duper con Latin America and you said all you needed to know if we are ready. But nothing else happened and we have been doing plans and working on that. Uh we were asked if we have a community. So I want to ask every Latin American in here to stand up for a second please. >> So I guess we have that covered. Um

Drupal Camp Costa Rica just came back uh after three years, two years. And we had a huge amount of people for for a camp. Um and also I have a request. We want to do Drupal con Latin America but we need the board help. I know there is no resources in the Drupal association to give us money. We were told we need a fiscal sponsor. We do

have the entity. We do not have the money. uh the Latin America community already explored with Costa Rica a special sponsorship package that it was like the for the year. So it was beyond Drupal camp. It was to help the community for the year for you know events, meetups, etc. Um and I wanted to give you some numbers. We did a quote of how much can a

Drupalcon cost in Colombia. Uh 11 years ago we have 267 people. So we're thinking maybe we can get 400. Maybe that um including Wi-Fi, AV, the place, uh snacks and everything will not pass uh from the quote that we have from an actual hotel in Colombia will be around $50,000. So my request is can we use uh the connections channels that the Drupal association has to look

for this potential sponsors that want to pre-sponsor uh Drupal con Latin America and see if we can next year go all to Kartahena. Yeah, if I am understanding you correctly, you're just asking can the Drupal Association support and be the what do you call it? Fiscal >> a fiscal sponsor or and do or >> give us the right to do a Drupalcon. >> Uh give us the

right and help us to reach out to the people that you know that could be potential sponsors. I we know we have to do the the leg work because there is no >> who to do it in the it >> there are no resources we know that. >> Yeah. So first of all >> we need your support. >> Yeah. Okay. So first of all, thank you all

for coming all of you here and and this is just this is really amazing to see because uh you know we have we have seen this sometimes before when there is a movement there is a group of people that come together and you all show up here because I think that you are you are really you really want to do it. So this is a a great

first step. Um again the Drupal Association has there there was a reason why the Drupal Association stopped doing Drupalcon Europe. Um and the reason was is that the Drupal Association did not have resources and uh and we also did not manage to make that event successful. So it was basically like eating also of the the budget and there was a decision made that we would not do

Drupalcon Europe and instead license that and uh so if you ask now us here I I can't say yes to that we can just start doing another Drupalcon because uh event business is very hard and if you look at our our financials from past year uh 10 years. Uh, Drupal Con North America was the event that gave us so much profit that we could actually fund our

infrastructure. Drupalcon Europe was exactly the opposite. So, Drupalcon Europe was actually eating off that profit and actually so so therefore we had to find another way with that. Um, at the moment we, you know, we used to have 3,000 people at Rubalcon. We now have 1,300 people at Rubalcon and we are not the only conference in the world that has less attendance because uh there is this

things have changed after co. So will we now take a risk as a Drupal association that potentially funding that uh would need to go into our infrastructure would now maybe if it is not successful need to you know be for that event. Are we capable of doing taking that decision today? No. Uh so that would need to be a a decision that would be made. But what

is definitely definitely uh not a problem is to give a license agreement to an entity or some kind of a that could be a company you know and you all just take care of that and we support you when doing that. Um so I don't know if there these conversations have happened before if there is already active conversations. Um so the process is a little bit like

this. First of all, we need Ree to come to Drupalcon, >> right? >> So, uh he his calendar also needs to be checked when is he around? Uh you know what would be his presence at that conference. Uh we need to you know there's it can't be too close maybe to some other events. Uh so that like that all we need to find a date so we

can do all of that ground work first. Um and then there is a question can we just maybe find the company that can actually be the license >> the fiscal sponsor and and the license >> and get the license agreement actually to go forward >> you want to add to it >> right so there's yeah I mean let me there's a few things that have to happen

for for it to be a Drupalcon so we obviously there's Teresa's presence there's uh certain requirements we have um insurance and different things entity to manage it um outside of so and we're happy to engage in those conversations. We've had some conversations on that. That's one level. The second level is okay, can we provide technical assistance? Can you take Megan's time and Molly's time and start helping

like work some of the potential sponsors and do outreach? And that's a capacity issue on our end. And so we do want to know and it's I'm like Bat I'm I'm impressed by seeing so many folks here and I'm hearing more Costa Rica and more and more energy there. So it's telling us there's more energy in Latin America. This is a this is a high it's worth

spending time on. So in that capacity that's that's so we have the legal requirements and then we just have the capacity of how much can we do to help you with everything else we're doing. Um and and that's something that we can we can kind of talk further about as we get closer to as you start really looking at what you want to do. >> Yes, I

think thank you for the question. Let's stay and have a let's chat. >> I think we're done at time. >> Yeah, we are done at time. So thank you for coming. come again. And uh thank you board for being here. [applause]