Shaping Drupal's Future (presentation description)

Drupal does not belong to the Drupal Association. It does not belong to Node One, Phase Two, Chapter Three, Four Kitchens, Palantir, Acquia, or even Agaric. It does not belong to Dries— except the name. It belongs to you, and every other person who steps up to claim it, equally.

What does it mean to take ownership?

Black Star Co-Op Pub & Brewery [in Austin, Texas] opened doors in the summer of 2010, with a large banner outside that reads "Community-Owned Beer." A consumer cooperative (owned by the community it serves) and also a worker-coop (run by its employees), Black Star is attracting a full house of business seven days a week.

Drupal's banner should be Community-Owned Software.

Drupal and its galaxy of modules, themes, and other projects are too big to understand by oneself. The most knowledgeable people are key contributors, and are too busy to help people who don't also contribute. And too much is riding, for all of us, on Drupal's continued improvement to leave this improvement to chance.

It's time to get involved— and to reap the benefits of participation.

The Drupal community provides everything there is in Drupal, and is the number one reason to choose Drupal. It is not the functionality, the extensibility, the power, the flexibility, or even anything related to the code. It is the community of developers, documenters, administrators and more who overcome obstacles and fix problems every day— frequently working together and helping each other across company and country lines.

The top ten Drupal shops could switch to stone tablet technology tomorrow and there would still be an amazing array of contributors to carry development forward. Not many open source free software projects can say that, and of course no proprietary products can make such a claim. This is what both protects and makes so promising your future in Drupal.

It is difficult but possible to work with Drupal sustainably as a professional and as a participant in the Drupal community. But in the long run, it's easier and more profitable than not engaging in the community.

And shaping Drupal's future means shaping our own future, and potentially our community and our world's future.

Why is this relevant to the Drupal Community?

Everyone who has been observer, instigator, or participant on any question of: #drupalappstore, "why doesn't the Drupal Association do X, Y, Z", "who makes decisions about Drupal Planet and why?", "why isn't administrator action 73 easy to do", "how do we get more resources put toward making the core APIs awesome and the developer experience great?", and "why isn't Drupal more relevant to people fighting for freedom all over the world?" will have something to think about during and after this talk and perhaps even have an action or two to take.

Questions this session will answer:

• How have major parts of Drupal that we rely on been coordinated and funded?
• How can we build on that success?
• Who else is thinking like this?
• What can we do to help people help Drupal?
• Why now?