Be the community

Planet Drupal

I mentioned on Twitter two weeks ago how fantastic DrupalCon Europe was, and after more thought it’s my favorite DrupalCon to date! Not because I got to parody Disney songs wearing Spandex (which I did), and not because I gave an impassioned session about my love of Pattern Lab integration (which I didn't this time around), but for the first time I feel like I have made a vital difference to the community. I didn't contribute though song or sessions or code, instead I was able to connect people to solve problems. 

It actually all started several weeks before DrupalCon. I was chatting on Slack with Aleksi Peeples, who, if you don't already know, is the author of the Data Transform Plugin, and a huge contributor to the Drupal theming ecosystem. I had assumed that people like him, always attended, but he explained that as a freelancer it was out of his budget. It’s my belief that for contributors like Aleksi it's extremely important to attend DrupalCons, since many important discussions and decisions are often made at the events themselves. Additionally, being physically present at the contribution sprints makes it’s possible for contributors like Aleksi to sit down with, let’s say, Tim Plunkett, to discuss Layout Builder (which they did). But that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t spoken up! I explained all this to Baddy who in turn talked to Ryan Szrama from Centarro. Several emails later, Aleksi had a ticket! Thank you, Ryan!! 

You can learn more about Aleksi and his contributions to Drupal on his blog: https://www.aleksip.net/

Paul Johnson of CTI Digital is someone I've known for a while, but got to know him better last year over coffee at Drupal Europe in Darmstadt. In Amsterdam we ran into one another Tuesday afternoon between sessions and he excitedly shared with me about the Promote Drupal pitch deck. He explained that it had progressed from a set of Google slides  to a full-on multilingual Drupal site! It still needed a frontend however and we talked about possible requirements. Paul then connected me with Ricardo Amaro, another Pitch Deck initiative leads, and the two of us locked down acceptance criteria to create a basic reveal.js slideshow for any given set of slides.

Are you a Frontender wanting to contribute? Then here’s what needs to be done.  If you have specific questions, please feel free to contact me on Drupal Slack in the #promotedrupal channel.

Now on Wednesday… After lunch I was helping my colleagues, Fran and Melinda,  tighten up their already amazing presentation on SVG Animations  As it turned out we were seated in the speaker lounge next to Irina Zaks. Don't know who she is? Neither did I.  She’s a huge advocate for the feeds_migrate module, which will provide a UI for migrations including Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 migrations! I was excited about the possibilities of such functionality so I connected her with our CTO, Stefan Weber, who later spoke with Wim Leers about putting some extra resources into getting an alpha release for feeds_migrate ASAP. 

Are you also excited about a migrate module with UI? Great! Let’s dive into that issue queue and make this possibility a reality!

I feel so fortunate that 1xINTERNET actually encourages me to connect people in this way as a means of contribution. But anyone can do it, you just have to open your mouth! And so I challenge you all: Be the Community. Go to meet-ups, camps, cons. Chat on Slack. Talk to everyone about what lights you up, and encourage others to do the same.

Because the Drupal community is you,
and because you can make a difference!