Bay Area Drupal Camp November 2007
Jim | Mon, 11/05/2007
Recommend (1005)We would like to express our gratitude to Tao Starbow, his team and UC
Berkeley for all of their outstanding work putting on the Bay Area
Drupal Camp.
The events continue to evolve and are beneficial in a multitude of ways. Most notably is the gathering of experienced Drupal professionals and amateurs alike, to exchange ideas and share best practices. The exponential growth of Drupal in the past 18 months has created a tremendous need for this ongoing exchange of ideas. It also has introduced an awareness of the unique challenges brought about from the business side of open source, as it applies to the Drupal world.
An insightful perspective is developing that integrates the various viewpoints of Drupal developers, the organization itself and the professional service providers. Contrary to some passionately held beliefs, making a profit from repeatable, value added services contributes to the well being of the entire Drupal community. Most notably it extends the Drupal functionality to clients who are primarily interested in the results derived from Drupal, not necessarily from the Drupal core itself. But, in the long run this embracing of Drupal brought by profit focused enterprise service providers, such as Achieve, grows the overall user base of Drupal. By aligning the interests of clients and those who facilitate the long term growth of Drupal at large, i.e. developers, this creates a synergy that has far reaching beneficial consequences.
Through expanding the awareness of Drupal functionality, from the developer community to the business unit leaders empowers the continued use of Drupal. As clients come to view Drupal as a platform for their success, even as their mission expands, it will create new opportunities within our open source community and to professionals not yet connected to Drupal. This conjoined expansion is the future of software that leverages the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to capture the ‘long tail.’
We at Achieve Internet are proud to be associated with such a great group of Drupal developers, themers and related professionals as represented at the Bay Area Drupal Camp. We also know that through discussions, and even disagreements, on thing is obvious: we all share the passion for not only pushing ourselves to excellence, but also pushing Drupal to new heights.
The events continue to evolve and are beneficial in a multitude of ways. Most notably is the gathering of experienced Drupal professionals and amateurs alike, to exchange ideas and share best practices. The exponential growth of Drupal in the past 18 months has created a tremendous need for this ongoing exchange of ideas. It also has introduced an awareness of the unique challenges brought about from the business side of open source, as it applies to the Drupal world.
An insightful perspective is developing that integrates the various viewpoints of Drupal developers, the organization itself and the professional service providers. Contrary to some passionately held beliefs, making a profit from repeatable, value added services contributes to the well being of the entire Drupal community. Most notably it extends the Drupal functionality to clients who are primarily interested in the results derived from Drupal, not necessarily from the Drupal core itself. But, in the long run this embracing of Drupal brought by profit focused enterprise service providers, such as Achieve, grows the overall user base of Drupal. By aligning the interests of clients and those who facilitate the long term growth of Drupal at large, i.e. developers, this creates a synergy that has far reaching beneficial consequences.
Through expanding the awareness of Drupal functionality, from the developer community to the business unit leaders empowers the continued use of Drupal. As clients come to view Drupal as a platform for their success, even as their mission expands, it will create new opportunities within our open source community and to professionals not yet connected to Drupal. This conjoined expansion is the future of software that leverages the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to capture the ‘long tail.’
We at Achieve Internet are proud to be associated with such a great group of Drupal developers, themers and related professionals as represented at the Bay Area Drupal Camp. We also know that through discussions, and even disagreements, on thing is obvious: we all share the passion for not only pushing ourselves to excellence, but also pushing Drupal to new heights.