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