I have been thinking back and forth of how to best put my thoughts down on “paper”.

This week, I had my last day of work with the Drupal Association.
The Drupal Association is undergoing a lot of changes and this is a result of one of them. My position is being moved to Portland, Oregon, where the physical office of the Drupal Association is; and since I am halfway across the world from that place, I was let go.

I started working on DrupalCon Paris in 2009 and it became a heavy workload, which I was happy to do. The result was that I had a little burnout and my brain wouldn’t function for several days. Also, I barely remember the week itself, as I was sick and simply exhausted by the time all you guys flooded the halls. :-)
Nonetheless, I enjoyed working on DrupalCon Paris so much, that I decided to remain involved as a volunteer and as someone, who had done it once, so I can share some experience and knowledge. At that point, it became a bit more personal, as many members of the Drupal community know. - We, volunteers, put a lot of extra effort and time into Drupal and its development, because we care, believe in its success, because we like working with enthusiastic and passionate people and want to make something happen.
The road evidently led me to project-leading DrupalCon Copenhagen. I had the chance to be the link between the Drupal Association and the community. I considered it as part of my vision/understanding to represent the local community and to implement the maximum of their vision.
Everything, that I built until then, I didn’t want to let go. I was lucky to find someone like NodeOne, which offered me 50% of my work time to be dedicated to community efforts with NodeOne’s involvement.

In the meantime, there were a lot of things happening within the DA; staff got hired, among others an events manager and sponsor manager and DrupalCon, starting with DrupalCon Chicago, became more professionally organised, something more like a model for future DrupalCons to be built upon.
The Drupal Association needed more people to help with DrupalCons and I guess it was only a natural move to offer me a job as event coordinator.

I was very enthusiastic and motivated helping to better internal processes and documentation to make life easier for volunteers and to make DrupalCons even better for the community. However, there was little time (and little priority) to focus on long-term improvements. I had to focus on DrupalCon London, which had a higher priority.

I am not going to lie and say that everything was great, whilst working at the Drupal Association. There were misunderstandings, tensions, frustration, mis-communications, more frustration. I quickly realised, that I cannot do all I envisioned to do due to many reasons (no time and too many things, barriers, changes are hard).

Overall, I think, I have (had) a different approach on how to carry things forward. I think I always have considered myself as a representative for community interests and a link between the DA and the community volunteers, trying to implement and execute the conference to fulfil the needs and wishes of both sides. I also believe, that I have a very different approach in how to communicate and share information; I believe it is crucial to be as transparent as can be in an open source community. This makes it harder to manage people to get things done, true.

I guess it was time for me to go and to embrace something new. I am taking some time to reflect on what I want to do, whether it’ll be in Drupal or something entirely different. But just to make it clear: leaving the DA does not necessarily mean, that I’ll leave the Drupal community :-)

Despite what I wrote above (again, there is always good and bad), I learned a tremendous amount about working with other people, communication and processes. I thank the staff at the Drupal Association and DrupalCon volunteers for your knowledge, experience, support and wisdom in this journey.

A wonderful Christmas (or other) time!

Johan Falk (a NodeOner) is part of the committee for the community track at DrupalCon Chicago (chaired by Greg Dunlap aka Heyrocker and also a NodeOner) and he sent an email out to get suggestions for session topics.
Here are my two cents, and certainly only drafts of what the content could be:
Topic 1: Involvement of Drupal Association in the Drupal Community

• What it does and doesn't do
• Roles of Permanent Members and the Board
• What needs to be done
• DA's perception within communities (Why, how to improve/maintain it?)
• DA's internal restructuring
• DA becoming a US organisation?

Topic 2: Growth of an Open Source Community

• Why does Drupal Community work so well?
• Compare development of community growth with others
• Strengths and Weaknesses
• What are the opportunities?
• What are the threats?
• How to deal with the growth, do we need to restructure?
• What does this growth mean for the Drupal project?

Topic 3: Engaging people to become part a community

• Things that are done
• Things that need to be done
• Engaging people through DrupalCon and EU Camps
• Dealing with cultural differences
• Including everyone
• Code of Conduct

The past 6 months have been very lively, mixed and full of travelling.
I was the lead organiser for DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010 from May until September (and yes, I loved doing it a second time around after DrupalCon Paris), especially with a Viking team!
Then, I enjoyed some days off in the South of France and travelled far north to start working at NodeOne, where I have been now for a week (feels like a month already) and also attended DrupalCXO in Brussels the past weekend. You can read an extensive summary here.

Part of improving communication towards the Drupal community, is writing about is done within the DA.
Here three posts that you may have missed:

• Jacob Redding hired as interim General Manager
• Drupalcon SF Drupal Association Retreat Report
• 5 paid contracts available to help complete the Drupal.org redesign and CVS to Git migration

Thanks to the people working on those.

Right now there is still the Drupal Association retreat in San Francisco going on. I, among other stranded members in the EU, participated via Skype thanks to Cary Gordon (Director or Events).

The main focus of this get together is to define the objectives and focuses and what the DA should really do. This includes writing a new mission statement that will capture the essence of who, what, why and how.

There have also been short discussions about the issue of the trademark, local events, local associations as well as marketing and how the DA is perceived in EU and US. In a previous post, I mentioned a questionnaire conceived especially for this retreat. It turns out, we are all not so far from each other and identified all the same issues, that need resolving step by step. I guess we cannot forget that change doesn't happen over night, but that this is a good first step in a new direction.

It was harder and harder to follow the brainstorming and discussions from a distance, so I hope that there will be a public summary of things that have been discussed and decided upon.

As the ash cloud prevented me from going to DrupalCon San Francisco, I decided to join the DrupalVolCon in Antwerp at Krimson's office.

I took this opportunity to do a BoF session on getting feedback from the community directly on the Drupal Association. I based my questions on a questionnaire, that was devised for the Drupal Association retreat taking place today.

A lot of people were interested in the session, around 12 people attended from a total of 30.

After reading the current mission statement to the attendees, I asked what, in their opinion, the DA should be/do.

Many said that the DA should be a formal representation of the informal Drupal community towards other communities, industries, businesses. It should provide a forum for discussion, provide financing and assistance for DrupalCons, centralise knowledge and funds for DrupalCons and then the community adds its local twist to it. The drupal.org redesign was also mentioned as a focus of the DA. >> Read more

Trying to get lifestream of keynotes and possibly other sessions. As much as possible that is. Thanks to Brightcove and DrupalVolCon UK for collaboration.

Today, as part of the European education project E-trust, we went to a waste incineration company called IZAYDAS in Izmit, Turkey. 

And this is, among many other things from cultural behaviour to governmental programmes, what I learned today:

• IZAYDAS bought the facilities from a German company. (So there is a market for second hand waste incinerators.)
• The Turkish export their waste to German waste incinerator factories as it is cheaper to export than to buy and/or build own factories.
• German waste incinerator factories don't have enough waste!
• Italians export their waste to Germany as well.
• IZAYDAS is the first waste incineration company in Turkey. It is a pilot project and now Turkey wants to implement more factories like this one.
• All data from the factory is available online publicly.
• They do not accept radioactive or nuclear waste nor cadavers.

Men in Turkey retire after 22 years of working, women after 20 years. They get a lump sum plus monthly retirement money based on work income. But this might change soon.

Hi Everybody,

First up, we, the European DrupalCon Selection Taskforce, apologize for the delay and lack of communication.

Consider this account of what has happened and what we discussed about, an attempt to improve the process, that we have started for the very first time.

The Drupal Association changed the way that DrupalCon planning is done. In September, the European Regional DrupalCon Organizers formed and developed a set of guidelines and scorecards for managing location nominations. At the beginning of December, the Board of Directors approved the proposal to have this year's DrupalCon in Copenhagen. >> Read more

2010 is the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion in adult education. To start his year, the European Commission organised a conference in Brussels, Management Centre of Europe, over three days (26-28 January 2010).
It was the first time I attended a conference like this, and I wanted to take the opportunity to not only meet people and new potential partners, but also to promote eduate.eu. I was the first one to arrive at the Centre and, hence could see who was coming in, and who'd be my first target. :-)
Over the three days, I learned a lot about what those people would like to have and what they need. I questioned and listened to them in the plenary, in workshops and, of course, one on one.
I noticed what people want is a tool to disseminate their projects and outcomes, a tool to network and to see what others are up to, a tool that is simple and easy to use. >> Read more