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0:00
Hello, and welcome to Tag1 Team Talks, the blog and podcast ofTag1 Consulting.
0:04
We're commemorating the 20th anniversary of Drupal with an interview series,
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featuring community leaders talking about their Drupal experiences.
0:12
I'm really excited to have Dawn Aly on the show today.
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Dawn is product manager for customer digital experience at Red Hat, and
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she brings a really fresh, new and unique perspective to the series.
0:23
I'm Michael Meyers, the managing director of Tag1.
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Tag1 is the number two all time contributor to Drupal.
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We build and manage large-scale applications for Fortune 500s and other
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organizations in every sector using Drupal as well as many other technologies.
0:38
We're also one of the few Drupal 7 extended support providers,
0:41
and we can help you run Drupal 7. After it reaches end of life next year.
0:45
Please reach out if you want to learn more. So let's kick it off.
0:49
Uh, please welcome me in joining Dawn to the show.
0:52
Dawn is the person that you go to when you want to talk about why Drupal's a
0:56
really great fit for your organization, for your projects, for your products.
1:00
Prior to joining Red Hat, as the product manager for customer digital
1:04
experience, she was VP of digital strategy at Mediacurrent, which
1:08
I'm sure all of you have heard of. It's one of the most well-known Drupal agencies out there.
1:13
Uh, she also has a lot of experience in the creative side of things, both
1:17
from her time at Mediacurrent and through her work as a brand manager
1:20
at the Rise Creative Group, she's a certified scrum product owner.
1:24
Uh, as far as I know it on the first CSPO on the show, which
1:28
is another exciting thing. And, um, uh, she's also given many talks at, at many conferences,
1:34
including DrupalCon uh, on topics like GDPR compliance, content
1:39
strategy, analytics, and SEO.
1:41
Uh, so there's a lot, a lot to talk about.
1:44
Uh, Dawn, thank you so much for joining me today and welcome to the show.
1:49
Super excited to be here. Thank you for that really warm introduction and having me.
1:55
Definitely. Um, so when I was putting together some notes for the show, uh, I was looking
2:00
at your Drupal.org profile, uh, and I noticed that you set it up around
2:04
eight years ago in a, roughly 2013.
2:07
But then I also looked at your resume and I was like, wait a minute.
2:11
She has been working with Drupal for so many more years.
2:15
And so I'm wondering, you know, why, uh, why is there that multi-year gap between
2:20
when you first started using Drupal and when you first created that profile?
2:24
Yeah, I know it's um, so first it took me forever to make my profile.
2:31
I am not an engineer. So for the longest time I felt like it would be really weird for me to be on D.o.
2:40
And I didn't always see myself represented in the Drupal community.
2:44
So I think I finally jumped in when my DrupalCon Austin talk was accepted.
2:50
It was about how to get the most ROI out of your Drupal website.
2:53
So again, not developer centric.
2:57
Uh, I made the cut and I also remember very specifically a meeting with Dave
3:03
Terry, founder of Mediacurrent and Adam Wade, our marketing director at the
3:07
time saying, Dawn just make the profile.
3:11
Um, so I think that was the nudge that I needed and the validation I needed
3:16
to just jump in and make it happen.
3:23
That's really interesting because you know, coming from an engineering
3:26
background and you know, um, I'm not always attuned to these things.
3:31
Do you think that we've made progress as a community?
3:34
You know, do you think people come to drupal.org today and
3:37
say, Woah, this is for engineers.
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Like, um, you know,
3:44
Okay. So even women.drupal.org.
3:48
There are a lot clearer paths into contributing that just were
3:53
not there at the time when I was getting started in Drupal.
3:57
It's much easier to jump in with editing content or testing.
4:02
Um, I see a lot more diversity in the talks at DrupalCon too,
4:06
which has been really nice, but imposter syndrome is a real thing.
4:12
I had a double-take even when I was invited to this podcast, I
4:16
almost emailed you to be like, you know, I'm not a developer, right.
4:22
That was one of the main reasons.
4:25
I, well, first of all, I was told to invite you.
4:31
I don't want to give away at the end of the show, uh, and what I do, but,
4:35
but you know, I will, I ask everybody. Uh, you know, you have to volunteer one person who would it be?
4:42
And James Rutherford at Pantheon was like, didn't even hesitate.
4:46
It was like, oh, you got to talk to Dawn.
4:48
And so I was like, okay. And I, and I looked you up and I was like, this is, this is awesome.
4:53
We need, we need more perspectives.
4:55
And, you know, and, and I, I think that, you know, I'm as guilty of
4:58
this, as many people, you get. So in the zone of here are the people I know, and I, I tend to gravitate
5:03
towards, you know, a lot of engineers.
5:06
And so I was really excited that you said that you would join us because, you
5:10
know, you, you have that perspective. It never occurred to me that Drupal wasn't friendly.
5:15
And as soon as you said, it was like, oh, of course not.
5:20
Um, and we've made, I'm really glad to hear that we've made
5:23
inroads because there has been so much effort in the community to.
5:28
One encourage people to do more contribution to show people that code
5:33
is not the only way to contribute that, to thrive as a community.
5:36
We need contribution to all these areas to, to bring in the
5:40
talks like yours, to DrupalCon. So I'm really happy to hear that we're, that we've really made a lot
5:45
of progress over the last, you know, eight or so years in doing that.
5:50
And it's always going to be a little weird for people like me, cause
5:54
I don't fit in 100% everywhere.
5:59
So I'm not an engineer, so I don't always fit in those hardcore engineering spaces.
6:07
And I have a strong preference for open source and Drupal
6:11
as content management system. So I don't always fit in, in the more dogmatic branding circles, either,
6:18
who believe to be a real designer.
6:21
You shouldn't care about the technology, let alone prefer something.
6:27
It's a tricky space to be in, but I think people like me, my profile does technical
6:33
marketing, strategic people it's growing.
6:36
So it's been really nice that Drupal has been at a place of the very welcoming.
6:42
That's great. Well, we need more people like you in the community in tech in general.
6:47
Uh, we're certainly open, open source at heart is how I like to call it.
6:52
Um, so how did you first come to discover Drupal?
6:57
It's kind of a long story. So back in 2010, I was working for this really boutique digital
7:05
agency called rise creative group.
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We were out of downtown Orlando.
7:10
We were doing cool branding for people like Grant Hill and
7:15
companies like Hart and Huntington, the Florida Bar Foundation.
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And we were a branding company.
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So custom was like our thing for a long time, like custom design, custom
7:28
mobile apps, custom website.net is cool.
7:33
So for the website in particular, um, it became a frustration
7:38
point for a lot of people to have to go through the development
7:42
team, to make a content change.
7:44
The development team hated it. Customers did that want to wait to get in our queue, wait to get the content change.
7:51
So we started looking at what technologies existed and looking at
7:57
content management systems in the market. At the time there were three main players and we picked Drupal.
8:04
It gave us all the things we needed. Let us still scratch the custom itch, you know, and enabled us to
8:12
help customers build their business really fast because we weren't doing
8:17
everything from the ground up and on a really reliable technology.
8:23
So that was the first kind of taste.
8:27
And is that what got you hooked on open-source because, I mean, you went
8:31
from there to Mediacurrent, which was really, you know, hardcore into
8:36
Drupal and open source and from there to Red Hat, which is, you know, the,
8:40
the pioneer of so much of open source.
8:43
So it's crazy to go from, you know, the, the sort of bespoke boutique to, you know,
8:52
I know my career path has been so strange, so I feel like moving from
8:58
rise, where I had to spend a lot of time selling people on why Drupal was
9:05
a good idea to, um, Mediacurrent, where I doubled down hardcore, on Drupal,
9:12
um, you know, the people coming to Mediacurrent, especially at that point
9:16
in time, they had already chosen Drupal.
9:20
And they were coming to find a really strong Drupal technology shop.
9:25
So we were outsourcing our strategy and design work, um, either to be done in
9:31
house by our clients or by somebody else.
9:35
So Dave took a big chance on me and that we found the strategy
9:41
department at Mediacurrent. And I think that's when I really super fell in love with Drupal
9:50
because man, we were growing so fast.
9:55
I was learning so much from those people.
9:59
And when I was looking for my next career move, I knew I wanted to
10:03
stay open source and I knew I wanted to stay in the Drupal ecosystem.
10:10
And so Red Hat was like a lot of wins for me.
10:13
Um, Red Hat's, obviously strong open source and all of the web properties,
10:18
including the one that I manage. Run on Drupal.
10:22
So the dug into Drupal hardcore
10:26
Real quick, uh, tell us a little bit about the Drupal usage at
10:29
Red Hat, because they've been a really long time user of Drupal.
10:33
I mean, I want to say like a decade in my mind, maybe more
10:37
that they'd been using Drupal. Yeah, that sounds about right.
10:42
So any time we do anything at Red Hat, we look to start with open source,
10:48
like literally, everything about red. How does open source?
10:50
The way we make decisions is open source.
10:52
The technology we use is open source.
10:55
It's a Drupal made a lot of sense for us.
10:59
Um, the property that I work with primarily is our
11:03
customer portal, massive site.
11:06
You can see it at access.Redhat.com and it is a mixture at the moment
11:11
of Drupal seven and Drupal nine.
11:15
As we go through our migration process. But yeah, all the portal properties are Drupal.
11:21
Very cool. So from your perspective, what's the best part about being a
11:27
part of the Drupal community? I think there's something really special about that shared Drupal experience.
11:36
And I guess it's so obvious that at one point, especially when my husband and I
11:40
were first dating, he could pick up on it.
11:43
Um, I would introduce him to someone and he could really reliably tell
11:48
if this was somebody from the Drupal community or somebody not.
11:52
I guess the like energy exchange is really undeniable.
11:56
Um, or maybe we just see like other people, uh, who
12:02
just, who resonate with us. Like we have the same sense of humor or the same sense of.
12:09
I don't know. I don't know what it is that makes it so undeniable.
12:13
Um, Was it the DrupalCon socks, the t-shirt, the
12:18
plushy that, that gave us away
12:24
It could be the undeniable love of karaoke.
12:27
Um, it could be a lot of things, but it's, I guess it's abundantly clear even
12:33
for people outside of the community.
12:35
And, you know, the, I feel like my longest friends, I met somehow through Drupal.
12:45
So whether that's in a co-working situation where we're colleagues or even
12:50
a vendor, client relationship, there's something so sticky about the Drupal
12:56
community that I love without Drupal.
12:59
I wouldn't have those close relationships. I got it.
13:03
I'm sure. I mean, if a sociologist hasn't studied the community, they should, um, I'm going
13:09
speak, digging and see if we can get someone in because you know, it, there
13:14
is something amazing about the people.
13:17
And I don't know, I could never put my finger on what differentiates it from all
13:22
these other communities that I'm a part of and why that is always the case with
13:28
people that I talk to about Drupal or
13:40
What is your, uh, favorite Drupal memory or experience?
13:46
So I have two. Um, the first one is I went to the Pantheon party for DrupalCon Austin
13:54
and not just to set the stage, I still had that imposter syndrome.
14:00
Going strong, even though I had just given my ROI talk earlier in the day, and
14:06
I remember walking in to this party out there, party, beautiful party live band.
14:13
And before I could move towards somebody that I knew this delightful stranger
14:19
came up to me and was like Drupal.
14:23
So I was like, yeah, Drupal.
14:26
And he goes, Drupal! It gives me thishuge high five!.
14:30
And I don't know, sometimes I still think about that moment
14:32
because it was such an icebreaker.
14:35
I don't even know this person's name, but it just fills me with so much joy.
14:41
So that was, that was number one that like instant acceptance, you're
14:44
part of a Drupal community you're in.
14:48
Um, so that gave me all the warm fuzzies and then.
14:54
Professionally. I think my favorite memory was going to Manhattan to pitch a
15:00
really large insurance company.
15:03
They hadn't picked Drupal yet. They were looking for someone to help them take on an entirely
15:09
new direct consumer market.
15:12
So it was me as the VP of digital strategy, Dave Terry, as the, of course,
15:17
founding partner of Mediacurrent, but also complete genius when it comes to sales.
15:22
Uh, Kevin Bass Rabb, who at the time was VP of delivery and Chris Doherty,
15:28
um, as our creative director, so real tiny tight team and the odds
15:33
were stacked so high against us.
15:35
And we nailed that pitch.
15:37
Like we just nailed it. And that was some of my favorite times that Mediacurrent, because it was getting
15:44
in the trenches with a customer to learn what they were trying to achieve
15:47
with their business and give up those moments of clarity or inspiration.
15:53
So in this case, it was telling them something new about their current
15:57
customers and helping them reach an untapped segment, because we were really
16:02
trying so hard to empower customers with data, to make smart decisions for
16:09
their business, to help their customers, which makes a lot of sense, you know,
16:15
in an agency environment or even in a customer environment, like where I
16:19
am at Red Hat growing our customer's business has been the best way to
16:24
grow your own business because we depend on each other to be successful.
16:28
Like we need our customers to be successful.
16:31
So they continue to come back and invest in us.
16:34
And we then get the privilege of continuing to improve the lives of
16:39
everyone that interacts with their brand. It's that kind of, um, reach that you can't get in other industries.
16:50
I think that's one of the favorite things about what I get to do is you know,
16:55
that interaction with organizations and be able to solve problems in,
16:59
in, in meaningful ways and see how it benefits them and their users.
17:03
Um, I also think I finally figured out why your husband, you know, understands
17:08
who all the Drupal people are because we're walking down the street.
17:10
Drupal! Drupal! Someone says, yes, we're like, high five!
17:20
Our, our secret handshake. Isn't a handshake. It's, it's a high five.
17:24
Drupal high five.
17:27
Oh man. That's awesome. That's a great way to be greeted.
17:29
Um, Its so amazing.
17:32
Like, yeah, that's the best way to welcome them.
17:36
Welcome somebody in I'm going to try that in my next client pitch.
17:47
So at the top of the show, we talked a little bit about this, you know, Drupal.
17:52
Contributions to Drupal go way beyond code.
17:55
And while code is really important and gets a lot of the credit Drupal, wouldn't
18:00
be Drupal unless people contributed documentation and, and where we actually
18:06
need the most help are the areas where you're an expert, you know, Drupal needs
18:11
to be better marketed, better positioned, you know, we're, we're, we, we desperately
18:16
need more people with your background to come to the website and say, not only do
18:20
I belong here, but I can really help here.
18:23
Um, so I'm curious what your first contribution experience was like,
18:29
you know what it was, how it went.
18:32
Um, I don't know what you remember around it.
18:36
Um, so I don't have a commit to my name.
18:39
I remember trying to do Drupal ladder and like curling into a ball.
18:44
Crying years and years ago.
18:47
So my definition of contribution is different.
18:53
Um, my first one was hosting Drupal meet-ups in Orlando and
18:58
giving free marketing workshops. So that's where I really got to know Drupal and help close the gap, which at
19:07
the time was, felt like an ocean between marketing, business people, and Drupal.
19:16
The unsung heroes, these, these local community organizers, uh, I've talked
19:22
about this and some of the interviews in the past to me, they are the
19:25
backbone of this community, you know, every well, you know, not so much
19:29
with the pandemic, but, uh, you know, historically, you know, every week,
19:34
every night, every city, there was a Drupal meetup somewhere in the world.
19:38
And because of this robust local community, uh, I think that's a
19:44
critical reason as to, you know, what drove Drupal to the, you
19:48
know, the success its seeing today. And, um, you know, being a local community organizer, uh, is, is really challenging.
19:56
It takes a tremendous amount of effort and, um, you know, uh, you
20:01
guys deserve tremendous credit for, for doing all of that.
20:05
Um, its been super fun.
20:07
Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you. Nonsense, um, of all of the contributions to Drupal that you've made.
20:15
Is there something that you're like, oh, I did that, like, I'm really proud of that.
20:20
Yeah. So it's, it's impossible for me to detangle the work that I contributed to
20:28
Drupal the big organization versus the work that we've done with customers.
20:34
And even though I love the thrill of launching some completely new
20:38
high stakes, high stress, I think if I were to pick just one thing,
20:45
I think it would be the strategy work we did with Truth Initiative.
20:49
So the mission of truth initiative is to spread truth about smoking vaping,
20:54
nicotine, and that hit home for me.
20:58
My dad smoked his whole life and he died from lung cancer because of it.
21:05
So working with Truth Initiative.
21:09
It made me feel really connected to him.
21:12
Cause at that, you know, my dad died when I was a kid.
21:15
Um, so being able to help them get that research in front of as many people
21:22
as possible and having that instant gratification, like instant in three
21:28
months, gratification of seeing in hard numbers, more people reach their website,
21:37
increases in organic search, 600 new keywords and search engine result pages.
21:43
It was so personal for me and so meaningful, like that felt like
21:50
such a win to be able to help them reach that, that new audience.
22:02
It's one of the most fulfilling parts of what I get to do, um, is when, you know,
22:08
like, I, I love all of our clients and, you know, and, and we get to work on some
22:15
really exciting projects with clients.
22:17
But when we do something that, that, that helps make the world a better
22:22
place that helps, you know, people, you know, be better like that is
22:28
fulfilling on a level that, you know, it just feels, you know, so to have
22:34
that personal connection, you know, in addition to, to that, Um, it is amazing.
22:40
And I think that, you know, I think one of the things that I've always loved
22:44
about Mediacurrent is what you described.
22:47
Like they did it, right. You know, the, the way that you give back to and contribute to open source
22:52
is by scratching your own itch by, you know, doing things in an open source way
22:57
and through the work that they did for their do work, they do for their clients.
23:01
You know, they contributed back to open source.
23:03
They still are a top contributor to the platform and that's the way it should be.
23:08
It's not an afterthought, it's the way that you do things.
23:11
And so I think it's great that, that your, uh, favorite contribution is
23:17
inextricably linked to what you did as a commercial company in the ecosystem.
23:23
If everybody did that, Drupal would be, you know, orders of magnitude
23:28
greater, and that's where we need to be.
23:31
Um, so what about, uh, Uh, contribution that you wish you could hide or, or
23:40
this is all, this is one of my favorite questions because everybody sees, you
23:44
know, your success, you know, and, and, and, and, and not everybody gets to see
23:48
some of the things that got you there. And I think it's important to share, you know, that we all learned some lessons.
23:54
Um, you know, so if you were to look back, you know, is there something
23:58
where, you know, you're turning a little red or you're like, oh God,
24:00
I, I can't believe I did that. Or I really wish I could change that.
24:05
Oh, yes. I will probably turn red just in telling you this story.
24:11
So I have a bit of a Type A personality, and I agonize over
24:18
preparing for big presentations.
24:21
So for my first DrupalCon talk, I remember editing my slides
24:26
up until the very last minute. And of course, the night before I had the brilliant idea to talk about marketing
24:34
automation, it was a win-win fit perfectly into the ROI talk that I was already
24:40
moving towards at that point in time.
24:43
Um, I think this was still in Drupal seven.
24:46
We had just flipped over the marketing automation modules, like Pardot,
24:51
Marketo, Eloqua into Drupal seven.
24:54
And so I started adding the slides.
24:58
Did I talk about this ahead of time with Adam Wade or Jay Callicott?
25:03
The people pioneering those integrations with Drupal?
25:08
No, I did not.
25:12
Did I get a designer to help me make these flow charts and graphs?
25:16
Nope. It was just me in my conference room typing away for these slides.
25:26
Was it a total disaster? So no, the content was solid and I think it hit the audience, but I think
25:38
I gave Adam Wade a mild panic attack.
25:41
The moment I flipped to the slide to this new marketing automation flow chart
25:47
that he hadn't seen before, I can still picture the way his eyes opened so wide.
25:55
So I learned some lessons through that process.
26:00
I you're, you're touching a, a personal note for me because you made me think,
26:05
I can't remember off the top of my head, Lullabot you used to have like
26:08
a conference series and it was like their first or second one of them.
26:12
And they invited me to speak and it was the first time I'd
26:15
ever spoken at like a big event. And I put together a presentation and I don't think it went as well as yours did.
26:24
And I remember like, being so grateful for Jeff Eaton.
26:27
I think I finished like at least 15 minutes early, maybe even more, because
26:31
I was like so nervous and speaking so fast and like, and he like peppered
26:36
me with questions and, you know, got into at least, you know, at least 10
26:39
minutes early, but it was, oh yeah.
26:43
I really hope that wasn't recorded Those people in the audience.
26:47
They're like pure gold. The ones that can feed you the easy questions and let you run out the clock?
26:54
Bless them.. I think
26:56
one of the secrets to giving a great presentation is to
26:59
have a plant in the audience. Someone who could like break the ice for that first question, because
27:06
then the rest of the audience goes.
27:09
Yes. Definitely.
27:13
So when you think of all the things that you've learned along the way, is
27:20
there something that you learned the hard way about Drupal where you're
27:23
like, I really wish someone had told me about this or I want to share
27:28
with other people because damn like,
27:32
Yes. Oh man. It, especially knowing my background coming from that hardcore branding
27:40
focus where, you know, you almost wore it a badge of honor, when you
27:46
could bend something to your will. The lesson I learned, the hard way is.
27:52
Don't fight it. Don't fight the system.
27:55
If you can use something the way it was intended, that is a bazillion
27:59
percent, what you should do, because there are people who put a ton of
28:03
thought into how that module or distribution or whatever works.
28:09
And if it fits your use case, awesome, don't fight it.
28:12
Don't customize it to over-engineer it spend those innovation tokens wisely
28:18
and do it on something that's going to really move the needle for your market.
28:23
So on the flip, my advice to anyone working on Drupal projects
28:30
is don't be an order taker from your clients or stakeholders.
28:34
Don't just say yes and make something that you were going to hate.
28:38
making part of your job has gotta be to partner with that person
28:43
to figure out the problems.
28:45
Those people are really trying to solve, because that's where
28:49
we're going to see the most value. And where I am now in my role, it is the best part of my day when
28:56
somebody tells me no and offers to give me a better path forward, because
29:01
I know I don't know everything.
29:05
And to have that conversation where we make the trade-offs.
29:09
Like, if you go down this route, these are the dangers.
29:12
If you go down this road, here are the other dragons you may encounter.
29:16
That makes me feel really good about the ultimate decision we make,
29:21
because we've explored everything.
29:26
I've never liked being told. No, but it is much better when you come to me with a better idea, you
29:36
say no, but I've got a great idea.
29:39
Um, know, I think that's, I think that's really great advice for people because.
29:45
Especially given, you know, the way that the community operates, you know, uh,
29:49
you know, you, you can't fight things.
29:52
You know, it really is a good, good point.
29:54
You got to work within the system to get to where you want to be.
29:57
And, um, you know, the, the more effort and energy you spend trying
30:01
to fight it, the more you're just tiring yourself out and get nowhere.
30:05
So, given your background in strategy, the fact that you've been in the
30:12
community for over 10 years, what do you think the biggest threat to Drupal is?
30:20
So I don't worry as much about people choosing Drupal for the first time.
30:28
I worry about retaining and deepening the usage of Drupal and in existing adopters.
30:36
Businesses are always, re-evaluating your budgets, spends, allocations.
30:41
And now that I'm client side, I'm more aware of discussions happening around
30:47
technology choices than ever before.
30:50
And when you are staring down a huge migration from Drupal seven to Drupal
30:56
nine, and it's going to take multiple quarters, or even a years, businesses
31:02
are naturally going to be evaluating.
31:04
If this is a good idea, or if this is the opportunity to pivot technologies into
31:10
something that is easier, we all know there's no easy button in this space.
31:17
Like it takes a long time because you probably customized your Drupal seven
31:22
sites into the ground, but the people who are controlling the dollars, don't always
31:29
have that story and awareness and context.
31:35
That's my worry. No, I, I think you hit the nail on the head.
31:38
You know, I've always thought of it as like the revolving door problem of Drupal.
31:43
And it's great that eight has meaningfully addressed in solve this
31:47
because historically every version of Drupal was a different platform.
31:51
And to migrate from the previous to the new was like migrating
31:55
from anything to anything. And so it forced you to step back and say, should I be doing this?
32:01
What else is out there? Um, and so, you know, the easy upgrade path, um, and then the other thing,
32:08
you know, it's great to hear you say, you know, uh, you know, w when we
32:11
think of like a sales perspective, when you're at an organization, you
32:14
think of like, you know, landing and expanding, you know, closing an account
32:18
is extremely challenging and difficult.
32:21
Once you're, you know, you're in an organization and you're proving your
32:24
worth and showing success, you can expand into that organization and
32:28
grow your business in a much more cost-effective and scalable manner.
32:33
And it's, it's a really great idea that we. Uh, foster more in the community and it kinda, you know, like kind of blew
32:39
my mind when you said it, because we, we talk about this all the time at the
32:42
organizations we work at, you know, we're dealing with our customers, but I've
32:45
never heard someone even at Acquia when their whole mantra was land and expand.
32:50
I don't think I ever heard anybody say, this is how we need to approach
32:53
Drupal community standpoint.
32:57
Um, so it's really interesting how, you know, I, I think that that's something
33:02
that we really got to double down on and, and, and, and get more of.
33:06
Um, so where do you see Drupal going in the future?
33:12
You know, if you had, uh, you know, uh, look down the telescope, if you could
33:15
see, you know, even, you know, five, 10 years into the future, what do you see.
33:24
So I personally think Drupal is going to keep lowering the barrier to entry
33:31
for marketing, rich content, editorial experiences, and design focused people.
33:39
Those groups are becoming more technical and there are often the
33:44
people responsible for showing the ROI on digital investments.
33:49
So enabling those types of people to iterate really quickly will help
33:55
them grow their business, make them a believer and justify the investment
34:00
in Drupal over something else. Wow.
34:04
Awesome. All right. We're I can't believe how much, how quickly time has flown
34:09
by just looking at the clock. And I'm like, oh my. So I'm going to jump to the lightning round a couple of
34:15
questions before we wrap up, uh, what comes to your mind immediately?
34:19
Uh, first question, who are your Drupal mentors?
34:23
I knew this was going to come. And I agonized over my answer here because I know as soon as we hang up, I'm
34:30
going to think of like 15 billion other people that I should have mentioned.
34:35
So I'm going to try to nail this.
34:39
So, uh, uh, number one, Dave Terry, had a profound impact on my career.
34:45
As a mentor. He let me bounce ideas off of him and gave me the room to try new
34:51
things like found a whole department.
34:55
And I learned so much about sales through his leadership.
34:59
James Rutherford is beyond high on my list.
35:04
I would literally follow James into a hurricane if he
35:07
told me that was a good idea. So I've just seen him do the impossible from leading the architecture for
35:16
really high profile enterprise Drupal websites to turning really
35:22
unprofitable projects into profitable projects while improving customer
35:29
satisfaction and driving sustainable revenue while supporting the team.
35:36
So I, I think the world of James, his superpower is really being
35:41
able to set the context for why a conversation matters broadly and
35:47
specifically to the people there.
35:50
And he's a true consultant. He won't just tell you what you want to hear either.
35:54
So I feel like every conversation with James is like a master class
35:58
in how to be a great human being. And I have also asked unending questions to all of the ridiculously smart people.
36:06
I have been lucky to work with, like Melissa Bent, Brian Gibson, Damien McKenna
36:12
Bob Kepford, ----------,---------, Alex McCabe.
36:16
So many I could keep going.
36:19
That's I think the best part about the Drupal community so far
36:23
is they haven't turned me away from asking so many questions.
36:28
It's been amazing. It's a, it's hard.
36:31
I, I love asking that question, but I know it's hard because it's like an
36:34
Oscar speech you're like, and I, and I left out all these other amazing people.
36:38
Like I would never be here without, uh, it's.
36:40
It's impossible to answer. Um, do you have a favorite or least favorite Drupal module or even feature
36:53
a lot of favorites or least favorites? A lot of favorites.
36:59
I feel like over time, most of the modules that I've really cared
37:02
about have been sucked into core.
37:06
And that's been really great to see. Um,
37:13
I know you said you were a big fan of a DrupalCon
37:15
Austin, and we've heard a lot about the Pantheon parties.
37:19
Excuse me. The recurring theme on the show.
37:22
Um, uh, is, is that your favorite, uh, Drupal Conference or a camp?
37:27
Uh, do you have another awesome Drupal conference or camp experience?
37:32
I think DrupalCon Nashville might've been my favorite.
37:35
Okay. So DrupalCon Austin had that cool bull in the middle of the conference.
37:40
And so that was really fun. Can't miss out on the bull, but the fun thing about Nashville, I feel
37:47
like the karaoke in particular was.
37:52
Incredible. Just incredible karaoke, incredible music scene.
37:58
And the birds of a feather for Nashville were just really
38:06
amazing, great conversations.
38:09
Um, that's another thing I hope this was never recorded with some of
38:15
the karaoke and Nashville pictures.
38:19
Oh my God. You knew, uh, as you were saying that like visions pop in the back
38:25
of my mind that I had completely forgotten about, um, that, yeah.
38:30
Wow. That was a really good time.
38:33
Um, all right, one more question. Before we wrap it up, the penultimate question here, uh, where do you
38:39
go to learn more about Drupal? Um, the honest answer is I go to, uh, either Google Hangouts or slack.
38:50
So the communities in which I know friends and colleagues for Drupal and Google,
39:00
it's honest, but that's where I go.
39:04
And I do tend to prefer answers coming out of agencies and of course, drupal.org
39:12
and the, the dishonest answer is, the Tag1 Team Talks?.
39:20
All right, last question. Uh, pass the torch.
39:23
Uh, James Rutherford said, Hey, you gotta, you gotta speak to Dawn.
39:28
Um, who should I interview next?
39:31
So first I hope I made it worth your while.
39:33
And this has been a fun talk. Um, second, I would probably say Jason Smith, I feel like Jason is kind of
39:42
famous for his work on weather.com.
39:46
He's also solving some of our most complex Drupal challenges at Red Hat.
39:51
And with interviewing Jason, you get his like off the charts, genius brain,
39:58
and undoubtedly, a ton of dad jokes.
40:00
Like I think it's a win-win for you. Um, sold!
40:04
I'm a big fan of dad jokes and I had a couple of chances to meet him
40:09
when he was working on some of the weather.com stuff with you guys.
40:12
And I mean, that was just, you know, that was such a milestone for
40:16
Drupal, uh, such an amazing project.
40:19
And, and we, we definitely need to talk about that experience more
40:22
and, and talk to him in general. I will be sure to reach out, uh, Dawn, I wish we had more time.
40:27
This was awesome. I really enjoyed chatting with you time flew by.
40:31
And, uh, there, there's so much more, I'd love to talk about.
40:34
This was a really great perspective. We need more, uh, folks on the show that can, you know, give
40:39
us the insights that you have. I really appreciate you joining me today, uh, to all our viewers.
40:45
We really appreciate you joining us as well. If you liked this talk, please remember to up-vote subscribe and share it out.
40:51
You can check out all of our other interviews in this
40:53
series of tag1.com/twenty.
40:56
You can also check out our past Tag1 Team Talks and the latest technology
41:00
[email protected]/talks, uh, as always we'd love your feedback, topics, suggestions,
41:06
who do you think we should interview next? You can reach out to us at [email protected].
41:11
That's tag number 1.com.
41:13
Dawn, thank you so much. And to all listeners again, thank you for tuning in take care.
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