About Me: 

I started building Drupal sites for educational institutions in 2010 with the help of Acquia and started moving all our hosted sites over to our new Drupal environment.  In 2011, I attended my first DrupalCon in Chicago and was absolutely blown away by the amazing talent pool it drew and was immediately hooked!  Since then, I've attended every North American DrupalCon and have witnessed the Drupal community mature and diversify.

Last year I ran for the Drupal Association Board but lost to the well-deserving Addison Berry.

Outside of my working world, I am a husband and father, sailor, backpacker, mud-running obstacle course nut, traveler, musician and all-around adventure seeker.  Life is too short and this world is too interesting not to explore it on many levels.

Let's just say I have a never-ending fascination with the new and am not afraid to dive into something that I truly believe in and I do believe that the Drupal Association can do a better job of attracting its fringe membership.

Questions for the Candidate

Jeff Veit’s picture
Jeff Veit:
Comment: 

What practical steps could you take as Director At Large to help fringes. How would/could you steer the platform as a Director? 

yareckon’s picture
yareckon:
Comment: 

Would you be open to gathering data about the developer experience in D8 for small shops?  What if the data show that Drupal 8 and object orientation is better for small shops?  Are you open to that?

tomgrandy’s picture
tomgrandy:
Comment: 

Jeff,

As a Director At Large representing the community, it is my intent to be a voice on the DA Board for the independent developers and very small shops.

Practical steps would be to present ideas related to helping people who have Drupal 6 or D7 sites get the help they need through training opportunities, be it online or in person, to make the migration less painful.  Also, I am a believer that a lighter version of Drupal 8 could be offered to site builders who do not need all the power of D8 for a small clients.  Not everyone is making massive sites on Drupal so the scalability on an enterprise scale is overkill for us.

If developers and site builders like us do not have a voice, the direction of Drupal as a platform of choice for everyone could be overlooked and become the platform of choice for the larger players and that is not how to grow we grow the Drupal community.

Thanks for the question!

Tom

tomgrandy’s picture
tomgrandy:
Comment: 

yareckon,

I would definitely be open to finding out about the developer experience with D8 in the smaller shops.

There is some trepidation that the jump to D8 is too large a learning curve for the smaller shops to take on.  I'd hate for site builders and developers to leave the community if there is data out there that shows small shops are having success with D8.

That would be a HUGE piece that needs to be advocated and highlighted, with real people in small shops, so that the perceived notion can be presented with true experiences from the community.

Great question!

Tom

Jeff Veit’s picture
Jeff Veit:
Comment: 

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

I am especially interested in your practical steps because the association "has no authority over the planning, functionality and development of the Drupal". How would you push or support the idea of a lighter version of Drupal when it's outside of the purview of the association?

Jeff

loloyd’s picture
loloyd:
Comment: 

It looks like you've got my vote.  I only hope that you would extend your sphere of influence beyond the western world.  Thank you for clearly stating your objectives.

I can very much relate to what you're saying about the performance of and complications brought by Drupal for small- and medium-sized sites.  The default PHP memory performance metrics of most of my default D7 installations render pages from 12 MB to 30+ MB, while my bare D8 rendering experiments range from 16 MB to 60+ MB.  I feel that these numbers are overkill for such simple solutions, and yet there are a burgeoning number of alternative frameworks out there that can churn out relatively the same renders at less than 2 MB.  I find this to be a major concern in the direction of the Drupal project as a whole.

I guess you could say that I've been fringing for at least years now here too.  Heck my association membership lists me for only over a year but my Drupal account is over 10 years old.

tomgrandy’s picture
tomgrandy:
Comment: 

loloyd

Thanks for your support!  I'm a supporter of Drupal extending far beyond the western world.  Right now it is imperative that the Drupal Association embrace countries around the world in order to grow the community.  The success of Drupal Con Asia is proof that we are growing communities and need to continue to support the efforts of local groups wherever they may be.

Your point about the memory performance shows why smaller projects don't need that kind of bloat.  Hopefully a lighter version will come out that will meet the needs of the smaller shops and sites that don't have to scale to enterprise levels.

Thanks!
Tom

tomgrandy’s picture
tomgrandy:
Comment: 

Jeff,

You are absolutely right.  I couldn't use my position on the board to promote a lighter version of Drupal for smaller organziations, but it is something that I do believe in personally.  I like the work that Jen Lampton and Nate Hoag have done with Backdrop CMS as a fork of Drupal, but as you pointed out, pushing the agenda is "outside of the purview of the association."

Thanks,

Tom

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