 All right, away we go. So hello everyone and thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to our first Meet the Candidate session for the 2015 at-large Board of Directors seat that is available. I'm Holly Ross and I'm the Executive Director of the Drupal Association. And I'm really thrilled this year at the turnout both in terms of the candidates. We had lots of candidates from all over the world which is really amazing. But also thrilled with the turnout today. We have more spectators than candidates which has not been my experience in past Drupal Association elections. Yeah, so grateful that so many people are out there and taking an interest and really wanting to learn about the folks who are running for the seat. So hopefully today's session will help you do that. We are going to record today's session. I'll make that available up on YouTube when the session ends. So you'll see the link in the blog post and in the elections section of our website change from join the meeting to watch the recording. So take a look out for that when we're done. And here's just a few logistics for everyone today. So all of our spectators, not the candidates, but everyone else who's just listening in, you guys are muted automatically to keep the background noise to a minimum. But that does not mean that we do not want to hear from you. In fact, it's just the opposite. Today is your chance to get some questions out there. So we want you to ask them. You've got a Q&A section of your control panel there. So you can feel free to share a question that you have for a particular candidate or all the candidates in that Q&A section. And I'll be monitoring those to make sure that you got to. I'll be monitoring those to make sure that we ask them. And as I said, I haven't had the experience of so many folks listening in live before. So hopefully we get to them all. I'll do my best. If we don't get them to them all, I have a record of all the questions. And I will do my best to get them posted up on the candidate pages so people can respond in their profiles. So here's how things are going to work once we get past these logistic announcements. I'm just going to let you know briefly who's on the line. We have a lot of candidates, so we don't have time to do longer candidate statements, as I was hoping we would at the beginning. But I'll introduce each of the candidates that are here and share their profiles, just so you know, we're not going to have a lot of other visuals today. So tune in with your ears. And then once we get past the introductions, we'll switch to Q&A format. I will kick off with a couple of questions and then work in your questions as we go. Again, we're recording everything, so if you miss it or want to share it, it'll be up within a couple of hours of the session. And you'll be seeing that both in the blog post at asoce.drupal.org, with all of the announcements about the Meet the Candidate sessions, as well as in the candidate's election section of our website. And just a reminder that voting will open on March 9. So that's the day we're waiting for. It runs through the 20th, so there's plenty of time to help encourage your fellow Drupalers to please get out the vote. We definitely want to see a huge increase in turnout this year. So get ready for that. Put it on your calendars now. All right, any questions from the candidates before we get started? OK. Then, oh. Oh, yeah, you're going to pick us out? Oh, do we need to raise our hand? Oh, right. So when we, when I put the questions out, feel free to just jump in. There are, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. There's eight or nine of you on the line right now. So you may step on each other when you get started. But as I mentioned in the email, I'll give you about 90 seconds to respond. And then I'll open it up and see who's ready to go next. And so everyone will have a chance to answer every question. That make sense? And the question is going to be from you and the community as well. That's right. So I'll be watching the questions come in through the question part of the control panel. And I'll feed those to you guys. But all the questions will come from my voice. All right. What else? OK, well, then one other reminder that someone asked for in the question section. We are electing one person to serve a two-year term on the board. And that's the term that they will serve. They'll serve alongside Matthew Sanders, the other at-large board director who's elected in the last community election. And the role of the board is an obviously really important one. The board is the keeper of the strategy for the Drupal Association. So they help set the direction. And that's obviously a really important role to play. And in addition to setting that direction, they also are responsible bottom line for the fiscal soundness of the organization. So they are going to be reviewing financials on a monthly basis, sorry, quarterly basis, ensuring the association is on track. They're also bottom line responsible for making sure that the association is just doing its work well. So in compliance with all the important laws that govern our work and that we are doing our work also in the spirit of our values and in alignment with our mission and vision. So the board plays a really important role. It is sometimes tactical. Sometimes board members will come down and do things like help make a fundraiser go or sit down and help us work through a marketing plan. But most of the work is at that strategic level. Is this the right direction for the organization? Those are the kinds of conversations we tend to focus on. So that's the work. And one other quick reminder. Candidates, when you do begin to answer a question, it'd be great if you use your name because we don't know who you are. So like, hey, this is Adam. And here's my response. Yada, yada, yada. All right, I think we got a couple of questions and reminders out of the way there. I'm ready to dive into questions. Let's do it. OK, so the first question is, what is the most critical issue facing the project, the Drupal project today, and what do you think the role of the association should be in contributing to its solution? So what's the most critical issue facing the project? Did you want to do a film production of everybody? Oh, I forgot. Michael, I'm sorry. Yeah. I didn't mean it. I mean, we can start with questions, no problem. I'm totally not following my own steps. OK, here we go. Are you ready for the intros? I'm going to do them for Rails. OK. All right. So here's what we got. Our first candidate, I think these are vaguely alphabetical order by last name, Addison Berry. Addison works in Lullabot, or she's been a long time contributor at Lullabot. She's been part of the community for a really long time. And she has made also an amazing personal journey. She lives in Denmark. She's an expat there. And has played a lot of different roles. She's been, I think, if I remember correctly, started with some documentation edits, right, and has moved around and done lots of different contribution. So Addison is our first candidate here today. We also have Alper. Alper, I don't know how to say your last name. How do you say that? It's Guccher. Guccher? Yeah. OK. And you are very faint, so you're going to have to speak up a lot when it's your turn. So Alper is an interesting candidate as well from Turkey, which I think is really exciting. And he runs Polygon Interactive and has been working on Drupal since D6. Ani Gupta is representing India here today. He has founded, I think he's worked in the community for a number of years. Oh, yes, since 2004, back in Drupal four days, and founded a shop in Delhi. And so he works at Accelerant now in India. Adam Hill has been another, you guys are all longtime Drupalers, so I guess that's redundant at this point. And Adam's played a number of different roles in the community. He runs an agency, but he also has been involved heavily in Drupal cons and the Drupal community working group. So we also have on the line Victor, Victor Lewandowski. Victor is based in the Ukraine, luckily Western Ukraine and not Eastern Ukraine, and has been working in Drupal since 2007. And he runs his own Drupal shop in the Ukraine as well. Also on the line Carlos Espina. Carlos is based in Houston, but is Colombian, I think, by birth. I hope I got to remember that correctly. And has been engaged in the last few years, really active in the Latin American community and was definitely very instrumental in helping us run Drupalcon Latin America earlier this month. And Michael Schmidt. Schnitzel. Michael has been also involved in the community for a very long time in a variety of ways. He works at AMAZY Labs, he's based in Zurich. And you may recognize Michael because we put him in all sorts of precarious positions to take our pictures at every Drupalcon. He's been in charge of the official group photo. So he's hung from the rafters and climbed up on ladders and lobbied hard to allow us to use drones to take people's pictures. So. All right. Enzo, I am candidate. Molly, can you hear me? Enzo, sorry, that's right. You joined us a little late. Enzo's with us as well. And let me just pull up Enzo's profile for everyone. There we go. Another candidate from Colombia who was also really helpful for us in putting together Drupalcon Latin America. Super important for us to get that event done. He's been part of the Drupal community since Drupal 6. And I think he's also been really helpful in getting the Latin community together as well. Did anyone else join or did I miss anyone in the interim? Let's just double check. OK. And we do have a question. Does Adam work for an agency? He does. I bet he'll get to talk about that a little bit too. All right. So it looks like I got everyone. Excellent. Thanks for your patience with that. All right. Well, now you guys have had a long time to think about that question, right? Repeat your feedback, please. I will. All right. Let's move into the question. So what is the most critical issue facing the project today? How can the association contribute to addressing it? Can I answer? How do we go about this, Holly? Jump right in if you have a question or if you have an answer. Just remember to say who you are when you start. All right. It's Ani. One of the things that I see is that the Drupal project by organic means is grown massive. I'm in India. And a lot of people still don't know about it. People that are working with Drupal don't even know that there is a community around Drupal, which is really astounding to me, right? The Drupal Association is doing a fantastic job around North America, even South America, Europe, and other places, but India, which is the second largest population of Drupal.org, we are not getting a lot of people understood what Drupal project is all about. I think one of the things that I feel is important for the Drupal Association is to reach out on a much larger scale to make sure people realize that the Drupal project is not a software project. It's an open source community project. It's about contribution. It's about help. It's about making things happen. I can go on, but I think I'll just stick to that one. But it's for now. Thanks, Anna. Yeah, I would mention a shorter term issue, and that's what I see currently happening all over the world is Drupal 8, that because we are an open source community, but a lot of people use Drupal as an enterprise system, they sometimes believe that we have release cycles like other proprietary software. And so a lot of people talk about Drupal 8, and they hear that it's coming out, and some of my friends working at other software systems already choking me, asking me, so when it's coming out? So I think we do a bit of a job of telling people how it's developed. And of course we say it's done when it's done, but that's sometimes really hard to explain people that are not into open source. So one of the really things we have to be careful about is how or that we make sure that Drupal 8 is coming out on time with a timeline that everybody understands. And the Drupal Association itself should support that with providing the right tools, as we do right now with the SLA rate grant, which is super great to support the last pieces, because everybody that does development knows the last box are the hardest ones, are the hardest to tackle, and sometimes you just need a lot of time to sit down and fix them, and I think the Drupal 8 SLA grant by the Association has a really great job in making sure that we get out and Drupal 8 in time and with at last these boxes possible. Thanks everyone, that was my goal, Schmidt, and I will do my best to try to pull up each candidate while they speak so you can see their profile a little bit. Okay, this is Carlos Espina. I think we have two things that we have to pay attention on the community. One is the diversity of the community, which is getting huge and bigger every time, as Ani said, there's still so much more people that is using Drupal and is not part of the community, so we need to work on that, but definitely the most important problem right now or issue is Drupal 8, which needs to be out, technology is moving forward faster than we can keep up with, and Drupal 8 is doing a great job about that. I think one of the problems is we have to make sure people understand what's the evolution that is happening with Drupal 8, not only as a software, but as a framework and as a new tool for the community and how can we use it to be better in our jobs and our work as programmers and developers and project managers, et cetera. That's on the side of Drupal 8 and get used to it, so I think so far we've been doing a great job with the grants and all that, and keep that work going forward and make sure we keep the diversity and reaching out to everybody as we have been trying. That's it. Thanks, Carlos. Other folks wanna answer that? Can I? Yes, this is Adam. Great. I think for me that it's a really hard question because of the fact that all the other candidates just covered really big things which I would mention, but I think one of the biggest ones for me is about the community is way, way bigger than the contributors, and I think that getting people, inspiring people and helping people on a global scale to contribute more often in different kinds of ways is a really important point. I wouldn't say it's so much a problem. I think some of the other things that other candidates have mentioned are bigger problems, but I think it's an opportunity that's kind of missed at the moment in terms of the amount of resources and people that could be helping who aren't quite sure how to do it. I think part of that is around, from the association point of view, the accessibility in the Drupal website in terms of pointing people in the right direction, and there's a lot of good work, obviously, gone into this already, but I think that the association could be pushing people more to understand the value, especially from the Drupal shop point of view, the value in contributing back to the community. If I may jump in, Holly, is that all right? Yeah, absolutely. All right. Adam mentioned a very important point, contribution. You need to identify yourself, though. Oh, sorry, sorry. It's Ani, Ani from India, from Bombay. Thanks, Ani. And one of the things that we need to also understand is that contribution, the word contribution or the process of contribution is not really that easy for people to understand, whether it be a developer or even a business owner, and I've seen the entire gamut from 2004. A lot of times it's important for people to understand that just even having a camp or having a small, tiny meetup is contribution. That evangelizes Drupal. And I think Drupal associations help in trying to understand where there are massive amounts of, whether there's a massive amount of potential, but there's nothing happening in terms of, okay, why are people not actually putting out their contributions? That could be really, really interesting to study and to actually implement. So contribution to me is not just code. Contribution to me is about everything you can do around building a great, supportive, empowering community. Yeah, and I bet most folks here definitely agree with that, yeah. Are there some others who haven't spoken yet who want to share some answers to that question? Sure, hi, this is Anzal. Anzal, Anzal, I hear you, but you're kind of faint. Can you get closer to your mic and speak up really loud? Sure, hi, this is Eduardo Garcia, aka Anzal. For me, the most important is person for moral language value. If we can try contribution by country, we can detect most of them comes from USA and Europe. Countries where English is not a problem. But I think as a Drupal association, we can encourage communities to create his own documentation. But I am not thinking about documentation as APA. I am thinking in a community from China, from Africa and Swahili in Latin America and Spanish to create his own tutorials, videos, screencasts to try to bring new developers, new documenters, new community leaders to try to improve the amount and the way we can represent in the Drupal association. Because right now these billions are technology consumers, but based in population, with the proper documentation and information, we can create technology and to share with the world. Great point. Oh, ladies, this is Alper, can we? Oh, sorry, one more time, because I didn't hear you. It's Alper, you can hear me? Almost, it's awfully quiet. Hello, can you read me? There, that's better, Alper, thank you. Okay, okay. I'd like to have a, I would say, a different point of view to the question and the answer. When we talk about the problem, the problem probably arises due to competition. We just talk about Drupal as an open source, a good framework, I would say the talented, one of the best I've ever worked with, framework to work on. But when we talk with the real world, the customers, they always talk about other CMS options like ULLA and WordPress and things like that. So I guess our first priority to have a success in this project is to clearly identify what Drupal is and how big and how successful and how capable it is. So I would say that as the Drupal Association, we should also really have a concentration on the management level, strategic marketing actions of Drupal because if we market Drupal, the project itself, we can have more contribution from everywhere and it's also Drupal associations, I would say, prime responsibility to create this synergy within the community and make things really working on. So I would say that everything, whether you are a developer or an end user or a finance guy or whatever you are doing or here in Drupal, you should also act as a, I would say, defender of Drupal in all operations, in all circumstances. Thank you. So I'll go ahead and take a turn. This is Addy and I definitely agree with what other people have said about priorities and I think an immediate priority in a lot of people's radar is Drupal 8 coming out and I do think that the Drupal Association has taken steps to help facilitate moving that forward already, which is great. One of the things that's, to me from my perspective on things in the community is the growth as has been mentioned and sort of getting people, onboarding people more into the community but growing the base of the community without having proper structures or markers in place for those people ends up creating a mess in a lot of ways. Like we found this like with the documentation, it's like we don't actually need everybody necessarily to do documentation, we need a little bit more structure to how that gets done. And so the overall, and there are many leadership structure conversations going on in the community that have been a little complicated in terms of how do we, we're huge and we're trying to control, we're trying to do a software project as well as a whole bunch of community activities and what are the leadership structures there. We've grown to the size where frankly we need to have some structure. It exists whether or not you acknowledge it. And I think the Drupal Association facilitating the space and the conversations for those and communicating those well to the community is going to be very important if we really want to grow in a sustainable and healthy way. Much like we don't direct the Drupal Code per se, but we put a lot of structures in place so the community can solve those code problems. I feel like looking at these leadership and structure issues is one of those really sticky gray areas that probably needs some push and some support from the Drupal Association in order to get to some resolutions that would carry us forward. Awesome, thanks Adi. Victor, are you there? Megan, yeah, I am ready as well to speak. Yeah, we'd love to hear from you Victor. Yeah, okay, so my thought is main goal to promote Drupal outside Drupal community because I am, for example, I am a member of a lot of IT associations in my country. Also, I attend a lot of conferences and usually my colleagues from other companies ask me, Victor, what is Drupal? Because they see on my visit card, well, Drupal. So I think that Drupal is not so popular. So I think that we need to do more for promote Drupal and to spread information to all world about this technology, about this framework. And in this case, we will have more guys that think and understand the technology and we will have more members. So I think it's the main goal. And we do it in Ukraine, we support here a lot of initiatives and we are a supporter and I think that it's very nice to do promotion, big promotion company, big promotion campaign on campaigns involved and we will have very good results in this case. That's all. Awesome. I think we managed to hear from everyone on that. Did I miss anyone? Okay. Yeah, I wanna thank you all for those answers. I think those are all really valid answers. Increasing participation, really making it easier for people to participate globally, marketing and promoting Drupal, figuring out how to structure leadership in the project, increasing participation, I already said increasing participation. I worked that down twice. That's how important I thought it was apparently. These are all really, these are all the kinds of issues that we struggle with. So thanks for thinking so hard about them. Also, you guys are really good at keeping your answers to 90 seconds. I just wanna say. So I wanna move on to another question. And as I mentioned at the top of the session, we have, this is a two year term that you get to serve. And we just recently restructured that because we wanted to make sure that folks had enough time on the board to really feel like they accomplished something. It takes a little while to work your way, work your way into a group that has already been working together, figure out how they work, bring your ideas and see them through. So it's two years that you get. And I'm curious for each of you, what would you like to be able, what would you like to say that you've been able to accomplish at the end of your term? Or to put that question a different way, what does a successful term look like to you? So I guess I'll go again first. Ani, is that you? Yeah, that's me. Yeah, it's me, Ani. Okay, great. Yeah. Sorry about that. No worries. For me, look, I believe, I'm witnessing a massive explosion in open source. Not just in my country in India, but everywhere else where open source is becoming a massive tool to solve problems and Drupal is a great platform for building solutions. For me, as part of, let's say, if I was part of the Drupal Association member, I would love to get in my own, well, starting with my own country, government, education, that started on a grassroots level where people are adopting Drupal. But Drupal distributions coming out of the way, Drupal becoming a mainstream word, like Google is almost, in two years, yeah, well, you might think it's kind of a joke, but it's not, it can happen. But I think Drupal as a platform can be a powerful platform for people to be able to empower themselves. And I think that to me would be a really powerful thing to reach out to people and also contribute. For me, contribution is a very big deal. Contributing back to the Drupal project. The project can only survive if people contribute. And contribute doesn't mean you write code. Contribute means you do whatever you can to evangelize, to get people to know what the community's all about, to have meetups, to have whatever, and just let people know this is a great project to be part of. For me, that is a fantastic contribution. Thanks, Ani. Others wanna tackle that one? Sure, this is Addie. I would say, I mean, at the end of two years, I would like to have a tangible thing. I'm a big person about documentation. And so for me, actually just even documenting community processes and structures so that they are more discoverable and understandable to facilitate the discussions and conversations around them would be a really awesome thing to see. And I would really like to see some brainstorming and implementation of actual onboarding improvements, be that through changes to Drupal.org that improves the onboarding process for someone who's new coming into the community, particularly ones that encourage diversity, or through having documentation and more starter packs for events in terms of how they can ease processes and reach out from our diversity for the community through personal events. So those would probably be some of my big things that I would like to check the box off on. No small feet. Hey, that's Michael. Hey, Michael. Hey, I go to a lot of events. Is it now in Europe or in the US? And I, especially from event organizers, which we heard before, are really important for the community, especially in Europe, I hear a lot of event organizers saying that they don't really feel supported by the Drupal Association, which most probably has a lot of different reasons. And I don't want to tell all of them, but I think what I would really like to see is like in two years, if I walk to event organizers in Europe or in other emerging continents right now, like we have more in Latin America, there is more stuff happening in Africa and Asia, everywhere, more and more events happen, and they need support. I would like to see in two years that they say they really know how the Drupal Association supported them, that they also say that they really value the support they got and say that with that support they could do more they usually couldn't do. And that's one thing that I currently don't see happening so much, and if I can say after two years with my help and understanding also what these people need and how can we, as the Drupal Association Board, support via the staff these events, if they say, yes, we really like it and we could do more than we couldn't do, that's one thing I would really like to see of two years. Hi, this is Eduardo Garcia-Enzo from Costa Rica. My success indicators will be how to establish Drupal communities in developing countries like Chile, Latin America, Nigeria, and Africa, and Vietnam and Asia. This is kind of examples. What I mean by established communities is to help them to establish Drupal Mirabs, to share the knowledge, to encourage people to contribute co-documentation. The second one will be enable these communities to help to create his own resources in modern language. So my point of view is if we help them to create a documentation in Chinese, in Hindi, in Swahili, or in Spanish, we will have an exploding system in terms of contribution for these areas. Great. Victor or Carlos. This is Alper again. Alper, great. Can you hear me? Yep. Yeah, right. Is the line okay to talk? Yeah, go for it. Yeah, okay. Okay, in fact, two years seems a long time where it's also really a short time. So I would definitely focus on four points, I would say, that define success for me at the end of these two years. The first goal I have to achieve, I would say is that the community that is far more in interaction. This interaction, I'm not talking about, you know, just mails and tweets and all online issues, but other than that, trying to get people together with small, more I would say, international events. I dream of, also I know that there are some task forces like that, but I dream of three separate task forces that will be in operation. One in documentation, one on training, and one on internization. And the goal of these three task forces, I would say, is just to create a documentation or a training or an internization suite. That is, you can only achieve when you pay for it. So it should be that good, and Drupal should be the base for creating huge internalized projects. My third point is, of course, to raise some funds to secure the future of this project. And this is closely related to my fourth goal, which I have to make this community also working for a social cause. If we can make the community work for open source software plus a social cause, I would definitely be, I would be 100% sure that we can raise funds more easier. Thank you. Hi, this is Adam, can I come in here? You betcha, Adam. Let's go to Adam, and then I think we also have Carlos. Okay, so, I mean, for me, I think the, it's kind of, a successful term is a bit different, I think to the one thing I'd like to achieve or accomplish, but in terms of a successful term, I hope it would be about helping the Drupal Association to grow the community in the way that, in the last few years particularly, it's really started to do on a huge scale in terms of looking at like staff members, the types of projects that are out there, the amount of funding which is going directly to community members to contribute and to grow the project. Tangibly, what I'd really like to see, and it fits into what a number of people have talked about is this kind of internationalization. But it's actually that, I know there's an office now in Europe, but actually that the Drupal Association opens offices tangibly with people inside that can offer on the ground support and staff to different regions of the world. I still think while, again, great strides have been made that the Drupal Association has a huge obvious focus in the USA, and I think bringing that outside will only strengthen the association, but also give a lot more support to people and majorly visibility in the various different regions. Yeah, so I think actually having offices with staff members, when we have 20 odd staff in the USA, I think it's time we had five in Europe, five in South America, et cetera, et cetera, and we really build, this is a visible association across the world. I love that, Adam, and I totally volunteer to staff the European office myself. Does it count if I'm American? But just so you know, we actually do have two staff in Europe, we have a developer, Oliver, who lives in Wales, and our good friend Tatiana, who is the product manager for Drupal.org. She is from the Ukraine, but this week, we just actually just helped her get a visa to do her work out of the UK as well, so. But I totally hear you there, there's definitely more work to be done, I just wanted to make sure that if I may jump in, it's Ani again. Okay, yeah. It's Ani again, Holly, you know, what Adam's saying is fantastic, I mean, and what Adam's saying and what other people have said about internationalization of Drupal, that's very important, isn't it? It's about, it's not a North American, oh actually, interestingly, it's a Belgian thing. And why are we so focused around Drupal being just English? It should be, this conversation should be had in multiple languages, maybe, at one point. Totally agree with you guys, totally agree with you guys. I didn't want to undermine Adam's point, but I did want to just make sure that we knew that we definitely, at the association, take that seriously and have been working on it a bit as we can, so. But I think we still have both Carlos and Victor, who've not had time to respond to this one. Okay, this is Carlos Espina, so I've been listening to everybody and I think we all agree that, you know, expanding the contributions, whether it's code, project, documentation, et cetera, it's important. We talk about the leadership, the trainings, internationalization, and that's something I see at the end of the two years being strengthened with my help. Something that I would like to see also is one of the reasons that brought me to the project is that, weirdly, being an open source project, it's a community and a project that has a strong business point of view, if that's the word. Where companies can support the project and we have never gone to the other side where the project gets closed or something like that. I think we need to keep working on that. There has been a lot of effort going this way, or we're talking about the jobs dot ruple or the initiatives that Dries was talking in Austin about maybe recognizing companies, et cetera. I think that's something that we need to work on, how to enforce the business part without hindering the community part. In that way, we can have the funds and the support to do everything that we've been talking so far. Great. That's why I would really like to be doing or see at the end of the two years. Great. Thank you. Awesome, and Victor, are you still with us? Yeah. Great. Do you want to share an answer to that question? Yeah, sure. So, it's Victor Lewandowski. What I would like to tell, I am Drupal, as I told you, I am Drupal Evangelist, and my goal would be to promote Drupal, and for example, a very good result if we could double the number of Drupal org users during two years. And big goal to promote Drupal to soul level when everybody know what is Drupal. Everybody, you know now what is Windows? Yeah, everybody should know what is Drupal. So, this is the goal that I see. Yeah, that's all. Hello. Do we lose Holly? Sorry, I forgot that I was with Holly. You still there? Yeah, Holly. Okay. So, let's stay on this international theme because I hear so much passion around it, and I have a couple of questions in the queue related to it. So, you know, we've talked about, we've talked about the association needing to be more international to make connections with community leaders who are organizing events around the world. I, you know, we all think that's really important. And there are a lot of ways that we could go about that work. So, I just wanted to put out to you guys, if the organization, if the association were really doing this work well, if we were truly international organization, what would that look like? How would we connect with the community leaders that are out there? And I think also more importantly, how would we connect with some of the local and regional leadership teams that have already been doing awesome stuff, right? Because we don't want to come in and step on their toes. So, how do we do this in a collaborative way so that we are working with some of the leaders that are already there on the ground doing great work and we're supporting them, but not stepping on their toes? Does that make sense? Yep. So, Holly, well, DAE has been doing fantastic work with the Indian teams. In the last few months, we've had great camps. It's Annie, again, Annie from India. Gotcha. Sorry. Oops. And I think the Drupal Association has been fantastic in terms of reaching out to us. India is a huge traffic, not just traffic, but in terms of developers and, well, not so much contribution. But what we miss, though, is, for example, I think Megan knows about it. 2011, Rees came to India, and it was a watershed. It changed the entire scope of Drupal in India for that one moment. There were three different camps happening in that year. 2015, now we are seeing 600-plus people in our camps. What Drupal Association could do is certainly help us with initiatives that we are now initiating with students, with government. And I think, I don't know if I should introduce that, but yeah, DrupalCon, they've been planned in India, so that should certainly help. But one thing that is still missing is still people feel there is no representation of India in Drupal Association, in Drupal. So. Hey, Oli, Michael here. I think that, or I would like to see the Drupal Association connecting people. Connecting people in terms of just telling or knowing what the issues in the local communities are and bringing them on a global scale means that if somebody in Switzerland has the same problem as in India, whatever it is, is it onboarding people, is it organizing events or whatever, if we have the same issues, we should be brought together. And the problem I see right now, this doesn't happen. I don't know what other communities, local communities have issues, but the Drupal Association can be the possibility for us to get to know each other better and the Drupal Association listening to us. How that actually works? I don't know, maybe it is a monthly meeting with leaders of each local community that inside of the Drupal Association somebody meets with leaders and lives with them and talks to them and connects people. I think we don't need specific help by the DEA, we need help to help ourselves and that is through communication, through telling each other and connecting people and not specifically on where, for example, it happens. And so we meet up cons and the local communities discuss. I think it can also happen outside of that and telling each other, hey, this other community has the same issue, why don't you talk together and solve the problem together. I just want to say here what Michael just said. Absolutely. Yeah, I think, I mean, similar to, I think connecting people is really important. I think also the opposite is, this is Adam, by the way. This is also, the opposite is also really important that we don't assume one issue happening in one place is therefore the same issue that's happening in another. And I think the biggest way that the DEA can really do this is by integrating into the communities or becoming part of the communities or even better, people in the communities becoming part of the DEA. And I think that that could be opening up the DEA board membership in a way that there's representation, almost like forced representation, but maybe not in the, that would take time, obviously. In terms of the staff, I think it's again important, similar to saying having regional offices that you actually have people, not people who represent the region, but people who come from the region or live there. And I think that it's about kind of closing any gap, not just the DEA does a great job already in integrating into the communities, but closing that gap culturally, language, through events, et cetera, on the local levels of going to those regions and being seen and visible in those regions. Anyone else want to talk about? This is Carlos Espina, me, me, me, me. I'm Carlos. Okay, I think that something that we started doing, we started doing it in Group Alcon Latin America and that was for me a really good show of how we can work together with the community, the local community and have something amazing like having over a hundred sprinters in an event with 260 people, which was amazing. And we need to keep working on that, working with people locally and using the Drupal Association power, and I quote unquote power, being like the central association that can help with grants and involvement and organization to the local people, that will be amazing. And that would prove to be very successful in Drupal Con Latin America and expand that to local camps, local efforts, GTDs, Dev Days. That's everything that came out from Drupal Con Latin America, for example, so I'm sure we're gonna come with a Drupal Association and that's part of my goal to help get that support going to Latin America when those events start and everywhere in the world. Offices, I'm not so sure. And in terms of languages, I think we did a good first start by, I don't know if everybody knows but Drupal Con Latin America was the first tri-lingual Drupal Con ever. We had three languages going on with simultaneous translation and I think in that way we can help expand the community. And my time is up. Hello, this is Alper again. Hey Alper. Hi, I just listened to my mates and every one of them, every single one of them has really pointed out the importance of our community. And I guess right at the moment we are just on the boot track to achieve what we require as internalization and representation all around the world because as you said, we are 24 candidates from 14 different countries. So that's really internalization of the project. I would say that we have to put more power on the democratization of the community, which I can say that this election is a good way to start. So we need to find ways to identify the local leaders because in some cases, especially for example in Turkey, there are people who know Drupal and who do good stuff about Drupal but they are not known by the association. So I would say that we should organize a committee under the association's authorization to create people of the local, I would say, origin to come together and talk about the problems and things together. This may be online conferences or as my colleagues just pointed out, we can also start trying more small internal internal international, I would say, meetings as well. Thank you. Hi, this is Enzo, the Garcia. Okay, as my name mentioned before about complete leaders, well, define a community leader in a country or region is really hard and it's not free of friction and that could be changed time to time. So I want to mention about my experience in Conta Rica because after five years working as volunteer or interested about Drupal, we finally decided to create an NGO to help us to organize Drupal meetups, Drupal camps and obviously to put a face with more organization to possible response or so. That helped us to avoid any friction and to avoid any possible interest between companies. So with this new NGO and we call Drupal Costa Rica, we use this organization to work each other and also it's a connection with our local community, with Drupal community as a product or as an international community. So I really encouraged to create this kind of entities. It's like a Drupal association in our local environment. Thank you. Great. I think Addy or Victor, do you guys have anything you want to add to this? Yes. All right, Victor. By the way, Holly, I'd like to add also, Addy. Yes, Addy. Addy, Victor, please go ahead. No problems, just tell. No, no, no. You go ahead, please. Thank you. Okay. So my idea to provide from Drupal association some information support for organizers of local meetups, the Drupal meetups. Imagine that some simple guy organize local meetup here and we know that a lot of people organize it with these meetups and imagine that one moment this guy receive just a mail from Drupal association with thanks guy. We know that you organize this meetup and we would like to tell you thank you. It's a very big push for motivate this guy to do this again. So I would like to provide this support and to show this guy that we know about their initiatives. And I think we will have a very good effect. Thank you. Addy, anything you want to add on to those responses? I mean, honestly, I don't think I have anything novel to add other than to, I definitely feel that the DA creating in encouraging spaces for communication across groups rather than being like a central force that comes down per se, but being able to create mechanisms and create whatever it is that people need to communicate just federally amongst themselves is definitely something that I think is really necessary. Everybody's so scattered and it's hard to figure out like how do I in Denmark figure out who I would talk to in South America without just sort of pecking around and trying to see who does events and who should I try and contact and feel like if there was more of a central organized way to facilitate that communication that would have a huge impact on a lot of different communities, especially really small ones who feel very isolated. I'd love to add to that what Addy said. Addy said something very, very important. And the Drupal Association, I don't believe is the organization that necessarily is about the power of Drupal, but yes, the facilitation of Drupal. It's about the community facilitation. That's what Drupal Association acts out. It's a blue of Drupal, I think. And what Addy said is very, very cool. It's about how the hell do I get in touch with other people in small communities. In India, well, we have very large communities here and lots of people, but yes, we face the same problems. In fact, I've spoken with that about other people from VA. How about opening up the API from Drupal Association where we can, you know, our own little small camps where we could share information, using that information to attract other people and having not just an IRC channel, but other ways to talk to each other. I think Drupal Association could definitely do that, but yes, please let's not forget, Drupal Association is a finite organization. It's not unlimited in terms of resources of people, right? So that we are, that's true. Good, well, listen, I wanna continue on this theme a little bit. And someone on the call wanted to ask, particularly Carlos and Enzo, about what they feel like in their specific community in Latin America, what they need to have happened there to grow Drupal adoption and bring in more contributors and really make that ecosystem flourish. And it just, when I saw that question, it reminded me of one of the things one of you smartly said, which was that, you know, every community around the world, you know, we wanna touch all these places, but we also wanna make sure that we're doing it in a way that makes sense for that area, right? We can't treat every contributor the same, right? You guys all work from different perspectives. So I wanted to open up to everyone, you know, what is the thing where you live in the world, what is the thing that is unique about your place that the Drupal Association can help to encourage your community to flourish? Does that question make sense? Hopefully someone says yes. Yeah, Holly, but you know, it's gonna be a very tough question though. For example, you know, within India itself, there's like five different different things between different cities, right? Like in Bombay, I don't know, what can I tell you? We are already at 6,700 people, but yes, there are issues. We have local issues in terms of people not making it into meetups, because it's too hard to travel sometimes in Bombay. What I'd love to hear from Latin America, I mean, I'm so intrigued about Bogota and what happened over there and how that's planning out. I would love to hear from somebody from Latin America. Yeah. Oh, this is Ani again, by the way, sorry. No worries. Carlos or Enzo, do you guys want to talk about it first? My story, Carlos. Well, I think we, how do I say it, I mean, I think the work that we did with DrupalCon Latin America is a proof of that. What is important is to understand the reality of the community where we're going, and especially in the Latin American community. One of the biggest discussions is, we don't have the same, I don't know if this is the correct expression, monetary power that we have here in the States, and that's something that is important to understand. We have a different language. So I would just talk with the experience that we have organizing this DrupalCon Latin America that in terms of everybody that I've talked to was a huge success. Is we work with local people. Enzo helped, Eduardo helped us with the trainings. We have people everywhere and volunteers everywhere helping us time to identify how to do the things right. And with the support of the Drupal Association and their experience in organization and everything that had happened, I think we could reach out to the community in a way like I will say it again. The biggest surprise we had is the sprints. And remember the code sprints, even though they are code sprints or not only code, it's about talking about community, talking about the project, documentation, et cetera. They were a big success because what I feel is if you identify what makes the community special, in this case, Latin America is a very strong united community. As a region, I mean, Eduardo kind of tells, I mean, if you go to a Drupal camp Costa Rica, you will find people from everywhere. If you go to a Drupal camp Mexico, you will find people from everywhere in Latin America. Drupal Peaks you have had over 60 people from different countries, almost three countries, different countries, including Holly. That's where we met. And I think that's the way you can help a community. By working together with the people that can guide you and show you how different it is or how similar it is or what will fly and what won't fly. Yeah, okay. The way they think. Yeah, just to mention, how I looked at Drupal Congo at the time, for me, it's more a result than a success. It was a success, but for me, it's a result of several jobs of working. If you check out the history in Latin America, from Mexico to Chile, we have around 23 countries. We have been working for at least six years in different fronts. It's like, it's not a word for one person. So there are people working in South America, in the South of South America, people working in Brazil, people working in the North of South America, people working in Mexico, people working in Central America. So I think the most important thing in the Drupal Association could be to try to improve as a video, is to try to help these local events to try to engage more people, to bring his passion to Drupal, to Drupal as a community. Because if you, I'm not saying it's a mistake, but if you try to create a huge event at the beginning, it's less probable it will be successful. But if you potentially these small events in each region or each country, at the end for sure, you will have patient people to help in the creation of these kinds of events. Thank you too for sharing that perspective, since we have such a recent event there. I wonder if folks from elsewhere want to address that as well. I could say something. I think the really important thing when we look at sort of, let's say, this is Adam, sorry. Some of them maybe takes that have happened in the past and the successes that are happening now. I think it's been brought up before that this asking and working with the community in these areas is really the key. It's about not going in and saying, this is what you need, but saying what do you need. And I think this is the key to any successful kind of intervention or exploration of events or programs in other countries. But I also think one of the things overall that the Drupal Association we could look at would also be the wider impact of the work that's being done. So it's not just, you know, we're doing a DrupalCon in Latin America, so how many people are we gonna get there to move away from a kind of numbers game. But look at the social impact, and I mean social in the Drupal community wise rather than generally speaking, but the social impact of bringing a DrupalCon to a certain region. The fact that I honestly believe, you guys will tell me more, but I honestly believe there'll be a ripple and impact in Latin America now because of this DrupalCon for many years to come. And I think when we have a DrupalCon in India, it'll be the same thing. And keep going in that way. And I think we need to spend a bit of time to try and look at the different indicators and find the social impact, the different more kind of qualitative impacts that are happening to the community to help improve that as we go to different places. But it's really important that this is not seen, you know, that we're not taking the package we made in Latin America and putting it into Mumbai or wherever it'll be in India. I think this is the really important point to make. So if I can add something to that. Hello, this is Alper. I can say about, sorry? Yeah, go ahead, Alper. And then Carlos, hold your thought, we'll get to you. Okay, I totally agree with Adam and I would like to thank him in person because trying to make things out, work as a package is not working in everywhere and in all parts of the world. So it's really important to ask what is required to the community, the local community and after that we can use the expertise of good case studies. This may include, you know, the structures of events or getting personal help from community members. But I would like to thank again to Adam that he indicated we need to have solutions locally by asking the question, what do you need or what's wrong with your structure? Thanks. Yes. Thanks, Alper. I just wanted to say to not, ready? Yep, sorry, Carlos. This is Carlos, okay. So very quick, I will try to make it quick. It's really hard to explain how different was this group that come from the others. I have the opportunity to speak with so many people here in the States and over there and I know how it works usually and I think the approach more than the package is what we have to pay attention to and the approach was to reach out to the local community. This community that has been working for six, seven years trying to create that Latin American community that is today really strong and identify the problem. One of the problems that we identified is for example, a certain rejection of Drupal 8 because we weren't sure it was good for small companies which is mostly what happens in Latin America. We have small companies. So I think as long as we understand the local people and the success wasn't in numbers, I'm sorry I named numbers, but the thing wasn't in numbers is that after we approach the problem that we saw talking with the local community, we have a great response and that's what I meant. It wasn't a package, but it was more the way it was done because it was guided by the local community, the creation of this event and I think we can replicate that everywhere in India, in Asia, in Africa. If we work with the local community and understand how do they see the project, what are the things that they feel are lacking in the project and we can help the rest of the world to bring that to the table. The change can be huge. I mean we have now like we make, we duplicate or triplicate the number of contributors from Latin America just in one event and if we keep going that way and I know it's gonna happen that way because the same people that has been working before is ready to work forward in the local community and hopefully we can give the support from the DA. We can replicate that approach more than that package everywhere. Make sense? Make sense? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I think what Carlos is saying with this, Ani, is absolutely right. It's about replication. It's about learning from where we are at and understanding where strengths are. Groupal association is perfectly poised to basically present all, let's see, what are we all talking about here? We're all talking about, hey, let's share what we already know. We're saying we learned this from this event, we learned this from that event, we're not sharing enough. Perhaps duplication could be a great bridge to bring all these communities together and let them talk to each other and say, hey, listen, this is what happened here, this is what happened here and let's learn from this and this is what your problems are. We had the same problem we saw this day. I think that would be a great idea as part of the repulsingization job. Okay, I wanna stop and see. Can I just add something again? Yeah. One last thing before we move on. It's Alper again. I guess that we are just looking at the great opportunity right now in person because we are people around the world and talking about a future of the project. So I guess this kind of election say meetings and probably other meetings that the association can organize, the increase of the rate of information exchange between local parties. I guess this is a great opportunity that we are around. Thank you. Thanks Alper. Good, so any other insight on how to address your unique community needs that you guys wanna share? Okay, then I have one final, I think this is probably gonna be the final question, just judging on the timing. So we'll put it out there if we have time for something else, we'll get to it. But I just want to share with everyone briefly the mission of the Drupal Association. It's pretty short and simple. Drupal powers the best of the web. The Drupal Association unites a global open source community to build and promote Drupal. And I just wanted to ask all the candidates, what makes that mission meaningful to you? What is the part that really resonates with you and really moves you to want to act? This time I'm gonna go last. Thanks, Ani. Thanks, Ani. Yes, sorry. So should I start then? That's Michael. Yeah, go for it, Michael. I think for me it's the uniting. It's, we're so many different people all over the world in different time zones and having different issues and different thoughts. And I think it's the importance of the Drupal Association to unite these. And that's for me being from Europe and seeing, and we just heard a bit about Latin America and India while they're still like trying to form each other. In Europe, we're actually ahead there and there are already ideas to build something outside of the Drupal Association because some people in Europe believe that they do not feel understood by the Drupal Association. And I think that's really dangerous and that's one of the really big parts why I said, okay, I wanna join Drupal Association Board as a European person to bring in the European mindset or the European ways of thinking, how do we interact in the local communities? Because the mission is to unite and I think we can only do that if the board also consists of united people of all over the world. And definitely, as we just heard before, use whatever we learn how we can fix these issues we have right now in Europe, bring them to the other continents, prevent doing them or if they also happen, know how we can tackle them and resolve them. That's why I said, okay, I really wanna do that because I think we should be one united group. Great. Who else wants to tackle that question? This is Addy. I have a feeling a lot of us are gonna zero in on the uniting and the global. Given the conversations that we've already had this evening. And yeah, I mean, for me, it's about the building of bridges and that the association has resources to help build those bridges and to be able to perhaps take a step back and have a view to be able to connect things that maybe people closer to things can't see or don't have the resources to do. And so for me, that's like all of the things I want to do is to be able to bridge those people together and to build bridges to the Drupal community, not just within it. There are a lot of people who are on the fringes of the Drupal community and just see it as this humongous overwhelming thing and being able to bring those people in to the community and incorporate them and have them feel at home and have the power to do something important is what drives me. Thanks, Addy. Other folks want to add? No, Carlos has been up. Thanks, Carl. Please, please go ahead. Okay, Victor. Oh, Adam. Hold on a second, okay. There you go. It takes me a few questions sometimes to find you guys. I will do it, I will do it, okay. No problem, guess what I'm gonna say, of course. Before Carlos starts, before Carlos starts, I have to have a beer with you, man. I have to tell you that. Yeah, we have to. We'll talk later, write to me and find whether or not we're gonna be in the same place and we'll have a beer. Okay, so, yes, I'm gonna go with the Unite part, of course. Come on, we need to keep together working as a Unite community because that's what made Drupal grow so much and be so professional and that's what I like about the project that is professional and I can go and easily do a small, simple little page or think about whatever web app that you can believe or imagine. So that's what made the project so big, is the union of this community that I know from so many places. I work with the US community, I work with the Latin American community, I have really good friends in the European community and I can see how all working together we do this. But I want to also talk about the promotion and that's something that Holly knows that I have a business vision, a little bit more than a simple community vision and I think that's the big work of the Drupal association. Keep us together to grow the project and help us promote the project in a way that it can be profitable for us to be working with Drupal because I think that's also important. I mean, it's not just being the idealistic part of the community, but I think we all eat from Drupal and we need to keep that going on and make sure as the project grows, the business grows, and again, keeping that balance so delicate and wonderful that it's the Drupal community which has a beautiful balance between businesses and community. Thank you. Thanks, Carlos. Let me, Viktor Lewandowski. Thanks, Viktor, go for it. Yeah, okay. So, technology promotion is part of my life. Yeah, let me show you an example. These days I am running a project of promoting a programmer profession. I am visiting every school in my city and speak with children about a programmer profession. Yeah, I would like to tell them how nice to be programmer. So, I do promotion. I like this, this is part of my life, yeah, and I love this activity. So, this is very interesting for me to also have activity as part of Drupal's association. That's all. Thank you. Thanks, Viktor. Should I go now? Go for it. Go for it. No, sorry. No, no, please go ahead. Right, thanks. This is Albert again. All we know is a Drupal open source project. But just think of this way. Drupal is an open source project. It really is a, I would say, face of the life. It expresses my lifestyle. Why? Because it's international, it's technological, it's multicultural, and it has almost infinite capacities. And besides that, it's open to all. So, if you want to be part of it, you can be a part of it. It's the real work, man. And if it is in the real world, we have some problems. So, my main motivation is to try to remove the obstacles from the community's way to grow bigger and reach the future. Thank you. Excellent. Adam, did you also want to go? Yeah, it's pretty hard after all that. People picked up on, obviously Unite is huge. But I think also, I want to pick up on the open source side of things. I think that in terms of the association, that often people see it as this kind of, and maybe I'm talking from the past, but I think that's still present, and a couple of people have mentioned it, that it is kind of disconnected from the community and not as it should be, and I believe as it is, which is connected in an integral part of the community. So, I think in terms of what to do from the DA point of view, it's that community being, including the DA, rather than the DA being the one that is uniting the community, it's uniting themselves in the community as well. And from the open source perspective, I think it's really important that we remember the kind of ethos of open source in every aspect of all the things that we do, that we talk with our staff, but I also talk in community events, events with the local community, not the Drupal community, about the concept of open source, because this idea of collaboration can be brought around everything that we do in life, and I think has value to bring in so many different aspects of what we do. And I don't know if that's the case within the DA, but I think we need to always remember that whether you're a staff, you know, it's an open community, it's an open source community, and that needs to run as the backbone of what's happening. Well, Holly, come on, this is Ani again. Can we just get all of us together and room and have beers? I mean, come on, Adam, Addy, Victor, all of us. Just so you guys know throughout this entire session, Ani has been tapping away into the question section, things like, right on, that's exactly what I think. These people are so smart. You all have fans and Ani. I think the primary objective, honestly, this itself proves my belief in Drupal. The Drupal Association bringing all of us together, that we have not even heard of each other. Go out and find each other out, right? Yeah, exactly. Which is fantastic. Which is to me fantastic. Yeah, I'm going to find you guys. I'm going to have beer with you guys. But this is the greatest thing to me. To me, Drupal is the community. It is what is beautiful about Drupal. It is a community. And I think Drupal Association, yes, reaching out to larger markets and reaching out to larger players and then obviously strategically understanding where it's supposed to go. Look, there's, as director at large, I guess anybody who's part of the director group is supposed to understand where Drupal is supposed to go. I think we all agree on that. But I think overall, all of us, we are all fantastically attached to Drupal. Drupal may not be the best software out there, but I think as far as community goes, Drupal kicks ass. To me, Drupal is fantastic. And that is what a Drupal at large director needs to expound. Go out and let people know. What happens after that is... There you go. There you go. Okay. We are very close to the top of the hour, but I know we started a couple minutes late. I want to give Addie and Enzo. I think you're the last two. Okay. Hi, this is Enzo. Okay. For me, the Drupal Association mission gives off the opportunity to empower a high quality with products. We can bring these amazing products to poor and developing countries, and that will provide to us the opportunity to build amazing tools to solve our problems. And with this solution, this is a solution we can afford, and we can use our rock and tunnel. So the idea is in this way, we can have a positive effect in our societies. And I think this is the most important goal in open source, is how to grow in poor communities to reduce the gap in the world. And as a result, we will bring to the world a little more equality. Thanks. Thanks, Enzo. And Addie, are you still with us? Do you want to share something there? Yeah, I already answered earlier. Oh, sorry. I did not give you another check mark on my list. Sorry. I got lost in the circle. Did I forget anyone? All right, good. Well, listen, I just have to say that that 90 minutes flew by for me. Thank you all so much for the amazing conversation and the really, really thoughtful answers. And I especially want to thank the non-native English speakers, which is actually most of you, for conducting this entire session in English and doing it so well. So, yeah, just thanks so much for all the sharing you've done today. And just as a reminder, while we wrap up here, we have two more sessions scheduled, one tomorrow, one day after. Some of these folks will be back for future sessions as well. And new candidates will be coming into each of those, too. And lastly, just want to remind everyone, voting opens on March 9th. We do use the instant runoff voting method, which means that you will not be choosing a single candidate when you vote. You'll actually be able to rank several candidates. You don't have to rank them all. But if you have five or six that you know well, you can rank those five or six candidates. And the winner is determined based on those rankings. So that's the method that we'll be using. It opens on March 9th. Definitely, shout out from the rooftops far and wide. We want to see lots of great turnout because we have so many amazing candidates here. We just really want to see how the community can respect these great candidates. So thanks for everything today, you guys. If you need anything, send me an email. I'm Holly at association.druple.org. And I will look forward to talking to some of you guys later in the week. Thank you so much, Holly. Thank you so much. It's great meeting everybody, by the way.