 We're going to get started. So good afternoon or good evening. I think we have some folks in different time zones. Welcome to our 2022 Open Community Forum. My name is Joy Garrett. I use she her pronouns and I'm the Community Contribution Coordinator. So I believe the first thing that we're going to do is take questions from community members. So if you would like to put those in the chat so that we can ask them to our board candidates. All right. So this is an open question for everyone. What is the most important issue in your view that the Drupal Association faces today? What do you hope to bring to bear to assist with that issue? Would anybody like to start us off? And it's in the chat too if anyone needs to look at it again. I'm happy to kick us off. I think that's like a phenomenal question by the way. I think the most important issue at least for me is really trying to understand how the Drupal Association could increase or possibly evolve their role in helping Drupal become more vibrant, whether that's getting more people to adopt it, having Drupal invested in specific ways that might make it more attractive for contributors or people to adopt it. And what I hope to bring to that is really just some of my experience in both implementing, using building products in Drupal, etc., that I think might be a helpful perspective. But also I really want to hear from the experience of all of the community members. Like I feel like being a conduit to the community to hear what their thoughts are and how Drupal itself or the DA can evolve in helping with the viability of Drupal is a very important responsibility for this role. And I feel like that has to happen for anybody that's elected from the community in the seat. So that would be I think my main important issue that I want to focus on if I'm fortunate enough to be elected. I'm happy to go next. I think the long term, the most important issue for the Drupal project is bringing in new contributors, new users to the project. I think the role of the Drupal Association in enabling that and helping sustain that, this is kind of a maybe not the most fun issue, but it's a fiscal challenge. It's a financial challenge. How does the Drupal Association remain solvent and successful over the long term? Two years ago, we saw how COVID affected the Drupal Association and almost caused the Drupal Association to no longer exist. So much of the Drupal Association's revenue is based on events and DrupalCon North America, specifically. So long term, how do we support the Drupal project? How do we have the Drupal Association remain viable to do that job and help them? I think it's the challenge there is to diversify the Drupal Association's revenue and make sure that we're spending that revenue in the right places to have the biggest impact for the Drupal project. Okay, I'll go next. Yeah, from my view, I think the main challenge is about how to bring the new blood into Drupal. So the main challenge is the marketing strategy. It's very, I'm telling you from my experience, I'm based in Africa, most of them know about Drupal and they don't know the career path. So they need to have a clear career path. If you want to get into a way to start and to know different sections about Drupal or there are different paths, if you want to become a developer or you want to become a contributor not developer. So those things, people, they need to be educated. So my target is like to introduce Drupal like in schools, in high schools like that's how we can get in any adoptions. So that's the main challenge. In the schools, people, they don't know much about Drupal. They only know it post or it wait places. That's my point of view. I can take it and I'll also introduce myself for everybody, Nikki Flores. I'm based on Anishinaabe lands outside of the Midwest. I am a developer formerly and currently I'm a technical project manager for the last three years now. And I think my answer is similar to aside. So I have been a member of the Drupal Association, but as a Drupal for these many years, I think making the connections between the people who are interacting with the Drupal project like Mark has mentioned, and then converting that into kind of like the dues paying card carrying membership. Something about the Drupal Association that might be helpful is what I experienced with the certified square master training. So having that kind of designation, that license, that certificate, whatever it looks like, and then having that be concurrent with a educational track. So like aside, having the, this is what you need to learn to be a Drupal or these are the types of tasks or learning how to do views and 300 content types. I think having something that makes more concrete for the rest of the world, what it is to be a Drupal or and having the association be a person organization that can support that may be helpful in terms of things like continuing education units or having a vote and a voice on any of the initiatives have come up. So having a more of that give and take between what community people say and what the association is doing. I'd like to see those become pretty closely wrapped. And I hope to bring the bear to assist with that. Just an organizational perspective, thinking about it as somebody who has not been to Drupal, except this past year, thinking about as somebody who was self taught on Drupal, thinking about as somebody who didn't necessarily know the benefit of joining the association. That mindset, if there's so many thousands of people who are using Drupal, but maybe 2100 or so Drupal members, how do we make that more accessible or more valued or more widespread in terms of association membership and also encouraging actions like if you're a part of the Drupal association, we would like you to have this many volunteer hours or these are the committees you could join or these are the initiatives that we can ask folks to get involved with. So that sense of shared ownership over Drupal as a profession would be something that would be interesting for me. Yeah, I think these are all great answers. I think Ma is going to be in a similar vein. I think expansion of the community is probably the most important issue here because every other problem that we've talked about, as everyone's mentioned, comes with new members expansion of new blood into the community. And that leads to new members, which leads to new money, right? And better engaging the different personas that are active in giving back in the community about things that they care about in order to increase the amount of fundraising that the association can get. And I think it's a multi-prong approach with education about what the DA does and how they support and why it's important for being a member of the community to also support the DA because without the DA, as Mark mentioned, there can be a world that we don't really want to see happen within the Drupal community. And what I hope to bring to bear with that is my experiences in the network coming up from a developer and transforming into a leader all within the same technology and the power that this community has to enable talent, to enable careers and to open up possibilities for both employees as well as clients and businesses and how they can deliver amazing digital experiences with the platform and continue pushing new ways and case studies and things like that to talk about what the future of Drupal is and how we're going to continue evolving this amazing community that's brought us all friends and great experiences and careers in our lives and sharing that with a wider audience. So I think it's really going to drive on expansion of that community and let that kind of uplift the Drupal association and then all the sharing that goes with that. Thank you all for sharing. Those are incredible answers. Our next question earlier this year are most recently elected at large board member resigned in an act that was likely both a protest and a sign of burnout and having not made any substantial progress in advance his singular initiative expanding the voting pool for DA elections. This came personally as a huge shock to me and a peek at perhaps this role isn't as meaningful or as much of an agent of change or community representation as it may seem particularly in the face of a board filled with longtime players who have made opaque decisions in the past. How will you as a candidate drive meaningful change as both a new and short term member alongside other board directors who may be more satisfied or invested in the status quo and once again it's in the chat if you need to reference it. I'd like to take this so I didn't know about the at large at large board candidate I was recruited by someone here on the board and I didn't know that it was open to just any board member same thing so I think a lot of this is education and then the other part of that is not feeling like I was allowed to participate without that kind of gentle nudging and so maybe part of it would be the ability to share stories and to share like kind of like how I got to Drupal how other folks got to Drupal encouraging the Drupal diversity so I think I would say either expanding the types of people who like we recruit to become candidates for that pool alternatively sharing stories of what it is to be a Drupaler like John what you talked about we're here for our professions my livelihood my family like my future is all based on Drupal and so part of this is one showing that Drupal is a viable career option but also to encouraging people to you know it's not just a certain type of developer that is a Drupaler like you could be a Drupaler and be a organizer or you can be a Drupaler and be a community contributor so or part of the Drupal diversity initiative which my company supports so I think as a candidate my meaningful change would be encouraging more stories and sharing how people came to Drupal and what they're doing with Drupal and expanding the pool of who is like invited to participate in the elections in terms of status quo I think status quo is always evolving so I think it's good to have an election every year I think it's good to have new fresh voices and I think it's good to have a fixed term so that you can make space and make way for new opinions you new ideas yeah I I personally am not aware of the situation but I do understand with any business organization there's politics to play right and you know I want to go in with the fresh minds and go in with with a positive attitude being able to look at making an impact and you know it it's possible we're gonna we're gonna face an uphill battle with longtime players they're stuck in their ways that happens with really any organization and the ways to get around that is is really managing how you communicate with people and how you lay out the changes that you want to make and the value that they're going to bring to the overall community and making sure that that's told in a way that everyone can understand and really has has no choice but to recognize kind of the decisions that we want to push forward and if we can't get consensus on the story that we want to tell and the value that it brings to the community then furthering the conversations about why or where the discrepancies are in order to come up with a solution that that really helps the whole you know I think really everyone on the skull has a significant connection to the community has been here for you know a long time and my hope is that we can step in and make change no matter which one of us gets this this board seat and that will stick with it to push the board to to make the changes that they need to and you know I I haven't seen this story be told in the way that you mentioned it in this in this question from other candidates so you know my hope is that it's a it's a burnout thing it's a one-off things weren't moving as fast as as as they wanted but again I'm not close enough the situation to to understand it's an all speculation and really want to want to try to stay away from that so hopefully that that kind of answers you your question on on how I tend to approach the the situation I think it's a really good question and really fair to ask I can maybe go next oh it looks like Mark came off mute would you like to go first Mark sorry go ahead Adam okay I'll go after you okay no problem and I'll look for the mute button next time so yeah I um I have some thoughts on this I guess the first is I I certainly don't like John I don't know the specifics of kind of what happened uh with uh with Pedro uh but I do remember his candidacy last time I know he was very passionate about expanding the voting criteria uh it kind of leads me to maybe two two different responses I think the one is we shouldn't really be speculating there should be enough transparency in the governance of the board that you should be able to see what he proposed you should see what the resolution of that was why it was the case there's definitely I think some opportunities to improve upon just the transparency and communication there there was another question I believe about the the board notes in the meeting minutes as well might be a little bit related right there might be opportunities just to make some of the day to day communication a little clearer about the board's intent and why they do certain things um but also at the same time I I really don't feel like it's fair to assume anything specific about you know his circumstances I don't think that would be fair to him at all so I certainly don't don't want to go down that path but I would say the most important thing is is that we have to build trust back to the community we may all have different issues that we're passionate about and that's really up to the community to vote on about which issues they want to see you know taken up and have that representation on the board however the governance is just as important there needs to be you know updates on that and follow-ups and people should be really clear about exactly what's going on and how that's happening in the board and I think that's the piece at least that can help to establish a little bit more trust between the community and the board and I think that's a totally fair thing to call out I'm really glad this question is being asked as someone who has attended the open board meetings regularly for years tried to you know get involved on that level and understand what was going on as far as what the board was thinking as far as the direction of the Drupal Association and have some level of input and voice in those discussions I think it's been I feel that it's been challenging to only have that access you know once a year essentially you know twice a year at best I wrote about this in my in my post about running for the Drupal Association board seat about how important I think the transparency is and about about that board meetings page on the da site that has you know dates only that are two years from two years ago so this is something that's very important to me I think the transparency is important from a governance perspective as has already been mentioned but I also think it's really important just for you know getting getting people involved perspective this is how we get more people invested and participating in the future of the Drupal Association this is how we get people excited about potentially running for you know a seat like this in the future expanding the pool of candidates and you know I think that the only way that you you know there was a part of the question about you know driving meaningful change in light of this and I think the only way that you do that especially right now without more transparency is to be in the room and so you know that is what is important to me and you know it would be a priority priority for me to you know advocate for and hopefully implement greater transparency so that others can see what's going on hopefully become excited by what's going on weigh in on what's going on and you know and become a part of that future for the Drupal Association okay thank you I'll go for this one yeah the part for bending out this one I think is a two-way thing here's a to become a Drupal member if you are in need to join the board you are joining from the seniors and you are a junior you don't have much experience so you need to have emotional intelligence and we'll be dealing with different people from different backgrounds also it also causes to be stressed so I think the best thing is to learn from the previous candidates it's best to communicate with them how was it how did they manage and then the first time when you join the board is to learn from the seniors so the best thing is transparency communication and then you listen how it works and another thing which really helped me I see it's a very demanding position was when I read on the code and contact of the Drupal Association and the requirements it's really stressful from reading only so you need to be prepared mentally emotionally for the board so the main thing which I can encourage is to be mentally prepared and emotionally it was to be dealing with different people on the board sometimes if you contribute something someone they might look as if they don't like it or sometimes people they might act in a different way so you need to be strong and then to have a softest skill how to communicate how to ask others but the best way to overcome such kind of things is to learn from the previous board members I think most of them they are always published they are open on social medias and communicate how do they manage what they go through and then it really helps you if something comes to you you are able to handle it it's not something new they tell you no maybe first three months there will be challenges like this communication meeting deadlines how do you overcome such kind of things of meeting deadlines what is involved exactly so that's I think that's the best approach for me to deal with such kind of bending out or to like you don't want to end up with a situation by resigning before your contract is over so the best advice I can say is to be emotionally mentally and emotionally prepared for the position it's quite a big position and it's a demanding post thank you let me unmute so I believe that from David's question we were also able to answer Mark's question about accountability transparency so I'm going to move forward and let's scroll down what are some new tactics that you would recommend the DA implement to increase meaningful emphasis on meaningful contributions from Drupal service providers tangentially what changes if any would you like to see made in the contribution credit system I think I can take that initially and I did look for Mark's mute button first so I I know that there is a very vibrant discussion going on right now about the contribution credit system I can say and I'll just give firsthand what my experience is I don't I think it's just becoming a little too academic in my opinion I would like to see it not be used as like a criteria to evaluate service providers I think it's too complicated of you know you can't make an algorithm that gets it right or or perfect and there's going to be and I certainly believe that you can't disenfranchise you know credits that might come from non-technical means as well and I think you get into major gray areas there that I think are very hard to sort out what I would actually like to see quite frankly is I would like to see service providers step up their game especially financially instead of just using the software trying to advocate and push for not only their teams to be contributing meaningfully they can do that in whatever way it speaks to their values and their intent but also to to look at them as commercial partners to help drive better investment back into the Drupal project or the DA itself in this process and I know there are some programs that do that like you know you can get your logo on certain things from the DA and you could sponsor Drupal con you could have a booth etc etc but I think there's maybe some more opportunities there to offer some programs that can help you know kind of bridge that like you know maker and taker philosophy that's been blogged about a lot but what I would say though is if I had my druthers right now I would kind of get rid of the credit system but I don't I think that might be a little bit too bold or a little bit ambitious you still need ways of being able to recognize both individuals and commercial entities that are participating in the community so I don't want to look at it too too boldly but I can definitely highlight my perspective which is it seems that there is certainly room for improvement there and I have been reading and paying attention to a lot of the community blogs around this right now Theodore Baidala who used to work with John and I actually just wrote one last week that was pretty fascinating kind of taking a fresh look at things and I would open up you know any voice or any perspective and try to encourage anyone in the community to reflect on that and not you know just look at it from one specific perspective or even look at it historically of what we've done we can think bigger and do something innovative here so I think there's definitely opportunities and I would like to be a good facilitator in that process and definitely pay attention to what the community is doing and try to advocate for more and better so yeah I love that the discussions that are going on around this right now on many of those issue threads and following along closely I think that we haven't we'll never perfect it there's always going to be another iteration that where we can improve I will say that I think that Drupal's credit system is pretty fantastic and there's a lot of open source communities that that look to Drupal and have used Drupal's credit system as an example for something great that that they don't have until it's one of the you know features that has been built into Drupal.org that you know during the GitLab acceleration progress initiative during that initiative it's been a topic of conversation of well how do we make sure that we don't lose this because it's important you know even if we're moving more pieces to GitLab and there are great solutions that are happening around that we're not going to lose that but I think it it does way more you know brings way more value than harm and I think that there are always going to be people that game the system and we can improve that some of that I think to help with that but I love that you know I love all the improvements that have been brought to it around non-code contributions I love you know that we have the ability to you know like committers have the ability to to choose who's getting credit and who's not and I trust in most cases of committers are making good decisions about who's adding great value and who is not and I also you know in these discussions the one thing that I always try to keep in mind try to get others to keep in mind you know when we talk there's a lot of talk about low value contributions and I don't really like that framing I think that there are you know there probably are examples that you that anyone would consider low value but I think what most people are talking about I would not call low value I think that maybe they are maybe it's they're more novice type fixes maybe they're more novice type issues and people have concerns about how they're being submitted and things like that but you know we were all novices once and I think it's super important to even if there is a bit of gaming going on I would be very hesitant to make any changes that would that would dissuade any true you know novices you know from making those their first contributions and getting their first credit that's going to get them excited and keep them contributing so I want to keep those folks in mind and make sure that we are prioritizing them and not you know making the experience worse for them just to get rid of what you know will always be there which is a group you know a small group of people that are going to try to game our system or you know game the algorithm we can get better at that but I'm I would be very cautious about unintended consequences yes I can jump in I don't have anything to share about any changes to the contribution credit system but I do think meaningful contributions would mean increasing and upping it seems like that's been the case so far the level of sponsorship that companies that are able to give to the Drupal Association so I know at least for my agency they have increased every year and prices have gone up every year and I think financially I mean our company makes our living off of Drupal and so I feel like since it's such a pillar such a bedrock of our company that could be something that is reflected in the level of sponsorship so I don't think that there's a problem with requesting higher levels of financial contributions and also increasing the variety of ways that organizations individuals corporations can contribute so I do know that the Discover Drupal was an emerging and new thing that my leadership of my team decided to support and I think that's the type of thing where other companies could also think about the either mentoring time supporting employees with mentoring time supporting with equipment or supporting with any kind of training I think are great ways to get Drupal's new lifeblood and to have the the association be at the forefront of recruiting more people into Drupal. Yeah I mean I think Mark and Adam and Nikki did a great job covering a lot of a lot of my feelings on this I think my my emphasis here is you know I I think I agree with Mark a lot of the contributions here people are coming from a good place I think something we need to be really careful of is discrediting someone's contribution you know we don't want to make this for lack of a better word I'll call it a boys club right it's not it's not inclusive it's not doesn't promote diversity and inequality and you know coming up from a junior developer role and trying to get in the community I was intimidated by contributing early on and you know I know a majority of the community is welcome welcoming and super friendly and you know I always enjoy the interactions that I do have but making sure that we don't try to put this contribution up on a pedestal so that only senior talent that's been in Drupal for X number of years can can make an impact and what's meaningful to one group of people might not be meaningful to another but doesn't mean it's not meaningful contributions right and I think as long as we take a look at this holistically and maybe separating maybe the question is meant to separate individual contributions from the actual service provider contribution system which I think there's probably areas of improvement that that can be made to the service provider side of things and you know some of my personal experience really starting up a Drupal agency myself and starting self-funded with just me and building it into a company you know the cost is a barrier of entry and when you look at you know competing with the bigs and other people have been in the space for five or ten years maybe there's programs that could be put into place or at least pitched to the association to promote small businesses and new organizations getting in here that are maybe using the community or longtime members and maybe provide some additional initiatives for them to play in this ballgame that can also help with our other other problem about getting more community sponsorship supporting small businesses and really helping push that forward get get more funding by providing additional opportunities for businesses that qualify and and keeping that in I haven't really thought about this in too much detail so I don't want to just throw out ideas without actually doing some more research and on the service provider side of things but I think it's an excellent question and I think everyone here really really answered it well so really appreciate you asking that. I just want to add one thing I think that the discussions that are going on right now and the proposals that people are putting forth are really innovative and really fascinating and you know so I think that while I am and while I am hesitant to to make sure that there are no unintended consequences I think there's even if the the credit you know the core the credit system ends up staying the same I think there's some great ideas in those discussions that could be used elsewhere around service providers and stuff like that so I'm really excited to see how it nets out. Great thank you all for your thoughtful answers we are running a long time so that's going to be our last question from the community but now we're going to transition into some of the prepared questions that Adam, Mark, and John you were able to answer earlier so we're going to begin with I know that Nikki you were able to introduce yourself but we want to make sure that we're providing visual and auditory opportunities for everyone so although we have our blog post which I'm really grateful that you that you sent in those responses if you wouldn't mind can you share again your name and your pronouns and maybe like a short bio for your involvement in Drupal your professional background and community interest. Yeah so simply thanks everybody so again my name is Nikki Flores I am Monica Deere on Drupal.org I go by the pronouns she her and again I'm based in the Midwest and Lansing which is Michigan's capital city in terms of my professional background I am a former developer and now have been working in the technical project manager role as a sort of federal master at an agency for the last three years and so it's been a switch from being in the code to looking at a higher level dealing with stakeholders timelines deliverable communication problem solving and assigning resources in terms of my community involvement I have been involved with the Drupal Diversity and Inclusion Initiative having spoken at last year's inaugural DDI campus keynote as well as supporting different initiatives such as the non-profit industry summit at DrupalCon this is my first DrupalCon in Portland this past year as well as organizing as part of the community working group so I have been able to through my work have time dedicated directly to Drupal and the community and so I've been utilizing that time in that way as well as giving talks um what was the other question sorry I'm sorry it was professional I think you know you had a professional background community interest and anything else you wanted to share oh one of my biggest ways that I got involved in Drupal and using you know spinning up your own hosting and just learning how to use Drupal was because I want women and minority people who are underrepresented in tech to have mechanisms to share their voice spread their products for their idea you know build community around their idea and so it's big for me to continue to educate people on how to use Drupal how to use free tools to spin up Drupal instances and how to think through contentized views permissions all of that in order to make those very powerful Drupal tools available to a wider variety of people so yeah we can solve our problems for our own communities when we bring our own knowledge and share that with each other thanks thank you Nikki Asaya we're just introducing ourselves so if you wouldn't if you mind telling us your name your pronouns and then maybe a short bio that um about your involvement in Drupal your professional oh no I think that awesome oh here you are up there he just changed the spotlight um but yeah so if you can introduce yourself with your name your pronouns and then tell us a little bit about yourself your involvement in Drupal your maybe a little bit about your professional background and your community interest Asaya are you still with us maybe having some technical difficulties on that end well to make sure that we're honoring the time Nikki I'm just going to jump into a few of the questions that we were able to ask earlier awesome so the first one is what is your approach to managing executive level leaders and I'm going to put this in the chat yeah absolutely so this has been a evolving discussion at my own workplace as well and a lot of it has to do with planning and identifying goals for each of the different executive leaders in terms of for example having guide points having additional training and then having a plan to achieve whatever goals folks have and having that documented in a way that it's easy to see quarter over quarter year over year someone's progression so for example at my own organization there's been a heavy focus on diversity equity inclusion including just cultural competence and understanding kind of the situation here in the United States local our members are in the United States and so each person has been tasked with going through a company provided diverse equity inclusion training from our training provider so I would say that would be one big aspect just because with Black Lives Matter and the events of 2020 we've just realized that there's such a huge chasm disconnect potentially between people who in past historical situations have held all the power and people who are coming into that power so I think part of it would be one learning about difficult just understanding historical situations and then understanding where there might be gaps in our current kind of executive functioning second is developing a plan for each person if that is like learning how to update the website to post the minutes like that could be a basic thing or having maybe some back to the question earlier in this read about what is accountability and transparency look like in the board position I would say for sure for me having a goal of how many people are Drupal Association members as well as how many people feel comfortable with the associations you know those questions about how likely are you to support the Drupal Association's lead or how comfortable or how satisfied are you with the Drupal Association's mission and implementation of the vision having pre and post surveys with that I think that would be a good way to start measuring or putting a number on overall satisfaction between the association yeah so that would be part of how I would approach that having a plan having training specified training and then having some sort of numerical judgment factor that we could have as a goal awesome thank you Nikki and you kind of touched on one of our next questions a little bit and I've seen this as a thread throughout some of your answers which I'm really appreciative of but how will you embed principles of diversity equity and inclusion into your board seat if you're elected and I just wanted to base if you wanted to share some more about that oh sure and I just want to make sure as I if he's available to talk about that so again I mean I feel like that's very much built into whatever thread I have and I think simply by existing as a triple minority as a woman as an immigrant as a Filipino as somebody didn't speak English as my first language I think even having a seat on the board is a great step at least for me personally being in the room and then having that ability to discuss and share that information with the community so like for example one thing that I didn't know and I didn't want to rock about was is there a open contact for where people can raise even anonymously issues with the board and have a way for that to be reflected back so the people one know that they can give a comment suggestion feedback or anonymous anonymized feedback and then two to know that that's been referenced or heard or documented somewhere so that there's this open sense of discussion and not just kind of like what has been talked about before opaqueness or having it behind closed door so I think about opening sunshine that kind of thing is important in terms of additional DEI it would be about understanding that like I appreciate the time zones appreciating the fact that there's pronoun uses appreciating the fact that we can build thoughtfully a place where anybody who does Drupal can feel comfortable and I think that that is best embodied by initiatives like the best over Drupal where people who may not have thought of themselves as being Drupal there's people who may not even know about the technology can be introduced to it and then to have an equivalent professionalization like if there's a way to get a license certificate or some sort of designation then that elevates the profession elevates the progression and then elevates the ability for people to feel like they can contribute so that can be as a mentor as a trainer or just as somebody supporting through blog posts through stories so one part of it is encouraging people to share because I know for me it's taken quite a long time for me to feel comfortable sharing and then to making sure that the voices that are not yet in the room can have a voice or a seat or open conduit into that room as well as reflecting that back. Thank you Nikki. What is your approach to non-profit fundraising and philanthropy? Yeah absolutely so my experience with this has been through the being the non-profit wide developer for Ashoka Changemakers at speed and it's based in Washington DC as well as being the Drupal developer for Green America and supporting through their DA launch so the lessons I've learned is that you want ongoing contributors on a monthly basis so I would use as my approach this idea of sustainers became a sustaining member five dollars a month I know we always talk about a cup of coffee a month like if you can do a cup of coffee a month and then also highlighting the fact that these are all the benefits that you receive as being a part of that association membership so I would say highlighting the idea that you can become a member have a voice have a vote have ownership in the association for a small amount per month and then also the idea that here's all the benefits that come with your badge like we have on the Drupal.org directory having the ability to vote having the ability to join or be encouraged to join any of the initiatives that are going on but I would definitely focus on increasing the pool and decreasing the amount that it takes to become involved with the association I know that there's a pay as you go right now which I think is great and I encourage that. Awesome and our last question is what is your approach to building healthy team culture? Yeah that's a tough one so as a robot worker at a completely 100% distributed organization it is all about but having a healthy communication asynchronous opportunity as well as having kind of focused time to discuss certain issues so I would say let's embrace Drupal Slack having kind of community hours having opportunities for people to participate even if they're introverts even if they're extroverts like having lots of more social or cultural or educational events as well as having actual the initiatives that people are working on to have maybe much more open and transparent notes for that so for example if I as a new person wanted to get involved in something like community working group which I was recruited to work on to have those notes and those like the overview and the past history be a lot more visible right now I feel or at least in my experience a lot of stuff is behind kind of gatekeeping or kind of firewall basically like you have to just know somebody in order to know what the discussions are in the room and I think part of this would be tied to the accountability experience just making a lot more things open kind of sunshiney having a lot more of the minutes visible having any of the committees visible and open requests for actions that people can take on behalf of committee and initiatives I think that would be one way to encourage it and then also just to focus on understanding one's own strengths and weaknesses and how they would approach a team like everybody participates in a team in a different function so not necessarily leading towards people who are most focal or the most outspoken are the most like in charge but making sure that everybody in the room has time or an opportunity to contribute to the agenda or contribute to notes or contribute so it's not just stratified but that it rotates so I think that's something that's helpful having rotating leadership having rotating notekeeping having everybody participate in an equal fashion kind of Girl Scout style. Oh thank you and sorry one more calling out conflict so part of healthy function is to have conflict and to be able to speak to it and so this really disturbs me reading some of these blog posts about folks who feel like they're silenced or not able to share so I guess establishing and continuing to build a sense of psychological safety where you won't be punished for bringing something up you won't be disenfranchised for pointing out something I think that idea of healthy healthy conflict is something that I aspire to in my term of walking. Thank you and thank you for taking the time to share your perspective and your passions and your insight and this will be this recording will be available for other people to be able to to look to watch later today but I just wanted to take the time to thank you for joining us and have a few reminders before we close out as we are hitting our time one I know that Asaya wasn't able to join us so for a part of the the question so just I want to remind everyone that you can check out his blog post to learn a little bit more about him so I would highly recommend that you guys check that out along with other candidates blog post and just some important upcoming dates in order to vote you have to have an active membership at least 24 hours before voting begins so that falls on 0100 UTC on September 20th and our voting begins on September 21st and it'll go through the through October 19th and close at 2359 UTC after voting closes the board will ratify and they'll take a little over a week so from October 20th to October 31st and then we're going to announce our new new board member on November 1st so once again thank you for joining us Niki do you have any any closing thoughts before we close this out oh certainly I would just encourage everyone to make sure your Drip Association membership is up to date you can find that on the Association website and each of us it's up to each of us to play our small part however small it is can definitely be a part of moving and advancing the whole movement forward so I welcome the support of anyone who feels that any of the current candidates represents their interests and encourage you to vote thank you for the opportunity thank you