 All right, everyone, welcome to the Drees Note Q&A, or really the Ask Drees Anything session. We are your hosts. I am Tim Lennon, Hestanet on Drupal.org, the Chief Technology Officer of the Drupal Association, and with me. Hi, I'm Joy Garrett, JoyGarrett on Drupal.org, and I'm the Community Contribution Coordinator. Awesome. And we're here with Drees, who I think you know, and hopefully you got to see the wonderful keynote today about accelerating innovation in Drupal and the kind of steps to bring us along that journey. Our hope is that if you have some more questions about the sort of nature of this plan, this vision for the future of Drupal, you'll submit some of those questions, and we'll jump in and get started as well. Again, as housekeeping, you can scan this QR code or use this link and enter the code to ask any questions that you might have. You can also view the questions that are already submitted and vote them up if you'd like to do that. And you are also welcome to come up to the microphone and ask a question live if you would prefer. So with that, I think we'll jump in. All right. So our first question for you, Drees, is why was it important for Drupal to be recognized as a digital public good? Yeah. So a couple of reasons, actually, trying to order my thoughts here as I see the question. First of all, I think it's a great recognition of the work that we've done and what we stand for. It's an important recognition. And I think it will help us in a couple of different ways. First of all, we talked a little bit about this in the keynote this morning, but we want to do more fundraising grants, applying for grants and other philanthropic efforts. And I believe getting recognized as an official digital public good is a great thing for that because potential grant writers, they're probably more likely to fund something like a digital public good than, let's say, a more commercial kind of alternative. So from that point of view, I think it's a great thing. And I actually think that that notion extends to potential end users as well. Imagine you are in the public sector and you want to make a choice between two competing CMSs, let's say, it seemed like a logical choice to go for a digital public good because of the kind of side effects of being a digital public good. And in our case, it means that other organizations can benefit from the investment that you put into Drupal. So this notion, as a public institution, that's a good thing. And so these are just two reasons why I think it's a great thing for Drupal. It will help us attract money from grant writers, I hope. And two, it will help drive adoption because organizations are more likely to select a digital public good over, let's say, a commercial proprietary alternative. And I think it's actually worth saying out loud or expressing more clearly what we mean by digital public good because you may not be aware that the digital public good designation comes from a United Nations program, a digital public good alliance that evaluates a variety of open projects. They can be open standards bodies, they can be open source software, they can be open data sets, a number of different things of these kinds. And this United Nations organization evaluates whether these projects or data sets or other things advance the United Nations sustainable development goals, their 20-year vision for building a better, more equitable global community. And they felt that Drupal was a clear choice to include in no small part because the website that hosts the sustainable development goals is hosted on Drupal. So I think it's a really good choice. All right, so here's an interesting question that we got a lot and it's relevant to our keynote today, which is, what do you think about technology, the concept of technology fads? And I don't mean to make a value judgment necessarily with that phrase. But most recently, we've seen a huge rise in crypto, tons of investment, booms and busts and court cases and people fleeing to Bermuda and all sorts of things, it's been a little bit tricky. And now it feels like the whole world is abuzz about AI and what's coming next. So what's the difference between hype and innovation? That's a great question. I'm not sure there's an easy answer, to be quite honest. Personally, I see the potential of both technologies, both crypto and AI. But there's a big but. The but is that we need to sort out a lot of, it doesn't mean they'll win because I think we have to make sure that we develop those in the right way. For example, one big issue with crypto is just the impact on climate. So I believe in the potential of crypto is maybe a better way to say it, but not as it is today. And so usually what happens with a lot of technology is that they start off really like sort of in a suboptimal state and over the years to come. We become more efficient and we figure out some of the problems with the technology. And that could be technical problems, but also ethical and regulatory problems. And sometimes some of these problems stay, like sometimes they're never truly resolved, but they can get better. And there's a lot of examples of that in our life today. I mean, think about cars. Obviously, cars are useful. Everybody almost has a car, but they're also really bad for climate as well. So that doesn't necessarily prevent the technology from succeeding, but it does cause decades of research around how to make more efficient engines, for example. And so I feel a little bit the same way. Like I recognize all of the issues with crypto. I recognize the issues with AI today. At the same time, these may be kind of unstoppable trends. And I feel more bullish about AI than about crypto to be quite transparent about that. But I think AI is an unstoppable trend. I mean, it is going to be part of our future. Then the question becomes, how can we make it a part of our future in the best way? Like what can we do to help advance these things in a way that is aligned with, let's say, our values in terms of how these things can work? So I don't know. I think they're both innovation, to be quite honest. But like with a lot of innovation, they go through a hype cycle where there's a lot of hype. And then over the years, they kind of figure things out. But crypto, I like the potential in terms of what it can bring in governance models, for example. And AI, I think it's going to honestly re... I think the whole digital marketing world is going to be turned upside down. And we're going to see like there's going to be a big evolution of how people create content, how people brainstorm content, how people create personalized website experiences. That's all going to be AI driven. So we've got to figure out what that means for us and how we can participate that in the healthiest way possible. And actually, just to follow up on that a little bit, by participate, do you mean that in terms of regulation advocacy or do you mean more specifically how Drupal could perhaps innovate and set an example for a responsible use? Well, first of all, I think is we should try and participate in wherever we can to help steer it. And the beauty of Drupal is we have a large platform, we have a lot of users. So we do have a voice, I think, we just need to get ourselves at the table, so to speak. So, yeah, I mean all of those things, yeah. I don't know, it's probably not always a popular answer, so to speak, but I do think, you know, these things are here, you know. Thank you. So I've been with the DA for about a year now. And one of the first things that I tasked myself with was attending Drupal camps. And as someone who doesn't have a lot of Drupal background, I found it really helpful. The camps feel really accessible, and I'm always, like, really grateful for how welcome they are. So since we know that they're the grassroots of the community, what's something that you think they do really well and how can they evolve? Yeah, it's a great question. I think what they do really well is kind of what you said, in the sense that they're really, really, really helpful in knowledge sharing, and, you know, sharing information about Drupal and getting people up to speed on Drupal. So I love that about Drupal camps. And you can see often, like, the importance of Drupal camps. Like, there's a lot of places in the world where they have a really good Drupal camp and the community is really thriving because of that in that area. And it has nothing to do with the size of the city or the location of the city because there are certain regions, like, major, major cities in the world where the community is just doing okay or not okay. And then there are small cities and remote places in the world where the community is incredibly successful. And I attribute a lot of that to the local leadership, the people that organize these local events. So it's really important for knowledge sharing. It's really important to build excitement for Drupal. So I think that's what they do really well. I guess the second part is how can they evolve? I think that's also a great question. And I'm not sure of, like, an answer that applies to every camp because I think every camp has their strengths and their weaknesses, so to speak. But one thing that I would love to see is in light of what I talked about today is, like, how can we use the camps to get more people to contribute? Like, can we, and I don't know if every camp does that right now, but that would be great if, like, every camp had, like, a mission to help kind of create more contributors. And, yeah, I think that would be great. And when I talk to people, often they start their Drupal journey at a local event. And then sort of they graduate between air quotes to Drupal Khan, you know? And that's also a nice thing to see. I talked to quite a few people. They say, oh, I've been going to Drupal Camp Florida for five years or Drupal Camp, you know, Denmark or whatever it is. And then eventually they make the big trip, you know, the big trip to Drupal Camp North America or whatever the European Drupal Khan is that year. So I think they're important to recruiting people. And I would love to see them kind of get better and better at turning people interested in Drupal into very passionate Drupal people and then contributors. So. Thank you. Yeah. Awesome. Our next question is about local communities and reaching out into larger parts of the world. So it is, what can Drupal do to be more active in the global South, South America, Africa, Oceana, and et cetera? Good question, too. So I've been privileged to travel to many locations around the world. I've not been to Africa. I'd like to do that. But I have been to many other places and I've met with the local community. And one of the things I've seen is that language, like, you know, because most of what we do is conducted in English. That can be a real barrier for a lot of local communities. I've been to, you know, Japan. I've been to China and, you know, many other countries. And you can tell when I meet with the community, when we do events, like, lots of people can, are not fluent in English. And so one of the things that would benefit those communities is just having documentation in their local language, maybe Drupal books. I mean, I remember going to China, for example, and where English was a major barrier. And I thought about sort of the ROI, the return on investment of just having a book. You take one of the better Drupal books that are published in English. You pay somebody to translate a book, which I don't know how much that would cost, but it's not that much money to translate a book and then make that book available in a country like China where you have, you know, a billion people, right? And these might be interesting experiments, like, how can we get more and more people involved in the local community? So I think language and availability of documentation and content, videos, these kinds of things are a huge barrier. Yeah. I think perhaps if we could bring more multilingual content directly to Drupal.org, that could help as well. Yeah, exactly. That would be great, I think. There's many other things we can do, but that's the one that kind of stands out for me. It's also great, actually, I met already some people from some of these continents. You introduced me to the gentleman yesterday as well. Yeah, we had a member of the Young African Leaders Fellowship Program, Denia Dennis, who may or may not be sitting right here. Sorry, we actually can't see many people because of the lights. I know. It's very, like, right. Joining us from South Sudan, we have people from Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka, like, all over the place. A lot of these people that we want to reach are coming to us as much as they can, and it would be great to reach out back to them. Yeah, and we were talking a little bit about how we made the journey, and then he would, like, attend many different sessions and then take that back to the local community. And so one of the things we can do is, like, continue these programs where we invite people from all over the world, really, to attend Drupal, can learn about Drupal, and then bring those learnings back to their local communities. That's a great way to multiply information and knowledge and excitement about Drupal. So, that's, you know, one other idea. All right, so Discover Drupal is a program that was created to create resources and opportunity for marginalized people in Drupal. Why do you believe centering marginalized people in Drupal is important work? That's a great question. I know what Discover Drupal is, but does anyone know what it is in the room? Should we explain that in one sentence? I don't know if everybody knows it, but I think it's useful. So it is about a year-long program where students come and they get the training that they need in order to create their own websites and to be burst in Drupal, and they also get placed with a mentor to support them throughout their journey, and then we also connect them with resources and job placement, and it's just a really good opportunity to stay connected with people who need support and extra resources so that we can make sure that Drupal is a truly diverse community. That's right, I think it's helpful, maybe, but yeah, it's a great program, and actually the people in the program are here this week as well, so maybe get to meet some. Yes, they graduate on Tuesday. Which is exciting. But why is it important? I guess really the question. I mean, there's a couple of reasons that come to mind. Obviously one, it's important for them, but it's also important for us as a community, but it's important for them because we give them more opportunities. Like people in marginalized groups, they're often in parts of the world where they're oppressed, they have limited career options, and so we really help them learn Drupal, and that gives them opportunity, and that's absolutely wonderful for the people in the program. And hopefully, they will spread that excitement for Drupal and their knowledge, and bring more people into the Drupal community, which gives them opportunities in life. It's important for us too, not just for them. We want the Drupal project to be diverse and inclusive. We want everyone in the world to use an open web, and we want everyone in the world to participate in building a platform for the open web. I think it's important that we have representation from all of these different communities, so I think it's how we build the best software, by including all of everyone in the building of Drupal, because they'll have unique viewpoints that are different from the viewpoints of us or other people, and it's the combination of all the unique viewpoints and ideas that we'll make for the best end result. And so we benefit from that, of course. The hope is that the people that participate in the program continue to contribute to Drupal and play a role in Drupal. Of course, we don't control that, but our hope is that they become future participants and future leaders in the Drupal project. I think there's, to go back to your keynote, I think there's an opportunity for people who would not, perhaps, otherwise had the chance to become one of the seeds of perhaps the next major innovation or seed change to get a leg up and get the opportunity to be in the room when those opportunities happen. Yeah, I attended. There was a breakfast with Discover Drupal this morning. I couldn't make it this year, but I attended the breakfast last year, and it was absolutely wonderful to sit down with people in the program and them sharing their story and what they thought of the program and the impact it has already had, just going through the program and how they look at things. So it was one of my favorite experiences at the last Drupal console. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I think that for Discover Drupal, it's important because it acknowledges the inequities and it's a solution to it. And hopefully it can be replicated by other folks in the Drupal community in the future. Yeah, and lots of... By the way, the program is... Obviously the Drupal Association plays a big role in it, but also other partners of the Drupal Association organizations giving time and money to help trade students for, I think it's several months, right? The program, yeah. Yeah, it's almost as close to a year. It's like a multi-month training program where multiple different agencies and Drupal companies contribute their time and money. So it's quite nice, actually. Okay, now we're getting to a fun one, which is we heard a lot about Leica and the history of early photography. You've gone pretty deep in this. So how did interest in photography capture you? What was the bug? Ha, funny. Well, I've been doing photography. I'm actually not that good at it, but I've been doing it for a long time. And I think it started with my dad having, like I remember it being a Canon camera when it was an analog Canon camera. And as a kid, I was playing with it. I don't think there was actually film in it. But I would just go around and pretend, take photos. And then I also remember getting a camera for a Sinterklaas, which I should explain. But Sinterklaas is a European, I guess, tradition. It's actually what predated Sinterklaas in the U.S., yeah. And it's on December 6th, of all, I don't know why December 6th, and I think in some countries it's on December 5th. But anyway, Sinterklaas comes to your house and leaves gifts, a little bit like Sinterklaas, and you know, Christmas. And one year I got a camera. And it was like for kids, like foam padding and that kind of stuff, like you could throw it and it would still work. And I started using that camera and I guess that's how, and I must have been, I don't know, six or seven, you know, young age, I guess. And ever since I developed kind of like an interest in photography. And I would say recently, the last year or so, two years, you know, that kind of passion was rekindled. You know, I kind of graduated to bigger cameras, I guess, and it became like a hassle to carry around. So I would travel to Drupalcon with a camera backpack, with like a big lens and I ended up not bringing my camera. And then about two years ago, about a smaller camera, and I've adopted this philosophy, always carry your camera, or almost always carry your camera. And as a result, I've been taking more photos. So long-winded answer, but there you go. Awesome, very cool. So I want to remind you again that you can continue to submit questions to themmenti.com code or come to the microphone here in the center if you'd like to ask a live question. And we're gonna go to some of the audience questions now. Let's see here. I'm gonna jump in. Yeah, why don't you take the one other side? Okay. Adoption of layout builder has been slow. How would you sell layout builder to veterans of Drupal who has invested much in tools like contacts, paragraphs, panels, et cetera? How would I sell it? Or how would I? Sell it to veterans of Drupal. How would you sort of convert them from maybe the other tools into layout builder? Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, layout builder definitely, when I talk to people, I mean it's not necessarily layout builder, but when I talk to people, the thing that they ask the most about is like, I want to be able to build landing pages or simple pages. And that's kind of associated with layout builder. And so really people want those tools to get better and I think it's because our competitors like WordPress have gotten really good at those kinds of solutions as well as the SaaS vendors, as well as there being a trend towards empowering marketers and content creators with low code, no code tool. So layout builder is a big thing for those reasons. I mean, I would say what layout builder is really good at in Drupal is in actually creating templates that can be applied that are associated with a content type. I actually think layout builder today isn't very good at creating a single landing page, but what it would be good at is, let's say you have an e-commerce website and you have a 10,000 products in your database and you want to lay out how each product looks in a template that way, that's today what layout builder is pretty good at. And that's actually pretty unique capability that some of our competitors miss. But what we miss is how do we create a one-off page? Like when you start your website from scratch, usually the first thing a lot of organizations want to do is like, I'm just going to create an about page. I need to have a title, an image, two images, some address information, what have you. That's actually not that easy in Drupal to create like an unstructured page, if you will. But what we are good at with layout builder is structured pages. So I think the opportunity is to get better at structured pages as well as embrace this notion of unstructured pages and bringing that into the Drupal core platform. I'm probably not the best person to serve a comparison of all of the solutions out there, but there's multiple solutions and I think it has served different people in different ways. I think I would add to that that it was implicit in what you said that layout builder is often for a different audience than necessarily who we think of as the Drupal veteran. If you're the Drupal veteran developing the site, building the site in a deeper way, layout builder is a tool you're deploying for your users. I don't mean the visitors to the website, but the team that is gonna use the Drupal site that you've created. And I think thinking about it as a tool to help empower them and answer things that they might frequently come to you with frustration on is another way to think about that. Yeah, I'm actually quite excited about the two layout builder proposals being funded. The two that we saw this morning because I think we have these different solutions right now, like the layout builder that's in core. We have Gutenberg for Drupal. We have paragraphs based solution quite excited about the idea of bringing all of the different stakeholders together and figuring out is there a way to combine the best of all of these worlds and create a path forward that allows us to build a really nice layout builder or page builder that we can use for Drupal going forward. I'm actually quite excited about Gutenberg too. That's maybe a controversial statement, I don't know. But Gutenberg was designed to be an independent project and WordPress is the largest user of Gutenberg. But what I like about it is that so much effort has gone into it, as 80 million websites use it. A lot of people love it. And it seems difficult for us to out Gutenberg Gutenberg. You know what I mean? It has just so much momentum. So like rather than building our own, trying to figure out resources to go build it, would it make sense to adopt Gutenberg and then contribute to it and make it better? Because I'm sure once we look under the hood, we'll find all kinds of things that we would like to change. One, because we can make it fit Drupal better. For example, let's say the structured content. Maybe it's not well optimized for structured content or template pages like layout builder. So that would be something we can contribute to. Maybe it doesn't meet our accessibility standards and we can contribute to that piece. But maybe by joining forces, we can get to a great solution faster because if we are gonna build our own Gutenberg, I mean, we'll be here in five years and talk about how we've kinda just did some basic work. And so anyway, I'm not saying we have to go with Gutenberg, but I'm excited about bringing all the stakeholders together to see what we could do. And actually had a conversation with Matt Mullenweg about this two weeks ago, not about specifically for this reason or anything, but every time I see him, every time I meet him, he mentions like, hey, if you want, you can use Gutenberg. And I'm sure he does that to other CMSs, but he's very keen on other projects adopting Gutenberg. So I'm sure he might contribute to that as well. So anyway, it's interesting and we'll see what happens. Awesome, okay. So our next three questions are all related to sort of the ethics of the open web. It's a popular topic here in our questions today. And I think I'll pick the first one here and we'll go through. You mentioned the open web as a key principle of moving forward with Drupal. How do you propose reconciling this principle with the need to protect marginalized groups from hate groups who use the same open platforms and tools? Yeah, it's a great question. It's a difficult question. And actually, let me start by saying that I don't always have the answers. And I'm also constantly learning about how to do these things. And I just wanted to say that because it's a difficult topic in many ways. And sometimes there is not a right or wrong answer. But I think to this question, I mean, this has always been an interesting challenge with open source, right? Because open source software is made available for free. Everybody can use it. And open source software has been used for good and for bad. And unfortunately, our license, the current license, does not really allow us to, or does not really enable us to do anything about it. Like, we can exclude certain groups from using Drupal. Like, it's impossible. And so this is not a new problem. This is a problem that's been in existence for 25 years and in Drupal for 22 years. So I don't think there is a magical solution. But I think what we can do on top of that is what matters. And what I mean by that is we can have our values and principles in the Drupal project. You know, and we are focused on diversity. We are focused on inclusion. We wanna help marginalized people. And that's what we can focus on. And in the end, hopefully the positive impact of all of that work outweighs kind of how people use Drupal for, you know, for negative things, you know? And I think in general, that's how technology often plays out. Like, there's always a bad side to a lot of these things. But what we can do and should focus on is like making sure that it's used for good a lot more than it is used for bad, you know? And that starts with us and the values and the principles and how we act in this community, so. What are your thoughts on the openness of the web when it comes to causing harm? Do you think we should de-platform sites that support harmful organizations? Sorry, can I? I have this echo because of where we're sitting. What are your thoughts on the openness of the web when it comes to causing harm? Do you think we should de-platform sites that support harmful organizations? That's a great question. It's also a difficult question because I don't know if we can, you know? At least as a Drupal community, we don't have that power because a license doesn't allow us to. Personally, I would love to see only good size use Drupal. You know? Yeah. And yeah, I don't know what to do about it. It's kind of, I know we're a little bit dancing around the elephant in the room here, you know? And it kind of feels awkward, too, but at the end of the day, we can't control the business policies of all of the different players in the Drupal project. I mean, that's not our job necessarily. So. Fair enough. I think these sites, unfortunately, if we de-platform them, they'll go somewhere else, you know? So one more question along those lines and then we have some more technical questions. You mentioned the license just a moment ago and what the license allows us to do. So this question addresses that point. Drupal is open source. We can't control who uses it or for what purpose they use it. But what are your thoughts on new licenses emerging? Things like the Hippocratic license that attempt to insert some kind of ethical use clause. Yeah. Well, my personal opinion about it is I think that would be a good thing. You know, I think the GPL has a number of shortcomings, not just this one in particular, but you have to remember the GPL is a 25-year-old license, you know, and the world has evolved dramatically in those last 25 years. And when the GPL was created, we didn't see the world the same way or we didn't kind of understand the global impact that open source would have. So, you know, I think I embraced the notion of evolving open source licenses to deal with these kinds of learnings and I mean that in the broad sense. So the challenge is always like, how do you migrate an existing project like Drupal to a new license? It can be very difficult because you need copyright transfer, depending on the situation. Anyway, there's like technical challenges with adopting a new license or legal challenges. Like let's say to use, you know, just to use an example of like us, if we wanted to adopt another license, technically we would need to go back to every contributor, everyone that has ever contributed to Drupal in the last 20 something years and get like their signature almost, where they say, yes, I'm willing to re-license the software or the lines of code that I wrote from this license to that license. So practically speaking, it's impossible unless the new license is compatible with the old license but adding additional restrictions to the GPL or current license would not make it a compatible license because the GPL is pretty clear and says everybody can use the software and when you contribute to Drupal, you sign up for that license. The idea is that you can use Drupal but then when you contribute to it, the same rights will apply to it. You can just like take something, change the rules, you know, like so. Anyway, we're getting into a little bit of a maybe technical part here but I just wanted to explain that to people because it's, yes, I love the idea of making our license better and overcoming certain limitations and this is not the only limitation but unfortunately it's not that easy is I guess the short version, you know, for the reasons that I mentioned. Oh, thank you, it makes a lot of sense and it is a huge challenge. If I could bend intolerance sites from using Drupal, I like that idea, yes. All right, with more than half of all Drupal sites still using 7 and EOL approaching quickly, how do you see backdrop CMS as fitting into the Drupal community going forward as an upgrade alternative? Yeah, so backdrop CMS, maybe I should explain what that is too but it's basically, I would call it a friendly fork of Drupal 7. So some members of the Drupal 7 community decided to create their own version of Drupal using slightly different principles. For example, they decided to fork Drupal 7 and adopt a backwards compatibility policy because at the time we were breaking APIs, right? And so that's what they did and in many ways that has been good for Drupal in the sense that one, it provided a home for certain users of Drupal but two, we also learned from that and we actually took or adopted some of the policies that they started with and applied them to Drupal future versions of Drupal in Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 and Drupal 10, et cetera. So I would say backdrop has been a net positive for the Drupal project. And so to go back to your question, I think we're gonna make some announcements later today about the Drupal 7 end of life and that will be done, I think it's around four o'clock at the Drupal 7 EOL session. So I don't wanna announce what we're announcing but at some point, people will need to move off of Drupal 7 and they'll have some choices like hopefully they will choose to upgrade to Drupal 10 or Drupal 11 because I believe that's the best version of Drupal, the most powerful capable CMS but I also recognize there is a lot of organizations that may not have the means to do that and for them, backdrop might be a great solution. Depends I guess but so I think we can promote that as one of the options for people that are stuck with Drupal 7. I think there's other options like maybe you turn your site in a static website that could be another option depending on your site. So I think there's different options and I would hope that all of the Drupal agencies in the room when they work with customers that are on 7 that they walk them through their options and that they explore those options with them and then kind of guide their customer in the best possible direction given the situation. So the next question is no code and low code application development we'll say has been on the rise. How's Drupal planning to compete with the ongoing stack of no code and low code tools that keep appearing? Yeah, I would say no code, low code has been a 20 year trend. You know, if you think about the original web it was all hand coded, right? And then, you know, every year it becomes a little bit more WYSIWYG and DragonDrop and a little bit low code, no code. So it's not a new trend, it's a multi decade trend. I think hopefully in 20 years when we do another one of these sessions that trend will still be active. I don't think it will ever stop. You know, it's a very powerful notion to enable anyone to build websites without having to write code and the definition of a website is changing and the power that we can put in the hands of users through low code, no code is only gonna grow. So I think it's an exciting trend. I think the question was what's the challenge? Is that the question? Or how do we compete with perhaps newly emerging primarily no code solutions? Yeah, so I talked a little bit about that in my keynote but I don't think we can ever be the best low code solution. And I think that's the case because the best low code, no code solutions will probably be SaaS services fully hosted. You never have to upgrade things, et cetera, et cetera. But I think what we can be the best at is what I call this ambitious site builder definition where we do an incredible amount of compelling low code, no codes, but also allow people to go outside of that box. Like low code, no code is great but it's usually also restricted. Like you can do everything. And I think the power of Drupal is that whatever you can dream, you can build. And you can do it with 95% low code, no code and that last 5% because of the power of open source. You can customize Drupal, you know? You can write a little bit of code or you can write a lot of code if that's what you wanna do too. And that's something that a pure low code, no code solution will never be able to do as far as I'm concerned. Maybe they'll figure out a way at some point but I think that's an powerful, that's a very great message because we don't box you in, you know? It's not, there's no vendor lock-in. You can use low code, no code, to be very productive and be efficient but if you wanna do something more, something that we haven't invented yet, something that doesn't exist in the world, something that makes you very unique, you can do that with Drupal and you can go outside of the box. And that's how we can win, I think. That's a interesting space to be, you know? As a question maybe, if you have a question, feel free to come to the mic if you don't mind. I think it's partially because the session might be recorded too. Sure. Is that something, creating the competition for a low code, no code site is the ability to create something that doesn't already exist that you would normally have to code? Is that something that AI could support and give that power, you know, almost like a translator for someone who doesn't know how to code? Yeah, I think so. I think AI, you know, will help ambitious site builders in a sense, right? You know, I could see a future where a certain customization that you needed to write code for was maybe not super easy and maybe you needed a senior developer to do so. But I can see a future where maybe a junior developer assisted with AI can make powerful customizations. So I do think AI will help lower sort of the barrier or will make it easier for, you know, for many people to do advanced customizations that require code. So it could be part of an ambitious site builder strategy in the future. Are we doing enough to bring more people to the Drupal community? Was hoping to see more people here. That's a great question. The answer is kind of no. We never do enough, you know? I think there's always more to do. Yeah, I don't know. There's an incredible amount of work going on to bring people to Drupal, you know? Events, Drupal is being taught in colleges, people write books, blog post tutorials. A lot of work is being done. When we prioritize features in Drupal, we think about which features have the best impact or which features help us attract more people to Drupal. So we do a lot. I really do believe we do a lot, but there's always more to do. And you know, that could be an invitation to all of you in the room to find ways to help. Yeah. Looks like we have a question at the mic. Yeah, can I follow up to that? Are there any plans to have any more hybrid conferences given that COVID is still a concern and probably a reason why attendance is not what it used to be several years ago? Yeah, the notion of doing either a fully virtual third conference or having more kind of hybrid content at DrupalCon. I think this is something that we've talked about before. One of the most powerful things we had during the DrupalCon global events is I met people in Drupal who I had never had the chance to see at a DrupalCon. There was no way, even separately from the COVID issue, there was no way that we were gonna be able to afford the travel and all those sorts of things. But I think those were highly successful. I think we have, you know, we talked about growing the fundraising for the Drupal Association, strengthening the foundation there. I think to run a third con, even a virtual con, is gonna take some resources. But I think it's a powerful idea. There was a lot of value in what we saw there. And so I personally, I'd love to see it. Yeah, me too. It was great. I remember it's called DrupalGlobal, right? It was great. From all around the world that I would not have been able to meet if it was an in-person conference. At the same time, I love meeting people in person as well. So I love the idea of doing both, really. Combining the two. Like, and also know some other open source projects. I was actually a keynote speaker at a conference organized by Git Kraken or something around Git, believe it or not. And then like 20,000 people on a Zoom. And so like, I think you can also reach incredible amount of people using a Zoom conference if it's done well. And their format was really interesting too. I think every speaker had like 10 minutes. It was like fast and very quick learning. You know, it wasn't like long presentations or anything. So it's an interesting format. Often these things come down to, you know, resourcing and all these kinds of things. But I like the idea of virtual events personally. And we have another question. Yeah, hi. I posted on the thing, it's probably next as well, but I wanted to triage off of it, which is I've been developing Drupal for like 16 years now. And I think what I noticed is when Dev Desktop stopped, it was not easy for local development to continue as far as moving from Lando and DDev, Docker dependencies, now moving, you know, having NPM and all these versions, trying to get a local development going isn't to me well adapted to someone who isn't an engineer, frankly. And so I'm curious to see or to understand if there's a plan to bring back a UI tool again for local development. And the second part to that is if not, how does that dovetail with this notion of ambitious coder? Because to know how to debug all of this kind of stuff is to me a level above that. Yeah, that's a great question. Let's see, there is no official plan to bring back a UI based solution. However, I will say I think DDev and Lando they've gotten easier and easier. Doesn't mean they're perfect. You still need to use the command line quite a bit and that can be intimidating or difficult at times. But I actually recently switched from Lando to DDev myself and it was surprisingly easy. I mean, I'm also a technical user, but I was surprised how little steps it took. Then there's also solutions that you may or may not have heard of like, I think they're called GitPot. Have you heard of that? It's basically, with one click of a button you can have a development environment in the cloud and they have free versions of that. Not exactly the same as a local development environment because you can't really use GitPot on a plane, for example, or depending on where you work you may not be able to use those kinds of environments. But those are also good alternatives for people to be aware of. I would love to see a UI on top of DDev. Could be a great proposal, maybe for a future Pitchburg or innovation contest or maybe somebody in the audience will feel inspired to help. So I think it's definitely a great idea, but it's not something that we are officially working on. But that doesn't mean other people couldn't. Yeah, and I would add, you may know this having sort of 16 years of background in the community, but I would add for others, again, if you haven't gone to the contribution events before and if you join the first time contributor's workshop you'll learn some of these tools. It's actually a really good place to get a leg up on some of these things, learning Git pod or Drupal pod, this sort of layer on top to help develop is a great thing to do. We are running out of time here, I think. We have 30 seconds left on our clock, so I think we have to say our thank yous. Again, there's more questions than we could answer. There's been some great questions and I think some tough and important questions that have been really worth exploring. I don't always have the answers, but I'm learning with you, together with lots of people in the room, I do navigate things like those questions. Thank you. You're welcome, thank you. Thanks very much, Dries. Thank you all.