 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the Drupal Association Town Hall to talk a little bit about what the format for this is. This is just a question and answer session. There's not a big presentation here. We just have some opportunity to speak with some of the leaders of the association and to just answer any questions that the community may have. So I have some questions that we've prepared in advance, but if anybody in the audience would like to ask questions, please line up at the microphone as the question occurs to you and then we can move forward and listen to those. Just do make sure that you're at the microphone so that it is recorded. So we'll get right into it I think. So the first questions are by way of introduction. So for Heather, could you introduce yourself and tell us just about your story in non-profit organizations and technology before joining the DA? Sure. And Tim, you have a fabulous recorded voice by the way. I noticed that today of the Drees Code and I was thinking of the possibility of a second career. Yeah, no, I've been practicing my radio voice. So hi, I'm Heather Rocker and I'm about four months in on the gig of executive director. I have an interesting background in that. I'm about 50% non-profit and 50% corporate consulting to be specific. So my non-profit background is primarily to do with women in technology and then also issues around women and girls. So I've spent a lot of time in the diversity and inclusion space. And in a consulting role, I've been heavily embedded in technology. So my educational background is in industrial engineering, which put me into power supply consulting, where I learned a lot about running large spreadsheets. If you're interested in buying a power plant, I can help you evaluate what you should bid on now. So we want to go into that line of service at the Drupal Association to get funding. That's an option. But it's nice. So this is a nice culmination of tax implications. So this is a really interesting place for me to apply a lot of different skills and pull them together. And so I love utilizing all my non-profit business knowledge. I've run exclusively volunteer organizations. So this is a fun fit with that as well. And then of course, being able to have enough of a technology conversation cannot feel like a complete idiot. So that background comes into play. But there is a wall outfit where I'll give you a signal that you've lost me. That's awesome. Thank you, Heather. So to you, Adam, could you introduce yourself as well and just sort of tell us the story of how you came to be involved in Drupal? Sure. So hi, everybody. My name is Adam Goodman. I chair the board of directors for the Drupal Association. It's nice to meet everybody. We've got a couple of other board of director member plants in the audience. So when we don't know an answer, we'll be staring at them and hoping that they do. I've been the board chair for a couple of years in my day job as it were. I'm actually a professor at Northwestern University, which is in the States, just in Chicago and just north of the city of Chicago. I'm at the McCormick School of Engineering, which is obviously an engineering school, although I am not an engineer. I wouldn't like to claim to that. My academic area is actually leadership and organizations. So I've worked with a lot of leaders globally and helped them to become even better leaders. And that's where my research is focused, particularly specialized, and how people learn how to become more effective leaders. Probably more than you wanted to know about. How I got involved in Drupal is that it's kind of a fun story that is at the intersection of Northwestern and technology. There's a group of student-run businesses. So these are businesses that are selling birthday cakes that parents would call on order a cake for their child's kind of thing. Or doing delivery before apps and delivery existed kind of thing. So at any rate, one of the other advisory board members to this group, I was this faculty advisor, and one of the other members is somebody by the name of Tiffany Ferris, who I know is relatively well done in the Drupal community. And she came to me, I want to say about maybe 10 years ago, and said, so we've got this board. I know you know a lot about governance. We're not particularly well-governed, and we would like to get better at it. We're maturing and growing fast and trying to figure out how to do a good job at that. And could you just come and help facilitate a meeting and help the board think more about what governance should look like at the scale of the association that we have and help catch up. So that's how I got to know, so that's how I got to know Drupal. And over time, I've learned that many of the websites I touch are actually powered by Drupal and sort of, by the way, including Northwestern universities. There we are. My alma mater also won Drupal. I checked. I was going to have to disavow them if they weren't. Awesome, cool. I'll give a quick introduction myself, although I think a number of folks know me. So Tim Lennon, the Hestanet on Drupal.org, and now the CTO at the Drupal Association. Like many people who've been around Drupal for a long time, I actually started just freelancing with Drupal. I used it as a way to pay for my college tuition. It paid for a small fraction of my college tuition, as you might expect, but it did eventually become kind of part of my career. And then about five years ago, I had the opportunity to go work for the association with the engineering team and have been there ever since. So yeah, that's me. So since we don't have anyone at the mic yet, I'm going to go through a few more questions that we have. Awesome. So Heather, to get some kind of outside perspectives into your formats on the job, can you talk about what you see from other nonprofit experience are the unique challenges of an open source nonprofit or open source technology for that matter? So what I think is unique but also powerful is the mission behind the Drupal Association as a nonprofit itself, right? So you don't often see a nonprofit set up to promote a product in a community of which it has varying ties and intricacies. So it's an interesting blend of what does the nonprofit itself bring to the table versus what the community does versus what business leaders do and how does that all intersect. So it's not as cut and dry as we raise money to do X. It's very complicated. But I think what makes it complicated also makes it exciting, right? So there are a lot of things that we can do. And I think the fact that it is predominantly a volunteer run community that we do intersect with individuals with businesses with governments with educational institutions allows us a lot of opportunities to engage in different ways. Where I think that we can learn from the nonprofit community that is more traditional is some of the structure around volunteer recruitment and management. So I'll give you an example. I just left the local association roundtable. And probably not surprisingly, their top concern is how do we recruit and retain volunteers, because we'll get a handful of them will burn them out not intentionally. And then we lose that talent without leadership and we have to start over. So what we talked about were some structures that exist today that help organizations function very well, that we can use with our event organizers group with our camp structures with local associations, where we adopt some of that volunteer management best practice, so that not only we avoid burning out the volunteers that we have, we learn how to recognize them in the best way possible. But we also look at succession planning. So leaders can kind of come in and move up and move through and you constantly have to recruitment of new talent. And the nice thing about that is when you recruit people into roles other than leading an organization, you get that next generation of Drupal. So it helps us solve a few things at one time. Awesome, thank you. So I'm going to pick on your academic background again, Adam. So in the like kind of field of literature about leadership or about the kind of economic development of technology organizations, is there a kind of no the answer. So this is slightly a trick question, but is there existing academic literature about open source or open source leadership? There. So there is some literature. And to me, what's what's what's what's interesting, and again, I don't know how much you care to know. But to me, what's interesting is the the concept of open source in the ecosystem, in particular that Drupal has built, is really fascinating to study. So if I'm running an organization, and we'd like to think about organizations not being hierarchical, not being top down and that sort of thing, but the reality is that we all sort of end up looking up, even though we don't think we should be looking up, right, to figure out what's the direction that I should be receiving. And, you know, to do my priorities align with the priorities of the of the organization, and am I sort of following in the way that should be following. And to me, what's really interesting about open source is that it is obviously, yes, there's trees as the project lead. But it turns out, if you don't show up, he has no followers. And you know, the question is sort of what compels people to engage. And when there's a group of developers or whoever that get together and say, we want to build this, this thing, wherever that feature is. And, you know, three stands up, I probably shouldn't be saying this, because we're going to get in trouble with the trees. But when Dries stands up, like he did at the Dries note this morning, and says, you know, these are the four paths or five paths that we want to follow to the top of the mountain for eight or four, nine kind of thing. And the nicest possible way, we're all kind of hoping that others say, yes, we agree. And we'll show up and contribute and make that happen. And so for me, as an academic, it's, it's, you know, very interesting to think about. So how do you how do you engage people? How do you, how do you grab sort of the hearts and minds pieces of that, so that people see value and want to contribute and see a sense of community and want to contribute. So in some ways, Drupal is much more akin to a community association than it is to sort of an organized software enterprise. And in some ways, because of the sort of the piece to me that is even more interesting is the is the global nature of those contributions. So if I have the advantage of geography, right, while living in a neighborhood, while living in a particular area, then it's a little easier to organize and keep things together. But somehow Drupal has been able to build really this best of free community. That is, you know, we have sometimes we look at the inside and it's, you know, we think, Oh, this isn't working, or that isn't working, it sure would be nice to have this or got this conflict going on in the community and whatever it is kind of thing. So it's easy as an insider, I think, to think to yourself, well, we're not doing so good. But if you look at what Drupal has accomplished both on the technology side, but also on the community side, it really is an astonishing story. What the things that we do around you if you just look at something like the community working group, if you if you if you just look at the security team. So here we have we were talking about this this weekend. We we run software that is widely acknowledged as being among the most secure on the internet, right? And it is done through volunteers. How do you get that? We're not sitting there with, you know, you know, $100 million security budget. We're sitting there with volunteers who have to, you know, pay for their own t-shirts and hats. To me, that's that's that's truly amazing. Awesome. Thank you. We have our first customer. Yeah, I came with another question, which I will ask you that to your what you were just saying, actually, makes me wonder, I'm Brad Jones, by the way, I'm from Denver, Colorado, I'm a freelance server. That's my story. I will maybe challenge a little bit the idea. And probably, I think we're speaking the same language, but maybe just different terminology, like much of the much of the important, like security team or like trees, all that kind of thing. That's a lot of that is sponsored work, right? It's volunteer in the sense that they're not getting a salary from the Drupal Association. And, like, Greg Madison, who is a fellow Denverite, like he's on the security team and his, you know, his current job doesn't really even care, I think, if he's on the security team or not. Yeah. So there is some true volunteers. That's right. That's the range. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Right. And so my question on that is sort of like, I think, you know, Dries is in a unique position that a lot of projects have where he's the founder. He created this thing in his pajamas in his dorm room. Could you maybe talk a little bit about I'm sure the DA is probably talking about like succession planning, like, when is the right time for Dries not to be the project lead? Right. And what does that look like? Because, you know, and he's even coined his own, I mean, it's like, it's the Dries note. It's not the keynote. It's not the, you know, it's the Dries note. So it's very synonymous with him. So maybe you kind of get the point of my question, like, what is, you know, because we don't think any of us want Drupal to be like Dries's thing. And he, you know, when he gets hit by a bus one day, we just don't know what we're going to do anymore because Dries isn't going to tell us in the Dries note, right? So I'm happy to respond. I don't know, sort of, but I just don't want to preempt. My response was going to be we're looking for whoever has that exact hair. And then we know we found the chosen one. Adam's answer is probably practically different. Tell them to apply. So one of the, one of the things that gives me comfort. And by the way, you know, my sense of working with Dries fairly closely over the last few years in particular, but certainly having worked with him one on one over the past 10 years is, you know, his passion and commitment is sort of is undimmed, right? It's strong, powerful, it's effective. So I'm not sitting here thinking to myself, you know, wins the kind of wins the end sort of thing, because I don't have any sense at all that we're any work close to that. What is interesting about Dries is that he does not carry, and I can say this as somebody who knows this field a little bit, he doesn't carry with him many of the challenges that afflict founders. And so, you know, sort of the the signals that you want to look for that would certainly give me a pause are the stories always about him. We don't see that, right? He's always he's good about sort of lifting up the community and recognizing and validating the contributions of others and asking for help. The second sort of indicator that you would look for is a desire to control as many decisions as possible. And again, it's not a pattern that I've seen with Dries. Does he have a view kind of thing? Yes, certainly in, you know, for example, our board meetings, he's very careful to be the last person to weigh in, which is sort of a funny thing to talk about. But obviously, what it does is it creates space for everybody else in the room to be able to share their opinions, thoughts, ideas, and that kind of thing. And on many issues, he's actually pretty silent. Because he has it, he has that he has that sense to know that kind of once I say something, people are going to sort of are likely to galvanize for that. So he so he uses his power or influence, like, rather than rather than rather than a heavy manner. And, you know, there's many more, but sort of a third indicator that would that would kind of worry me is a reluctant to give up, you know, sort of roles and responsibility. And if you track, you know, sort of dribble in the community over the last three or four years, it's actually shedding responsibilities, not keeping up. And obviously, as a play towards, you know, understanding something around succession, what I've not said this to you, so I want to be very careful here. But that last piece, I think is actually pretty important, because in a corporate setting, and I want to be very clear, triple is not a corporate setting. It's a community. But in a corporate setting, if you're looking for if you're going to do succession planning, right? Basically, what you're going to do is have three people inside of your organization, and three people outside of your organization, that sort of best practice, who you are actively sort of staying engaged with on the internal side, you're actually actively cultivating them. So that when that leader leaves, you have multiple choices. And what I see us doing, and I mean, us not just trees, is working to create more leadership opportunities for more people. So that when trees, you know, steps away, or, you know, something else happens that is more sudden kind of thing, that there is, it's not just sort of who's the next person, I actually think that's a mistake. I think it's much more about who were the next sort of wrong of people who could step in and not necessarily do so to fill exactly the role that trees has. I think what we want is a much broader sense of resilience around that. And again, my view is, consciously or not, that's exactly what we're creating. Is that answer your question? Yeah, that's a good answer. And I mean, he's not the executive director, he's not the chairman of the board. So, like the position of like, project lead, like, you could split that up and it could be something else. So, yeah, exactly things, you know, like the CWG reported to him up until a year ago, it was two years ago. And, you know, now it's all all the new charters are rolling up to the Drupal Association. So your that when we talk about structural shift, I'd be more concerned about a gap. If the association didn't exist. But I think that you do have a layer through the association for some continuity, where I don't feel as worried about there being a catalytic event that would that would cause Drupal to be unsuccessful in some way. And I'll add one more note on that front, which is that we know we have other clear leaders in the community. I mean, there's people who are like a tremendously influential of their own right, one of them is sitting in this room over there. Hi, Gabor. And that's why he came here so that we can say no, but and people like Angie and all these folks in our community who are leaders, and who are leaders to large groups of folks. I mean, ironically, when I was telling my own Drupal origin story, I was pretty sure that Angie Byerman was like pretty much the leader of the whole project when I first joined like she was the active person who was my inspiration and kind of mentor coming in. So I think we have the kinds of people who would be, you know, again, not in the same sort of leadership role, but who are already in leadership roles that logically makes sense. Now I'm nervous because I see which faces we have. By the way, I think it's a really good question. So hi, so I'm Gabor. So that's part of the reason why we did the Monday keynote is to highlight all the leaders that are actually involved in doing this stuff and making actually making the decisions from most of the things that happened in Drupal court. And then Dries comes on and shows up all the nice things that those people decided and may happen. Yeah, so that's why we put them on stage to humanize the group of leadership that already makes stuff happen. Absolutely. And I could point to other leaders to stay on that theme, who would have said, absolutely, we are not doing that because the show needs to be about me. Right. Hi, my name is Matthew Saunders. I've been involved in the Drupal community since 2006. I am the director of the Drupal Camp Colorado. I've been involved with that since 2007. I was an association board member for two and a half years. As a large member. And I am super interested in what Mike Lam was talking about today. In the video, the community recognition program and how that how that will work. And my sort of reasoning for being super interested in that is that my contributions, while I've got a few code contributions, my contributions have largely not been code. And they go long and deep into the community. And for a very long time, those kinds of contributions weren't necessarily valued in the same way as code. And I would argue that if Drupal as a code base would disappear entirely, the community that's been built around the software would likely survive because of the friendships, the bonds, the way that people's careers have bound themselves, bound them together. So I'm really interested in hearing a little bit more about that program and how people can get involved to help. So I think that's an excellent point in that you cannot have a robust, effective volunteer organization, and not appropriately and effectively recognize volunteers for what they bring to the table. And so while code is obviously very important to your point, there's more to it that makes Drupal what it is. And, you know, I think we heard the message loud and clear and there were already some things in place where volunteers could submit non code contributions. Part of what we need to do now is just make it easier to find it to to be able to go through those systems to be able to kind of self, you know, self populate that information so that we have it. And so that's that's the challenge that we're trying to take on. And so while I would love to pop up my PowerPoint about how this is all exactly going to work. I want to point to when Mike said we're kicking this off and we're thinking about it and we want your input, that's truly where we are. So what I didn't want to do is have the Drupal Association go off into a room and chart out what we thought was the right plan, only to be told very vehemently that we had it all wrong, we rolled it out to the community. So it very much is thought leadership and the board level, the staff level, community leaders and everything in between because we want to make sure that we get it as right as possible. And we know there's a lot to that. To your point about what you do not only has a long history, but you've been deeply involved. So there's different levels of I showed up to a camp, and I helped run a session room. And I took attendance and I went home versus I organized a camp and it led me dry for a year emotionally because I was so invested in what was happening. And we need to be able to recognize the difference in that from a recognition standpoint. So that's partly what complicates what we're trying to do, but also makes it more powerful. And so that's really the approach we're trying to take as we move forward. Yeah, and speaking to how to get involved and things that are going on. So on Drupal.org slash contribution dash credit. There is a link to a form if you want to be involved in the committee itself, that's going to sort of help us govern what the weights and measures and types of contributions are that we recognize. There's also an issue for suggesting, here's an activity that we do that should be recognized by the community. And there's some preliminary work in terms of the kind of technical underpinnings of how we want to do this and how we want to make it as frictionless as we can. Because it's it's not going to help if you're going to have to fill out a 10 page report before you can get credit for any of your work. It needs to be real simple in order to do that and it needs some some careful control. And there's kind of two really key elements to this. Mike spoke to this when we were discussing it a little bit privately. And one is we need to measure everything well. But then we need to understand what impact measuring it and giving weights to things has on the contribution economy around Drupal and how we're making those choices. So there's a lot of a lot of work to be done there. But it's something we're really considering. I just want to add, I think I have one core contribution in my entire history. Like I'm a project manager by trade. So I'm in that same category. And I think, you know, everybody here is in that category of people who contribute a huge amount, but not in the ways that are traditionally recognized. So I think I may go back to my questions. If we don't currently have a follow up. I just want to add for me, that was one of the I was really pleased that it was in the Dries note. I was really pleased that, you know, that the DA is taking this on. And I want to make sure that we take time to to get input from the community. There's a part of me that is, you know, every day that goes by that people are contributing not being recognized for that contribution is a little bit of a lost day. So I want to, so I want to stand up something as quickly as we possibly can. And know that it's probably not going to be perfect. But I think the friction and easy part will, you know, will sort of hopefully dominate at the front end and then we can make it, you know, sort of more complete. Yeah, I don't know that will ever be complete, but we'll continue to iterate on it. Yeah, I think I think it's going to be continuing kind of kind of thing. But if we, my hope is that, you know, we get it sort of mostly right out of the box. And then we get it just kind of more and more right over time. And then people are able to, I think about just up the street from you literally two blocks from my office is where is where George and Tiffany's company volunteer is. And, you know, George is, you know, volunteering at the CWG. Tiffany was our treasurer for a long time, right? And both of them get zero credit. She got her first credit from our camp. Right, yeah. And that actually is sort of a good follow on to to what we've been doing. We've been creating tickets on d.o for everything, like we've so we've got a project for the camp and we create tickets for any kind of activity that somebody might be involved in. And that's how we're making sure that people who do things like show up for meetings or help at the registration table or whatever for the camp are getting some level of credit. Because a lot of the people who are volunteering are designers and project managers. And, you know, and that's a natural thing, like for project managers. It's a really natural thing for them to want to help do the the organization of events and so on, right? So I'm really super happy to hear that that that there's a sense that this is going to become more mature. Yeah, I would like to be in some form of reward or recognition mechanism. Yeah, I encourage that. And I was going to say it's great that you're doing that. We need more people to do that in the interim. The problem that I heard was either people didn't even realize that was an opportunity to create a ticket and to do it or they went and looked and it was so convoluted that they just kind of backed away slowly and said I'll forget about it after all. That's a communication issue though. That's something that I could easily be managed by by putting out a communication that says here are the three steps to repeat that back for the sake of the recording. As Matt was saying, it's a communication issue that we can communicate the existing ways that you can create community projects, not just code projects on Drupal.org and credit in all the same ways. Yeah, please. So on the topic of communication, I had sort of a interesting exchange in a Drupal.org infrastructure ticket a few, like maybe a month ago, something like that. I logged on to Drupal.org to do work and up pops a very prominent unavoidable click to make it go away banner about the global climate strike day and I don't expect it to be a popular opinion, especially in the EU, but that's not really my jam and I don't when I give money to the Drupal Association, I don't, you know, I expect certain things but I don't necessarily expect politics. It's the same kind of thing with Mozilla, like I disagree with Mozilla on, you know, net neutrality, but they're very active with it and I can debate whether my dollar that goes to Mozilla, you know, I enjoy that but, you know, I am a member of the Drupal Association and I can come to a town hall meeting about it. So I'm just kind of, you know, I think those kinds of things and I had the exchange in the ticket was basically like, you know, I was like, where did this come from? Did this just sort of happen, you know, and the response was like, yeah, I got put up the flagpole at the Drupal Association and everybody in the office is kind of cool with it, you know, it's more or less the, and I, that's a paraphrase, I'm not trying to put words in people's mouth, but, you know, and it went down to two days later or something like that and there was also an issue raised about how those kinds of banners and I think it's happened before, like negatively affected accessibility of the site because you have to click to make it go away and it's worse on Mozilla and that kind of thing. So I guess I'm just sort of conveying the thought that there's lots of stuff that I think the Drupal Association has on its list to do, um, waiting into, you know, encouraging people to strike on climate strike day is not something I think is sort of in the wheelhouse and I think, you know, if other, if people want to support that they've got other avenues in the Drupal Association's maybe not the, not the place where we should be doing that. So it's an interesting conversation and I want to make sure that we're clear that as much as we do sit around the office and talk about those things we actually don't have an office that we do. But it's one of those things where these are truly not issues that we come up with from a staff perspective. These are issues that bubble up from the community and are important to the community and so there's a lot we have to weigh in any association or organization, right? So it's like of all the things that bubble up, you know, where do you interact and where do you act or not act? We got a lot of similar pushback about Pride Month but it's interesting because there are things that are important to the community that when we talk about diversity inclusion there are going to be things where we as an association and as a community feel strongly, you know, with global strike it was actually, actually had a pretty big community push for us to take action on some of those things. So I think what we, what we have the opportunity to do as a community is say, you know, what is important and to whom? The issue is we're global so different things matter to different people and what I would not want to see us do is err on the side of not participating in anything for fear of ever doing the wrong thing. I do think it's important for us to step into the right things. Now is there a way to figure out what's right for us to do and what's not? Probably. Now where we're not truly ever going to be political is truly structurally, you know, involved in politics because if you think that's controversial imagine the larger conversation. So it's one of those things where we get community feedback. I think for, you know, for everybody that hates something what we do there's another group that loves it. So it's always striking that balance which is difficult but I think that we're still kind of finding the stride about, you know, what makes sense for us to engage on a global level and what doesn't and there are some things that we do and don't and I think with that one you brought up the pop-up banner thing and I'll let Tim speak to that too from a stride perspective. No, it's because it's a good point and I'll talk, there's a technical side to add as well but I think there's, you know, as we talk about these things internally and decide which ones we might want to participate in because we're seeing the kind of community feedback and things like that. Part of it is also do we see any sense of relevance to, that is to our mission because part of your point was like does this necessarily have anything to do with promoting Drupal and for some things it's more clear than others in the case of like the Pride Month kind of stuff. I think it was related to our deliberate efforts in favor of diversity and inclusion initiatives with stuff like the climate strike. There was a series of other foundations like the Linux Foundation, Mozilla, others, folks in a tech space who are linking it to the sustainability of how we use technology and things like that. So we felt there was enough of a link in that case. Yeah, it actually came out of an open source conversation, consortium kind of thing. Yeah. So it wasn't just Drupal community had decided. And maybe it wasn't as closely related as all things should be, right? Some of these might be closer to the market than others. On the technical side, the accessibility side, yeah, that was a concern for sure. And one of the nice things about it at least though is Neil Drum on the engineering team actually contributed back to that whole initiative and accessibility fix that got deployed out. The Wikimedia Foundation opened an issue is like, we need help with this. And we got to go on and say, oh, hey, we sold that for the Drupal site and show that out with the rest. So regardless of the particular message, there was at least that opportunity for a little collaboration. Yeah, and then this is certainly not the hill I'm dining on, but I think it's important also, like, you know, the more we talk about diversity and like, it's also diversity of thought and, you know, I think sometimes, you know, just because I'm another white guy at a tech conference, right? It's, you know, I think the same way as everybody else. Different question for you. Because we are GPL2 and, you know, that significantly limits, it's a blessing that occurs, significantly limits the ability to like sell stuff, right? Could you talk a little bit about the Drupal Association's sort of like financial stability? Because I know, you know, it was on the brink of oblivion a few years ago. I think things have gotten better. But also like, does the DA have any thoughts about, like, stuff that we can do, or it could be done, you know, like anything from an endowment to, you know, sponsored service that will help, like, avoid the next brush with oblivion? Because like, donations are great, but like, say Aquia gets bought next year by another VC company, and like, they're not a gold, platinum millennium sponsor anymore? Yeah, so let me speak to the, you know, sort of ins and outs, and I advise a number of nonprofits, I have to obviously share this particular board, and I don't want to say it is routine and common for nonprofits to sort of hit points of struggle as a part of just their general trajectory, but it is certainly something that happens. And obviously what you want to do is, you know, rescue out of it. So, and, you know, I was not on the board at the time, that's by the way not abandoning the issue, I'm just saying, I was just not on the board at the time, but what became clear to me as it is, you know, as a function of just kind of learning more about it, since I didn't look through it, was that the association, meaning the staff and the board, and you know, I think more the board, were, they were just making some assumptions about kind of where the future is going to be and, you know, where people would see value and how we should be staffed and organized and those kinds of things. And like any other business, you know, made some choices that didn't prove out as well as was hoped. And, sorry, I don't think that's any different than any, you know, sort of relatively small business. The, what we have done since then, obviously, has gotten much more focused on financial dashboards and financial reporting, so that we're much more keenly aware when things are not swinging in the way that we want them to in, you know, when we've got various revenue lines and that sort of thing. Audra is smiling because she's on the finance committee and I'm not, and she knows how little I know about this subject. So, you know, so I'm not, where I can't tell you is that I am not staying awake nights right now thinking how we're going to pay next month's bills. I don't think that's, I don't think that's our issue at all. But I'm also not sitting here thinking, oh, we've got all this cash that we can spend. What I have learned over the last couple of years is that we're basically, we basically commit every dollar that we take in to fund an existing activity that we take, that we have right now. So anything new that we want to do, we have to figure out how that, how we're going to generate the revenue to make that happen. And there is always a longer list of things that we would like to do than we have money for. And again, it's, it's both a frustration and a blessing, right? So it's kind of like from a financial side is what are the risks that we are willing to take so that we can do more and hope obviously that there's the money behind it in order to, in order to make that happen. So again, in some ways it's like any other business that way. The, I think what is different about us though is it's not about how do we bring in money so that we can send the staff on nicer vacations. It would be nice if they had a better benefits package than we're able to offer right now. It would certainly be nice if, if people understood I think that the money that we take in literally is money that we turn around and reinvest into the community, into the project to make good things happen. So again, there's no, there's no shareholder here in that sense. So that's what we, and so when I think about, you know, kind of what are the things that we would like to do when I look at Dries's, you know, sort of list of development pieces when I look and I know a lot of that, obviously that's going to come from the community and should come from the community in terms of sponsored contributions and people giving it their own time and all of that, I think, works. But what would happen if we could accelerate that, right? The, if I think about, you know, sort of building an even healthier community in terms of people's commitment and being able to recognize contributions. If we had, you know, to go back to your question, if we had a picket amount of money, $100,000 to put into solving this problem right here, right now, we could get there a lot faster. Right? So that's what I mean by, and I think about what the value of that is in terms of building in just a much better community. To me, that would be very cool. So that's the kind of thing that, you know, as a board, that's where we spend a lot of our time talking about how can we figure out and not just where we want to go next, but obviously how do we pay for it in a thoughtful way that doesn't take on too much risk? So, and I think to speak to the financial piece which you mentioned, which is really are you thinking around funding diversity? Are you future focused? Do you have one or two big sponsors that if they dropped out tomorrow everything falls through? So what we think through is that it is not an effective amount of profit model for most of your funding to come from an event, which is the way that the Drupal Association was created and has been maintained for many years. So very focused on how do we keep the funding that comes from the event but add other things to that pie of funding that are wrapped around either products or services or other ways that we can bring money in so that we're hedging against event being the big ticket item. And I think where we have a lot of opportunity is really, let me say this first, I've never worked for a nonprofit that sold stuff, right? But I've worked for nonprofits that were very financially healthy. And so what you do is you get really effective at selling the value proposition. And so where we have a lot of opportunity is really understanding the value proposition for each of the different audiences that we connect with. And I think that we are very much aligned to make that happen sooner than later in even bigger ways than we have before. So we've got new staff around the table that bring new ideas and new financial acumen. We've got thought leaders on the board that are helping us do that. And we're really connected to how do we really create a sustainable financial model not from trying to figure out what's the widget that's going to make it happen but what's truly valuable in the market. I'd rather know if you weren't in. No, I think that sums it up. So we are just about, no, we are out of time. So that's going to have to be the end. And I forgot to say thank you, Brad, for being a member. You get extra question credit. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you for our two people from Colorado because it's snowing like crazy. All right. And with that, we'll wrap it up. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you.