About Mike

Hi, I’m Mike Herchel. I have been an active member of the Drupal community since 2008. In addition, I am a lead organizer of Florida DrupalCamp, and lead of the new Drupal 9 front-end theme, Olivero. 

I live in Gainesville, Florida with my 10 year old (Millie), and two dogs (Coco, and Dexter) that like to sneak food off of the counter.

Note: You must be a member of the Drupal Association to vote. You can request a free membership through https://www.drupal.org/contact. You must do this before September 14th.

(thanks to fellow candidate Pedro Cambra Fernández for the reminder!) 

Why did you self-nominate for the DA Board of Directors?

While I believe that the DA continues to make great strides in supporting the Drupal community, I also believe that with better funding and clearer, more transparent goals, the Drupal Association can do a better job toward advancing and enabling Drupal, the community, and the ecosystem. 

To do this, I believe the association must

  • Continue to increase revenue by investigating additional revenue streams.
  • Provide increased transparency to the community by sharing motivations behind various decisions. 
  • Provide additional resources to community organizers and contributors.
  • Provide better usability on Drupal.org as well as investigate improvements to Drupal’s documentation system. 
  • Find ways to make Drupal’s free open source software contribution more sustainable for the contributors.
  • Work to change Drupal’s negative perception in the wider web development ecosystem.

What does building community mean to you?

I’ve been involved with organizing Florida DrupalCamp since 2012 and have been a primary lead since 2014. Through this (and other events), I’ve seen the power that a strong network and support system can have in integrating new members into the community.

I strongly believe in reaching out to under-represented communities to help build a stronger, more successful, and diverse community. My goal is to leave a warm, welcoming, and positive impression to all people.

I think that the community (and DA) should do more to actively engage the wider web development community to promote Drupal. This can be done by participating in wider discussions, speaking at non-Drupal specific events, and reaching out to non-Drupal developers to speak and participate at our camps and cons.

What does advocating for Drupal mean to you?

Drupal is not just for enterprises. I believe that advocating for Drupal includes advocating for smaller websites to consider Drupal, as well as Drupal to take into account use-cases of smaller websites (with less technical developers). This can be done through better usability on Drupal.org and the platform as a whole.

Drupal has an unpopular reputation in much of the web development community. I believe that pitching the power and use-cases of Drupal to the wider web development ecosystem is essential. Through outreach and education, the association has the opportunity to address misconceptions about Drupal and tell a more positive story about its usability and application, in addition to promoting the closeness of its community as a positive way to engage with those who are less familiar with it.

I also believe that we all should be continuously working to make Drupal (both the software and community) better. This is not just writing software, but includes engaging and helping people, improving documentation, and being welcoming and friendly to new people.

What is your favorite Drupal moment or memory?

I gave a talk “Secrets to Awesomizing® Your Editor’s Back-end Drupal Experience” at DrupalCon Portland. The talk was really well received, and the audience was participating the whole time. What really made it special, though, was a year later at DrupalCon Austin, a random person came up to me and told me how much he enjoyed my talk! That feedback made me so happy (and still does). 

Board Skills & Strengths (indicate those that apply to your experience)

Marketing/Public Relations, Strategic Planning, Program Development, Open Source Industry Knowledge, Community Building/Understanding of Community Needs

What best describes your personal style? (select all that describe you)

Coordinator, Director, Inspirer, Helper

Do you have experience as a board member? If yes, what organization(s)?

I am one of the lead organizers of Florida DrupalCamp.

Region Represented

Americas

Comments

e0ipso’s picture

e0ipso
Primary language Catalan
Location Can Picafort
commented

Excuse me if I make no sense in my questions. I am no lawyer either, and the U.S. is not my home country. My questions are framed around legal figures, however I only intend to get a sense of what your values are as a potential director are.

The Drupal Association (DrupalCon Inc.) currently declares itself as a 501(c)(3) (as per 2018's tax filing). According to the IRS website:

A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator's family, shareholders of the organization, other designated individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests. No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3) organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization.

(emphasis of my own)

I sense a lot of effort in promoting business using Drupal in what the Drupal association does (my perception might be wrong). From my limited understanding, this is typical from 501(c)(6) organizations (Business leagues, Chambers of commerce, Boards of trade, ...). For context, the Linux Foundation declares itself as 501(c)(6) (as per 2018's tax filing).

My questions are:

  1. Do you feel the current Drupal Association is living to the 501(c)(3) spirit? (I am not asking about the legality, but the spirit).
  2. Should a voting arise: do you lean towards promoting the project itself and stay as a 501(c)(3)? or do you think that promoting business with Drupal is the best course of action and, therefore, the Drupal Association should become a 501(c)(6)?

My questions are geared towards: how will you position yourself in the balance between promoting the common good vs. fostering healthy business using Drupal? But I would love to get specific answers to the two questions above.

mherchel’s picture

mherchel
he/him
Primary language English
Location Gainesville, FL, US
commented

This is such a well thought out question! Note that I didn't get any notification on this, so I'm only seeing this now. I'm going to put together a [hopefully] equally thought out response and post later today.

Premium component based Drupal themes

mherchel’s picture

mherchel
he/him
Primary language English
Location Gainesville, FL, US
commented

Thanks for the thought out question. Answers are below.

1. Do you feel the current Drupal Association is living to the 501(c)(3) spirit?

The DA is serving a dual purpose. It maintains the Drupal.org infrastructure, as well as promoting Drupal. Does promoting Drupal benefit private interests? Most definitely yes.

Does that violate the spirit of 501(c)(3)? It definitely seems so.

2. Should a voting arise: do you lean towards promoting the project itself and stay as a 501(c)(3)? or do you think that promoting business with Drupal is the best course of action and, therefore, the Drupal Association should become a 501(c)(6)?

Isn’t “promoting the [Drupal] project itself” intended to benefit private interests? My initial thought is that if we want to stay strict to the spirit of the text above, the DA should not do promotion at all.

However, if you’ve read my page above, you’d see that I want to increase Drupal advocacy. That includes talking about Drupal within the wider web-development community.

So should the DA reincorporate under 501(c)(6)? Honestly to me it seems like semantics. I personally don’t think it would affect the software or community in a meaningful way if we did so. It probably would cost a significant amount of legal fees and time. My vote would be determined by cost, and how the change would affect the software and community (both of which I’m not certain of).

Another option may be to take the “advocacy” role from the DA and give it to a new organization. In my opinion, the DA has historically not been very good at advocacy (although this is getting better). This has potential to muddy the waters from members’ point of view (another organization to belong to), but a new organization might do a better job with the advocacy role. I would likely be in favor of something like this.

Premium component based Drupal themes

katannshaw’s picture

katannshaw commented

I really like your answer to "What does advocating for Drupal mean to you?" of:

Drupal is not just for enterprises. I believe that advocating for Drupal includes advocating for smaller websites to consider Drupal, as well as Drupal to take into account use-cases of smaller websites (with less technical developers). This can be done through better usability on Drupal.org and the platform as a whole.

I totally agree with this sentiment myself as I have seen a gap in several local organizations that can't afford hosting options for Drupal, so they unfortunately end up choosing another option that do offer that option. The initial setup is also another thing holding non-techies back. Are there specific methods you'd advocate for to make Drupal sites more financially-accessible to all users and what are some of the things you'd focus on to make the install process simpler for new and/or non-technical users?

Katherine Shaw, Front-end Developer, Lullabot

mherchel’s picture

mherchel
he/him
Primary language English
Location Gainesville, FL, US
commented

Hi Kat!

Thanks for the question.

Are there specific methods you'd advocate for to make Drupal sites more financially-accessible to all users and what are some of the things you'd focus on to make the install process simpler for new and/or non-technical users?

Note that the Drupal Association has no say in features or the direction that Drupal takes, so this is slightly out of scope for the election. That being said, I'm really passionate about this, so I'll answer it here!

The biggest challenge is ongoing maintenance (including updates), and I'm so happy that the Automatic Updates Initiative is a thing. This initiative also will include work with Composer to automatically pull down dependencies. That work, in turn, should be able to be used during the install process.

Another huge issue is providing a learning on-ramp for new site-builders. The Umami profile does an excellent job with this. I would love to see an option within the install process that allows the user to dynamically list and pull down installation profiles from Drupal.org. I recognize that this would be a huge lift, but it would greatly help get users up and running for small to medium-sized websites.

Premium component based Drupal themes