By joshk on

At Drupalcon Munich, Dries will do something a little bit different with his keynote address. Rather than giving a presentation for the full hour, he'll have an interview/Q&A session with me as the interviewer.

We did this last fall at BADCamp 2011, and it was very well received. I think it'll be a lot of fun am obviously super flattered to be asked to participate in this way again. The conversational format is good to explore topics in more depth, and it also gives the community a chance to set some of the agenda.

We'll definitely be covering Drupal 8 and what's on the horizon, as well as reviewing many traditional themes from previous keynotes — but Dries has said I should feel free to "ask him anything." This is a chance for us to ask anything we're curious about from the project lead, so don't be shy with your suggestions.

Comments

joshk’s picture

joshk commented

I'll be watching this thread over the next several days, so let me know what kinds of questions I should include or if you have any other tips for the interview.

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Personal: Outlandish Josh
Professional: Pantheon

zzolo’s picture

zzolo commented

So Dries, how would you feel about giving up your role as Benevolent Dictator and replacing it with a democratically voted on Project Lead?

PS - I would vote for Dries.

--
zzolo

wouters_f’s picture

wouters_f commented
  • Why isn't there a (LTS) long term support drupal (e.g. 5Y), that enterprises can rely on? And shouldn't there be? Companies like acquia could benefit from this?
  • How does inline editing relate to "the future is a restfull Drupal" ?
  • Which factors influenced drupal popularity the most (both positive and negative) over the last years and what were our (the community) successes and our failures?
  • (I love distributions, don't you?) What's Dries's favorite drupal distro(besides acquia's) and why ?
  • When did you last install a complete website for a client (or is that too personal) ?
  • Will there ever be a commerce (at shop.drupal.org) with official drupal gear?

Hope to finally find some anwers, these were keeping me awake :-)

Add me on linkedin:
http://be.linkedin.com/in/woutersfrederik

joshk’s picture

joshk commented

These are some really good questions!

FWIW I am pretty sure that shop.drupal.org is in the works via the Association, so hopefully there will be "official" drupal swag soon.

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Personal: Outlandish Josh
Professional: Pantheon

drupalmind’s picture

drupalmind commented

whats the main structural change from drupal 7 to drupal 8?.
what do you think isn't drupal still lack speed efficiency issue?

mherchel’s picture

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

I want to know the secret to his spikey hair! :)

Premium component based Drupal themes

pdjohnson’s picture

pdjohnson commented

Many people who are passionate about Drupal are so in part thanks to the spirit, vibrancy and warmth of the community.

As Drupal grows, what measures have you made to ensure that this unique facet of Drupal is not diluted, or possibly lost.

--Paul Johnson

tsvenson’s picture

tsvenson commented

That Drupal has a pretty step learning curve is a known fact. This is something that often lead to that new users quickly give up on it and looks elsewhere. However, shortcomings to the flexibility of configuring a site based on Drupal also leads to complexity and sites that are more demanding to maintain and expand.

How can we improve the site building experience, not only to give new users a better introduction to Drupal but also to allow the site builders to better focus on their roles and be able to construct more easily maintainable sites?

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@tsvenson

mallezie’s picture

mallezie
Primary language Dutch
Location Loenhout
commented

I am wondering what's happening to the HTML5-initiative since jacine stepped out as initiative lead (http://jacine.net/post/24652270662/core). Any lessons learned from this for future initiatives?
Also what's happening to the design-initiative. (http://buytaert.net/design-for-drupal-8) it was announced long time ago, but it seems to be there are not very much updates on this initiative. Seems most work is taken bij HTML5 / mobile initiative. But any updates on a new core theme?

Crell’s picture

Crell commented

The #1 problem facing core development today is sustainable resources. 1000 drive-by-developers can fix bugs, but not build major new systems. Serious development requires dedicated, predictable, regular time by a consistent set of skilled people. Of course, anyone who would be a good candidate for that is already gainfully employed not working on core. That's a long-standing problem, but it's one that's getting worse every version.

So how do we make core development financially sustainable in a way that doesn't bank on developers working more than 40 hours per week (day job, plus core), when we know that such work is harmful to both their productivity and their health? Very few companies can afford to dedicate engineering resources to core without a clear short-term benefit, but long-term work is what we need right now.

How do we make core without making ourselves sick?

--
Larry Garfield
http://www.garfieldtech.com/
Thinking Functionally in PHP: https://leanpub.com/thinking-functionally-in-php

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Do you ever foresee maintaining different branches of Drupal to cater to unique markets such as the education, or government sector??

rcross’s picture

rcross commented

I would follow up Larry's question, with one around Acquia becoming a primary driver of the software and whether it is loosing its community driven root?

--Ryan
Ryan Cross
James Cross Construction Services
Project Management Software

JBI’s picture

JBI commented

Do you think that your being at the same time fonder the CTO of Acquia and the Project Lead is healthy for Drupal's echosystem ?

There is some concern about Acquia sucking talent out of Drupal and buying important shops for Drupal. Rember the April foll http://www.bluemarinesynergistics.com/

I feel that very talented and innovative Drupal Shops are needed and can not be replaced by Acquia alone :
- Bryght (precurseur de Drupalgardens at the origin of Aegir) is long been out of business
- For the first time, Lullaboot does not sponsor Drupalcon and has lost momentum on Buzzr.
- DevelopmentSeed don't do Drupal any more even though they had done a lot to promote the concept of product in Drupal and the underlying concept of feature.

In 2010 Automattic handed the WordPress trademark to the newly-created WordPress Foundation would it be a way to go ?

Jean-Baptiste Ingold
http://twitter.com/jbingold

Ps Is Acquia considering contributing back :
- Theme builder used in DrupalGardens +
- Code used by Acquia on AWS ? It could be mixed with Aegir ... and leave the market open .

blazindrop’s picture

blazindrop commented

My question kinda extends from what tsvenson and Crell said earlier about Drupal talent and having skilled developers available and able to do things besides fixing bugs. This extends beyond core development and permeates the commercial landscape - it is very difficult to find awesome Drupal talent.

IMHO, Drupal 8 is going to severely widen the talent gap with all of the complicated initiatives (Twig and Symfony come to mind first) that are slated for Drupal 8. When I say complicated, I'm speaking in relative terms to how things are currently done in Drupal.

Is there any plans to help reduce this gap for Drupal 8?

tsvenson’s picture

tsvenson commented

How do you envision the community to be able to simplify for developers to gain better knowledge about how to make their functionality available in the configuration UI. Including better understanding on when permissions are right to use and what configuration flexibility features needs and so on?

When looking at the impressive list of community initiatives for Drupal core, you can't help but get a little overwhelmed about everything that is going on. Drupal is for sure moving into an exciting future with functionality making it possible to build almost any kind of site. Then add to that the thousands of contributed modules providing additional functionality and the complexity that combined puts on the configuration of features.

What also has become more apparent over the major releases is that websites built on Drupal is a process of using options exposed in the user interface to configure features. Until now it has been difficult to separate what is configuration and what is content. The Drupal 8 Configuration management initiative shows great promise of finally changing that and I am most curious about finding out more about it during DrupalCon Munich.

I don't think the importance of separating content and configuration can be overstated enough. It really will make things so much easier at all levels and for all roles involved. However, for it to have the impact it promises, it also needs to be implemented and used right, including with great usability, for all the functionality provided by core, modules and themes.

Looking at the User interface standards section on d.o there are some content available, including several usability test results. This is great, but the information is quite sparse and wont often really give module developers much help when it comes to guide them about where in the menu structure they should add their features or how to design the configuration UI's to fit in with things.

So, what can we do to improve this situation and in the end make it easier for developers to implement better configuration interfaces?

Personally I think Michael Keara is on to something important in his post/video about switching from a push to pull based UX in Drupal.

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@tsvenson