Acquia

Meet Chris Porter, Drupal hero

jam — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:32:40 +0000

Chris Porter talks about the satisfaction of helping people solve the hard problems that will let them run their Drupal installations and their businesses better.

He says he feels like a hero sometimes, because he's welcomed by people who have invited him to come and help, rather than being the consultant who shows up because someone is forced to buy help for a proprietary system.

The thousands of other developers who contribute to Drupal allow Chris (and many other Drupalists!) to tackle and fix problems bigger than he could ever hope to address in other circumstances and system.

"I can show how Drupal, with the power of the masses ... They can turn around and hit these roadblocks and say, 'Okay, 8000 of you! Let's go rewrite this code!' And get around the roadblock. That's a huge benefit, that as a developer, you'll never be able to do alone. I help people understand that if there's a roadblock, it's not going to be for long, because you're not the only person with this roadblock. The community is working to fix it. It's a really neat position."

Chris_Porter.mp3

Bryan Hirsch, "Helping the Federal Government solve public sector problems with Drupal"

jam — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:17:56 +0000

I am privileged to be part of the extraordinary Drupal community and to have a job that focuses on growing and helping it. I'd like you to meet some of the amazing people I work with at Acquia and learn more about who they are and what they do. It's time to ...

Meet the Acquian!

Bryan Hirsch comes from a background of software engineering and political activism. He originally joined Acquia as an engineer on the Drupal Gardens team thanks to his expertise and interest in software-as-a-service products. His new position at Acquia as Senior Technical Consultant Acquia Government Practice Department allows him to leverage his longstanding interest in using open source software in government to save taxpayer dollars, improve civic engagement and government services.

Wearing his Drupal community hat, Bryan is one of the key people behind the Core Contribution Ladder, aka The Boston Initiative. This is a project that has come out of the Boston Drupal User Group to test and build tools to help more people contribute to Drupal core. The goal is to increase the number of people contributing to Drupal core by an order of magnitude - from roughly 0.1% of the Drupal community now to 1% by 2014.

Learn more

Learn more about the Boston Initiative and contributing to Drupal core at http://learndrupal.org.

Download the Learn Drupal distro at http://learndrupal.org/download and http://drupal.org/project/learn.

Check out the DrupalCon presentation Bryan and Jeannie Finks gave about the Boston Initiative at DrupalCon Denver. A recording of that session and some links to more resources are here.

Bryan_Hirsch.mp3

How Governments Market Themselves on the Internet

kfogarty — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:47:25 +0000

Originally posted http://www.theworld.org/2012/04/governments-websites/

Alex Gallafent of the BBC examines how countries go about creating their own government web sites to market themselves to their own citizens. Tom Erickson, CEO of Acquia, weights in on how open source software, such as Drupal, has allowed government web sites to be more open for their constituents.

042620124.mp3

Acquia Podcast 41: Drupal Camp Sofia 2012

jam — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:27:50 +0000

I just got back from a fantastic weekend with a couple hundred members of the Bulgarian Drupal community at Drupal Camp Sofia 2012. There was a lot of Drupal going on all weekend; some great sessions, lots of hallway track and an evening with the best-dancing Drupal community I have met so far at a little place called Veseloto Selo. A seemingly calm taverna-stye restaurant basically exploded from family-style eating to people dancing on the tables ... well, standing on the chairs at least.

I wanted to introduce you to a few of the people that were there and some of the sounds of the weekend. This podcast features a bagpiper I encountered in a park in central Sofia, the birds outside my window and parts of conversations with Hristo Atanasov, Kaloyan Petrov, Martin Martinov, Svilen Sabev, and Mario Peshev.

Stand out quotes:

"Because of Drupal, I was able to sustain a business model as a freelancer."
"Open source teaches you to share without losing anything. You share; you win and the other person also wins. It's contributing, it's sharing, it's like an open world after all! It's kind of a way of living."
"I have a module that runs on 300 sites. It makes me really thankful for all the other modules that I use."

Thanks for listening! And thank you Drupal Bulgarians for the hospitality!

Sofia12_final.mp3

Acquia Podcast 40: Jennifer Hodgdon on Documentation for Drupal

wonder95 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:57:59 +0000

As with any open source project, documentation in Drupal is a huge task that is never complete. The Docs team is the group of volunteers that strives to keep up with the documentation need. Join me as I talk with Jennifer Hodgdon, the docs team lead, and my new co-host Randy Fay, as we discuss the current state of the team and Drupal documentation, as well as future plans for enhancing Drupal documentation.

Update: Jennifer has been promoted to co-maintainer for Drupal 7 and 8. Her responsibility will be solely around documentation and code style patches.

Show notes:

acquia_podcast_40.mp3

Acquia Podcast 39: John Albin on Mobile In Drupal

wonder95 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:58:09 +0000

Ever since mobile devices have become more and more prevalent, the ability to display Drupal sites correctly on mobile devices has gained in importance. John Albin is recognized as a guru when it comes to designing and theming Drupal sites, and is the owner for the Mobile initiative for Drupal 8. Join me as I talk with John about the history of websites on mobile devices, the different methods for displaying sites on mobile devices, and plans for the Mobile initiative in Drupal 8. Show notes:

John's initial blog post on the Mobile Initiative for Drupal 8.
Groups page for the Mobile Initiative
Strategy for the Mobile Initiative.

acquia_podcast_39.mp3

Acquia Podcast 38: Melissa Anderson on Training for Drupal

wonder95 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:02:05 +0000

In this episode I talk with Melissa Anderson about training in Drupal, and how Drupal knowledge and experience can be shared in the community.

acquia_podcast_38.mp3

DrupalEasy Podcast: Chewbacca’s Bandolier

kfogarty — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:52:51 +0000

User Experience Designer Lisa Rex from Acquia joins Andrew Riley, Ryan Price, and Mike Anello in this episode of the podcast to discuss her involvement in the Drupal community, DrupalCon session proposals and sprints, potential interview questions for Drupal developers, and a very brief discussion on the Drupal Security Team’s secret knock. As always, we also have our picks of the week and an especially time-sucking site of the week. Read full article on Drupaleasy.com

DrupalEasy_ep68_20111122.mp3

Acquia Podcast 37: Conflict Resolution in the Drupal Community

wonder95 — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:41:13 +0000

In any type of community - be it software or something else - with a large, diverse group of people actively participating and contributing, there is going to be conflict. An important thing to understand, therefore, is how to resolve conflicts effectively so that the purpose of the group is not adversely affected. In this episode I discuss conflict resolution in the Drupal community with Randy Fay and Greg Knaddison, two prominent people in the Drupal community who have a lot of experience with conflict resolution.

Some links from the show:

acquia_podcast_37.mp3

DrupalEasy Podcast: Randrew’s Open Source Socks

kfogarty — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:37:17 +0000

Emma Jane Hogbin and Acquia's Erich Ludwig join Andrew Riley, Ryan Price, and Mike Anello in this super-sized podcast to discuss Emma Jane’s new book, “Drupal User’s Guide”, Acquia’s new “U”, and a bunch of other Drupal-related stories from the past couple of weeks. Read full article on Drupaleasy.com

DrupalEasy_ep67_20111109.mp3

Acquia Podcast 36: Neil Hastings on Solr and OpenLayers in Drupal 7

wonder95 — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:01:34 +0000

With advances in Apache Solr and Drupal, it is easier to do some really neat things with geolocating search results and displaying those results on a map. In this episode I talk with Neil Hastings of TreeHouse Agency about the work they did with Solr and OpenLayers maps for the US Dept of Energy.

Show notes

acquia_podcast_36.mp3

Acquia Podcast 35: Moshe Weitzman on Drush, Migrate and Moving To Acquia

wonder95 — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:11:15 +0000

Moshe Weitzman is a very prolific and well known contributor to the Drupal community, both in the core and contrib areas, and is responsible for a couple very powerful Drupal tools that are used by many people in the Drupal community. In this episode we discuss the beginnings and current status of the Drush tool and Migrate module, as well as his new duties now that he is at Acquia.

Show notes:

Drush project page - http://drupal.org/project/drush
Migrate project page - http://drupal.org/project/migrate
Blog post on Drush - http://cyrve.com/sprint
Blog post on Acquia acquisition of Cyrve - http://cyrve.com/acquia

acquia_podcast_35.mp3

Acquia Podcast 34: Alex Bronstein on the Media Module

wonder95 — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 04:29:45 +0000

One of the most commonly asked questions in the Drupal world is how to handle media - images, video, and audio - in Drupal. There are countless modules available to help you manage and display media in Drupal. The Media module is an attempt to create one module that can be used for managing all of your media. Join me as I speak with Alex Bronstein, one of the primary developers of the Media module, as he talks about the goals and status of the Media module for Drupal 7.

Show notes:

Media module project page - http://drupal.org/project/media
Media group - http://groups.drupal.org/media

acquia_podcast_34.mp3

Acquia Podcast 33: Interview with Angie Byron

wonder95 — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:16:52 +0000

Angie Byron, aka webchick, is probably the second most well-known person in the Drupal universe, between her awards, magazine covers, and role as the Drupal 7 co-maintainer. With her move from Lullabot to Acquia and her expanded role in the Drupal community, I caught up with her to find out what she's up to and what this move means to her work in the community.

acquia_podcast_33.mp3

Acquia Podcast 32: Marcus Estes on Donor Rally and Volunteer Rally

wonder95 — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:25:51 +0000

Two resources any non-profit organization needs assistance in obtaining and managing are volunteers and donations. In this episode I speak with Marcus Estes of Open Sourcery about Volunteer Rally and Donor Rally, two Drupal distributions designed to help non-profits accomplish those tasks.

Show notes:

Donor Rally project page
Donor Rally blog post
Volunteer Rally project page
Volunteer Rally blog post
Open Sourcery page for distributions
Open Sourcery on Twitter

acquia_podcast_32.mp3

Acquia Podcast 31: Barry Jaspan and Richard Jones on Acquia Dev Cloud

wonder95 — Tue, 31 May 2011 15:42:02 +0000

Acquia's Dev Cloud platform is one of Acquia's newest offerings, and it offers a complete cloud based development platform for professional developers. In this episode we talk to people on both sides of this platform; the provider and the user. First, Barry Jaspan of Acquia talks about the platform itself, including its goals, components, and features, and then Richard Jones of i-Kos, a user of Dev Cloud, talks about how his company uses Dev Cloud, and the benefits that it has provided to them.

acquia_podcast_31.mp3

Acquia Podcast 30: Lev Tsypin on MailChimp Module

wonder95 — Wed, 18 May 2011 14:58:16 +0000

One of the needs any large site has is to be able to send email to members using tools such as mailing lists. MailChimp is a service that allows you to do just that very easily, and the MailChimp module integrates the MailChimp service with your Drupal website. In this episode I talk with Lev Tsypin, author and maintainer of the module as we discuss everything MailChimp in Drupal, including some exciting new features in the D7 version.

acquia_podcast_30.mp3

Acquia Podcast 29: Ben Finklea on SEO in Drupal

wonder95 — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:54:31 +0000

One of the strong points of Drupal is its built in search engine optimization capabilities right out of the box. Ben Finklea is the founder and CEO of Volacci, a firm that specializes in SEO for Drupal sites, and in this episode we talk about SEO in Drupal, the SEO Checklist module, the status of the Drupal 7 version of his book on SEO in Drupal, and some upcoming SEO training Volacci is doing with Acquia.

Show notes:

Volacci web site - www.volacci.com
Volacci on Twitter
Ben Finklea on Twitter
SEO Checklist project page - http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist
Drupal 6 SEO book - http://www.packtpub.com/drupal-6-search-engine-optimization-seo/book
Blog post with link to SEO module availability matrix

acquia_podcast_29.mp3

Acquia Podcast 28: Leisa Reichelt on Design in Drupal

wonder95 — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:31:15 +0000

Ever since her introduction to the Drupal community as part of the drupal.org redesign, Leisa Reichelt has been an active participant in the issue of design in Drupal. In this episode we discuss her involvement in the drupal.org redesign and D7UX projects, as well as the Prairie Initiative (including where the name Prairie comes from), her new project for improving the design of drupal.org to make it more useful and welcoming for new users.

Show notes:
Leisa's blog - http://www.disambiguity.com/
Prairie Initiative - http://groups.drupal.org/prairie-initiative
Leisa on Twitter

Acquia_Podcast_28.mp3

Acquia Podcast 27: Ben Kaplan on the Janrain module

wonder95 — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:12:11 +0000

With all of the social networks out there that you want to integrate into your site, wouldn't it be nice if there was one central service that could integrate will all of them? Well, now there is. In this episode I talk with Ben Kaplan (aka BenK), one of the co-maintainers of the Janrain Engage module. Janrain Engage is a service that integrates with all of the social network APIs (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Orkut, etc.) and adds that information to your site.

Show notes:
Janrain module project page
Demo site
Ben's blog

acquia_podcast_27.mp3