Who is the Drupal Association?

It’s no secret that the Adventure crew here at Cheeky Monkey Media loves Drupal. Heck, we even had our Creative Director create a short video to proclaim it (you can check that out here). We love Drupal so much, that even though we’re a bunch of geeky, nerdy, development types, we’d actually try to hit on it if it was a girl (that’s saying a lot!)

But, in all our musing over Drupal, we’ve been remiss in not giving an appropriate shout-out to our friends at the Drupal Association.

The What?

With a community of over a million hardcore developers and users, Drupal boasts one of the largest open-source communities, and it keeps growing. It seems daily that you can read about another big-name company or organization switching their website to Drupal, and that just fuels the passion fire for all of the developers who’ve been pounding the Drupal Drum since its earliest iterations.

That said, when there’s such a large, enthusiastic group supporting the platform, it’s wise to have an organization whose mandate is to promote the use of Drupal, and provide tools and support to the community at large. That’s where the Drupal Association comes in.

Founded in 2008 by Dries Buytaert (the creator of Drupal, FYI), The Association is behind many of the great collaborative efforts seen within the community, and they organize several key events around the globe and throughout the year. Most recently, the Cheeky Monkey Media crew had the chance to hang out at DrupalCon in Austin, Texas, and connect with other like-minded developers, users, and interested people.

Events like DrupalCon are massive in scope, with hundreds of different companies attending, and thousands more people coming through the doors on a daily basis. A week-long event, the entire conference is organized by the Drupal Association, and the staff there work tirelessly to organize, plan, execute and run the event from start to finish.

To give an example of how big an undertaking this is, imagine you were in charge of a cat farm, and you had to herd cats for a full week (cats, of course, being notoriously tough to herd). You would have to make sure they all found their designated spots, that they were entertained, and that you had enough substance ready to keep their attention. The planning alone would keep you working long hours in advance of the task, not to mention the actual work that would happen when you finally stepped foot into the crowd.

But even this example doesn’t do justice to all the work the Association does. More than just events, the Association ensures that members have a place to share information, collaborate on issues, and submit ongoing drupal development work – all for the good of the platform and its users. On top of that, the Association is run on a not-for-profit basis, meaning that the rewards of the work are typically not realized in any material fashion. The end goal for the staff at the Association is ensuring that the community stays strong, ever working to improve the CMS and its ability to serve the web needs of the 21st century, and in so doing, they see their rewards in the rising number of users and fans.

We Love the DA Too!

It’s safe to say – especially from a drupal developer’s point of view – that the Association is the backbone of the Drupal Community and the single largest contributor of time and effort to the well-being and growth of the system. Without their efforts, the community would be a disorganized morass of developers trolling each other in back alleys and on Reddit forums. Instead of chaos and wild cats roaming the streets, we have a healthy and vibrant community in which collaboration is encouraged, communication is fostered, and progression is the norm.

For all of this work, it’s past due we showed the Drupal Association some love, and the Cheeky Monkey crew just wanted to say, “Thanks, DA, for all you do day in and day out. We love you guys!”

 

For more on the Drupal Association, its mission, and the work they do, check them out at: https://assoc.drupal.org/