Jeff Walpole's keynote presentation at Drupal Camp Costa Rica

1. Riding the Drupal Wave:
The Future for Drupal and
Open Source Content Management

2. Pura
Vida!

3. Jeff Walpole
Twitter: @jeffwalpole
‣ CEO/Founder @ Phase2
‣ Director @ Drupal Association
‣ Someone who has benefited
greatly from Drupal since 2007

4. The digital landscape
is changing rapidly
1

5. come in 3 forms
Digital Transformation
new and innovative ways to
disrupt traditional business
models
Web Plumbing
infrastructure & integration
Construction
cheaper and more efficient
ways to build
Web Projects

6. Cost Innovation
Contribution
plays an increasingly large and
important role in all three.
Open Source

7. Internet
TRENDS

8. Cloud
Software, hardware, and content are
distributed, ubiquitous and increasingly
commoditized.

9. Commerce
Everything is monetized from subscriptions,
to shopping, to advertising to data.

10. Mobile
Content and interface design must be
designed FIRST with mobile in mind as the
lowest common denominator of digital
experience.

11. Omni-channel
Content is disaggregated from code and is
optimized for each channel. There are
coordinated and automated efforts between
paid, owned, and earned media.

12. International
Global and cultural barriers are transcended
and disproportionate growth goes to the
developing and most populace locations.

13. Data-centric
Data as both a bi-product and a primary
objective are collected, stored, analyzed and
business decisions and models are optimized
based upon the insights.

14. Geo-centric
Location awareness and optimization provide
more personalized and targeted offerings to
users.

15. Photo by: Flickr user frankieleon
location is irrelevant.
The implication of ALL of these
trends is that increasingly…

16. Drupal is
changing to accommodate
2

17. Drupal fits many of these
trends natively
Drupal is a global phenomenon that can
create massive opportunity for anyone that
uses it, delivers it or builds a business on it.
Drupal is unique in that it
is both widely accessible
and enterprise focused
1
2
Drupal is about to release
its greatest version yet
3

18. CMS
TRENDS
CMS is moving from a software tool to edit websites to
an enabler of Digital experiences – a framework that
supports and enforces the standards, interfaces, best
practices for development for the products it creates.

19. Leading CMS Technologies

20. Wordpress
Drupal
Adobe
Joomla
3%
50%
Entire Internet - Wordpress dominates

21. Top 100k sites - Drupal is the second largest CMS
51%
10%
Wordpress
Drupal
Adobe
Joomla

22. Top 10k sites - Drupal & Adobe jump up
48%
14%
Wordpress
Drupal
Adobe
Joomla

23. 1. Community Innovation
2. Flexibility
3. Full control of platform
4. Open & Transparent
5. Cost
Why is open source winning?

24. ‣ Think in terms of total cost of ownership (TCO) not
free
‣ All software has implementation and
customization costs
‣ Cost is a competitive advantage - not a BRAND
‣ Don’t undersell the value
Cost is a lower criteria for adoption
but it matters.

25. 3How will Drupal 8 become the
dominant open source CMS
leading these changes?

26. Drupal 8 leading the change
Other proprietary CMS’s
won’t be able to keep pace…
Drupal 8 is heavily focused on enterprise /
larger and more complex use cases. But
remains a viable and appropriate tool for
smaller and simpler sites as well.
That flexibility is an advantage for dev
shops and enterprise organizations!

27. Top D8 Advantages
SUMMARIZED
With D8 we will see Drupal used as both a content
repository, a workflow and site building tool and to
create user experiences.
Or in different combinations.

28. Advantage Omni-channel
‣ Built-in web services
‣ Content is optimized for
each channel
‣ Over 25 services
overridable
1

29. Advantage
2
Front End
Experience
‣ Improved Theming (using Twig)
‣ Better Markup (HTML5/CSS3)
‣ SEO (RDFa/Schema.org)
‣ Accessibility (WAI)
‣ Front end performance
(Javscript/CSS aggregation)

30. Advantage
3
Multi-lingual
‣ Core multilingual installer
‣ Infinite flexibility and
control of translation for
everything in the admin and
on the site
‣ 4 consolidated modules do
it all

31. With multilingual built into D8 core, Drupal is addressing
the fact that the world is becoming smaller, and we
interact with people online from all over the world.

32. Advantage
4
Editor
Experience
‣ SPARK
‣ In place editing
‣ Views in Core
‣ New and improved admin
theme

33. Advantage
Content
Modeling
‣ Content as a service-
allows for Headless Drupal
‣ Content object centric
‣ Fielding
5

34. Advantage
Professional
Development
Practices
‣ Symfony and object oriented
‣ Configuration management
‣ Automated testing
6

35. Advantage Mobile
‣ Mobile first UI
‣ Responsive
‣ Mobile friendly navigation
7

36. the rapid pace
of change?
What can we do as a community
to stay on top of
4

37. The key is ensuring that we
have a thriving community of
involvement,
contribution
& participation.

38. What are the threats to Drupal Adoption?
‣ Demand outweighs supply of global talent
‣ Professionalism is comparatively low
‣ Training is less available than other
enterprise technologies
‣ Open source resistance still exists

39. The Drupal Community is becoming
larger, more professional,
more diverse, and more
globally connected.

40. 3 Global Drupalcons
including DrupalCon in India next
Photo by: Tanay Sai

41. We are almost there!
12 issues left...

42. Ways everyone can
CONTRIBUTE

43. Time
It’s not just the coders
Books
Videos
Themes
Features
Classes
Documentation
Blogging
Events (like this one!)
Demos
Case studies
Pretty Drupal sites
High profile Drupal sites
Innovative uses (of Drupal)
Client references
Social media chatter

44. Investment
$$$
It’s not just the…

45. Make a small donation to the Drupal Association’s
D8 Accelerate Fund. So far, the DA has raised
almost $225k of our $250k goal to rally the
community to the cause.

46. Ecosystem
The Drupal Business
Photo by: Carlos Reusser Monsalvez
We must invest in developing a healthy,
sustainable ecosystem and business climate
with aligned incentives to the project.

47. Here come the elephants
Photo by: Paul Bica

48. opportunity for small ones
Big companies are an
• They invest in a platform and its future
• Create jobs and develop talent
• Lend credibility to a technology
• Attract big customers!

49. Partnerships and M&A
We are seeing businesses joining up and also acquisitions. And there will be more…

50. 1. Products companies must emerge
2. Services companies should spread out and specialize
3. Profitable business models must co-exist with open
source contribution
4. We need more businesses @ scale
5. Success must spread globally
6. All ecosystem players should work together to patch
Drupal weaknesses
healthy business ecosystem
Key tenets of a

51. How can you
get involved and be relevant?
5

52. Drupal is global
TAKE ADVANTAGE

53. Open source levels the playing field

54. Photo by: David Spira
Humanitarian.ID
Spread good around the
world

55. Growing More Talent
Photo by: Bruno Cordioli

56. is essential to the Drupal ecosystem
Talent renewal
82% of hiring managers surveyed
plan to hire Drupal talent within
the next 6 months.
82%
40% of hiring managers surveyed
say they are “constantly” hiring
Drupal talent.
40%
HIRING PLANS “CONSTANT” HIRING MODE

57. Front End | Content Strategy | Core | Integrations | DevOps
be on the cutting edge
Opportunities to
92% of hiring managers surveyed
say there is insufficient Drupal talent
in the market to meet their needs.
MORE DRUPAL TALENT IS NEEDED
92%

58. Hiring managers say they are currently
trying to fill many types of Drupal roles.
MANY JOBS, MANY ROLES
Themer
DevOps
Site Builder
Content Strategist or Admin
Developer
+
Project Managers
QA Specialists
Analysts

59. MAKING A SUCCESSFUL
BUSINESS on Drupal

60. find a way to get noticed.
Photo by: Steven Depolo

61. What makes someone unique?
‣ Solution specialization
‣ Industry specialization
‣ Services specialization
‣ Geographic dominance
‣ Product/distro makers
‣ Community thought leadership

62. professional practices
Ensuring
• Configuration management
• QA and testing
• Documentation
• Project management
• Design
• Security

63. Giving back is good business too.
Insisting on contribution
• Build it into the jobs of internal digital teams
• Emphasize contribution
• Make reusable architectures
• Celebrate contributions
COMPANIES THAT PRACTICED THIS HAVE SUCCEEDED IN DRUPAL

64. successful Drupal business?
What is the recipe for a

65. successful Drupal business?
What is the recipe for a
1. Leverage Drupal’s popularity for lead generation
2. Master services / deliver them successfully
3. Corner specific niches for competitive advantage
4. Invest in new business models and thinking
around using Drupal (products, pricing, etc.)
5. Share, teach, learn, contribute
6. Rinse and repeat...

66. Gracias

67. Q & A
‣ Twitter: @jeffwalpole