Our first Drupal Initiative update was posted in December 2020 showcasing the contributions that drive our community of innovation and highlighting how you can get involved.
Rather than sharing a lengthy report every quarter, we will feature a select number of initiatives monthly to allow for the content to be more easily consumable. Initiatives will rotate so each is featured once per quarter. If you would like to add your group/initiative to these updates, please contact Rachel Lawson.
This month, we reached out to Drupal Diversity & Inclusion, DrupalLadder, Promote Drupal, Event Organizers Working Group, New Front-End Theme, and Drupal Community Working Group, and here is what they tell us about their activities over the last three months.
Join the Drupal Community Summit, Tuesday, 6 April, from 11:00 EDT - 15:00 EDT and hear from Drupal Diversity & Inclusion, Promote Drupal, Event Organizers Working Group, and the Drupal Community Working Group.
We heard from Tara King about Drupal Diversity & Inclusion:
About this initiative
The Drupal Diversity & Inclusion group seeks to continue the conversation about diversity and inclusion within Drupal. The group organizes regular meetings and curates a resource library.
What have been your priorities in the last three months?
Over the last three months, we've been focused on the early stages of planning for Drupal Diversity & Inclusion Camp, a virtual event focused on centering and lifting up the voices of marginalized folks in the Drupal community.
What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?
We would love assistance in planning DDI Camp. We have a proposed budget, and now we need help with selecting and scheduling speakers, choosing a virtual tool to host the event, contacting possible sponsors, planning swag and social events, and much much more.
And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?
We've been excited about bringing our new leads on board, and the planning for the camp is going well.
How can people contribute or support the initiative over the next few months?
Please join us for a few upcoming events:
- Hidden histories of the Drupal community | 6 April 2021, 20:00- 22:00 UTC
The Drupal Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Team is inviting a panel of Drupalists from various walks of life to discuss how diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Drupal community have shaped their experiences. Register here: https://www.drupaldiversity.com/hidden-histories-drupal-community - Visit our booth at DrupalCon North America.
- Save the date for DDI Camp: 11 - 12 June
We heard from Kay VanValkenburgh about DrupalLadder:
About this initiative
DrupalLadder is a community initiative to create an onramp for new Drupal users as well as new contributors to the Drupal project, or for those looking to level up their skills.
What have been your priorities in the last three months?
- user experience when getting started (create an account, understand next steps);
- adopt an up-to-date theme
What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?
Demands on contributors' time, and keeping ourselves organized
And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?
Some very skilled contributors have done some very nice work - we're looking forward to launching it!
How can people contribute or support the initiative over the next few months?
- Project management
- Authoring content - currently requires close attention to detail and rolling with a few frustrations.
- Refactor a few decoupled features that have the right concepts but groped around for the right implementation.
We heard from Suzanne Dergacheva about Promote Drupal:
About this initiative
Promote Drupal Initiative has one main purpose: to create business marketing materials targeted at the decision-makers who choose to adopt Drupal for their business.
What have been your priorities in the last three months?
It's Drupal's 20th birthday this year, plus with the first DrupalFest and DrupalCon next month, there is a lot to celebrate and highlight. As a more long-term goal, it's clear that we need a good core set of evergreen marketing content on Drupal.org.
What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?
We need to get more organized and make it easier for people to get up and running with contributing to Promote Drupal. Hopefully, we can build on the newly organized roles and committees (see below) and the momentum of the DrupalCon Marketing Committee to take Promote Drupal to the next level!
And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?
Thanks to help from the Drupal Association, the DrupalCon Marketing Committee was formed in March and has been hard at work marketing the upcoming conference. Great work to that team!
Also, we created a common What is Drupal deck and have created evergreen versions of the Drupal Pitch Deck and Drupal 9 one-pager. Now, how to feature this content more prominently on Drupal.org?
How can people contribute or support the initiative over the next few months?
We would love to grow the Promote Drupal team, and we have some specific roles to fill. Read about the roles and fill in our recruitment form to get involved.
We heard from Kaleem Clarkson about the Event Organizers Working Group:
About this initiative
The Event Organizers Working Group (EOWG) is concerned with supporting community-led events within the Drupal community. These include camps, summits, training days, contribution days, and meetups.
What have been your priorities in the last three months?
All of the EOWG priorities were focused around our three new initiatives:
- Onboarding to the Drupal Community at Events
- Drupal Events Platform
- Drupal Events Website / Database
During this time, we determined which board members will serve on which initiative, defined each initiative's short-term goals and drafted a call for volunteers for each initiative. I am pretty psyched about what these awesome folks have accomplished. Much love :)
What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?
Increasing our participation is definitely our biggest challenge. Our event organizer open community meetings have been happening on Zoom for over two years now and just like everyone in the world, I think Zoom fatigue and the challenges of work-life integration can make it difficult for any additional commitments. Many of the organizers are used to attending other camps in a show of support and building community, and for me personally, I am having a tough time missing those connections. By not having the opportunities to meet people in person and talk with other event organizers make it even more difficult for us to attract new members. But I am hopeful that will soon change.
And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?
Our greatest success was coming together in just three months and collaborating with the Drupal Association with the unveiling of a newly organized web page that will help raise the profile of all Drupal community events happening around the world. Well, I can’t actually tell you what it is. Stay tuned!
How can people contribute or support the initiative over the next few months?
Sign up to volunteer for one of our three initiatives: Onboarding to the Drupal Community at Events, Drupal Events Platform, Drupal Events Website / Database. View a description of all of our initiatives here.
We heard from Mike Herchel about New Front-End Theme:
About this initiative
The New Front-End Theme initiative seeks to create a new default front-end theme for Drupal with a modern look and feel.
What have been your priorities in the last three months?
Working toward becoming stable and Drupal's default theme
What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?
Code-wise, Olivero is in a great place. The difficult part is getting the code into Drupal core. To do this, we frequently have to get sign offs from accessibility maintainers prior to core committers. All of the people within these roles are very busy, and it’s hard to get their attention. This continues to be a challenge, but Mike frequently plays the role of “squeaky wheel” to get attention. The deadline for Olivero to become stable and the default theme for Drupal 9.2 is mid-May 2021, which gives us a bit over a month. We’ll have to step up our momentum if we are going to hit that.
And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?
During Midcamp, we organized a multi-day sprint to concentrate on testing. This started with Matt Glaman teaching everyone NightwatchJS (Drupal's core JavaScript testing framework) and making sure everyone is up and running on their local environments.
A lot of people then worked together to create our first Olivero Nightwatch test, which involves checking if an element is visible, scrolling the browser, and rechecking visibility.
Later, we split off to work on more automated tests. Brian Perry led the charge to write a number of PHPUnit tests along with many others, and many of us (including Matthew Radcliffe and Benji Fisher) continued writing NightwatchJS tests to ensure the various functionality of Olivero’s menus (which are deceptively complex).
Outside of testing, we’ve been making slow but steady progress on Olivero’s technical debt and accessibility issues. Mike Herchel has been doing occasional “mini-sprints” with core-committer Lauri Eskola to work on getting RTBC issues committed and into 9.2.x. This has been working very well, and we have one more scheduled in the coming weeks.
How can people contribute or support the initiative over the next few months?
I miss you all.
Issue reviews (from an accessibility point of view) are always helpful, plus you can find me at DrupalCon North America 2021 if you want to chat about the work we’re doing!
We heard from Mike Anello about Drupal Community Working Group:
About this initiative
The mission of the Community Working Group (CWG) is to foster a friendly and welcoming community for the Drupal project and to uphold the Drupal Code of Conduct.
What have been your priorities in the last three months?
We have been working to expand the size of the conflict resolution team, working to identify additional community health-related workshops that we can organizer, the launch of "nudges", continue to offer Code of Conduct contact training and make it a more visible aspect of Drupal events, the 2021 Aaron Winborn Award, and our annual report.
What has been your greatest challenge in the last three months?
Expanding the size of the conflict resolution team. Difficult choices.
And what has been your greatest success in the last three months?
Difficult to say - I'm not really sure.
How can people contribute or support the initiative over the next few months?
Be kind to each other.