At DrupalCon Amsterdam we announced the formation of a Contribution Recognition Committee. The purpose of this committee is to recommend solutions for how we recognize contributions to the Drupal project made by both individual and organizational contributors, and to advise the Drupal Association on how to weight each type of contribution relative to the others.

We kicked off the process with this call to action, seeking volunteers to participate on the committee who represented a variety of personas within the Drupal community: 

We saw a tremendous response to this call to action, and the committee has now been assembled. The members are: 

_________________

Committee Chair: Mike Lamb

Mike Lamb has just completed his second term on the Drupal Association board. He has been a member of the Drupal community for 8 years and is the Vice President of Global Digital Platforms at Pfizer. He brings his perspective as a former board member, a leader of digital teams, and a representative of a large end-user of Drupal to the table. His particular interest is in finding ways to incentivize other end-user organizations to make contribution history part of their vendor selection process.

Committee Member: Tiffany Farriss

Tiffany Farriss has a long history of leadership and service in the Drupal community, and is the CEO and co-owner of Palantir.net. She served on the Drupal Association board for 9 years, most of those as Treasurer; chaired the organizing committee for DrupalCon Chicago in 2011; and has served in many other ways, most recently on the executive search committee for the new Drupal Association Executive Director. Tiffany has personal experience across many kinds of contribution, as well as leading Palantir to be a top contributing organization.

Committee Member: Ryan Szrama

Ryan Szrama is well known for his work on Drupal Commerce and for co-founding Centarro (formerly Commerce Guys) in 2009. He's been a member of the Drupal community for nearly 14 years, was elected by the community to serve on the Drupal Association Board of Directors in 2017, and has just been appointed to another 3-year term. He lends his perspective as a Drupal business leader and D.A. board member to committee discussions and is interested to see how the data we gather about contributions can be used in ways beyond just crediting contributors.

Committee Member: Stella Power

Stella Power is a respected leader in the Drupal community in Ireland and is the Managing Director of Annertech. In her almost 14-year journey with Drupal, she's done everything from contributing code to volunteering at and organizing local events, consistently serving as a volunteer organizer of DrupalCon and Trivia Night quiz master. She provides the committee with her extensive experience in all of these areas - and as someone with connections to contributors around the world.

Committee Member: Jacob Rocowitz

Jacob Rockowitz maintains the Webform module for Drupal 8, as an independent Drupal consultant. Jacob has extensive experience collaborating with dozens if not hundreds of developers because of the wide usage of Webform, and he has pioneered a number of efforts to improve the sustainability of open source. He brings a unique perspective as a sole proprietor, as well as the knowledge gained from these sustainability experiments. One aspect of this project that is of particular importance to Jake is ensuring that the system incentivizes the quality of contributions, not just their quantity.

Committee Member: Rakhi Mandhania

Rakhi Mandhania is a Project Manager Colab Cooperative and co-founder of the DrupalCampus Ambassador Program. For more than six years in the Drupal community Rakhi has been a frequent attendee at local events in India, as well as international events like DrupalCon in Asia, North America, and Europe. Rakhi brings the perspective of Drupal users in the higher education space, as well as her experience as a project manager.

Committee Member: Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson has been working with Drupal since 2006 and is the Drupal Director at CTI Digital. Much of his client work is focused on the nonprofit world, and he brings that experience as well as knowledge of how to encourage for-profit, closed organizations to become more open. Among his many contributions to the project, Paul has focused on international social media efforts, including promotion from the @Drupal Twitter handle, and initiatives like #CelebrateDrupal8. His more recent experience includes work on the Promote Drupal initiative, and specifically the Drupal pitch deck. His passion lies in helping the Drupal project to realise the potential of its scale, ensuring contributions of all forms and scale are recognised and valued in particular beyond code.

_________________

These committee members are by no means the only community members who will be involved in the process. Six people are not enough to represent the breadth of diversity in our community. This is why the committee, both collectively and individually, will be seeking out feedback from every corner of our community to feed this process.

They'll also be working closely with the Drupal Association itself, particularly myself (Tim Lehnen) as CTO and maintainer of the system, and Rachel Lawson as our community liaison who already has tremendous insight from the community feedback she's gathered on this subject to date.

The committee will be meeting regularly over the next several months, with the goal of reporting significant progress and first recommendations at DrupalCon Minneapolis in May of 2020.