Approaching 20 years old, the Drupal Community must prioritize recruiting the next generation of Drupal Professionals

Time flies when you are having fun. One of those sayings I remember my parents saying that turned out to be quite true. My first Drupal experience was nearly 10 years ago and within a blink of an eye, we have seen enormous organizations adopt and commit to Drupal such as Turner, the Weather Channel, The Grammys, and Georgia.gov.

Throughout the years, I have been very fortunate to meet a lot of Drupal community members in person but one thing I have noticed lately is that nearly everyone’s usernames can be anywhere between 10–15 years old. What does that mean? As my dad would say, it means we are getting O — L — D, old.

For any thriving community, family business, organization, or your even favorite band for that matter, all of these entities must think about succession planning. Succession what, what is succession planning?

Succession planning is a process for identifying and developing new leaders who can replace old leaders when they leave, retire or die. -Wikipedia

That's right, we need to start planning a process for identifying who can take over in leadership roles that continue to push Drupal forward. If we intend to keep Drupal as a viable solution for large and small enterprises, then we should market ourselves to the talent pool as a viable career option to help in an attempt to lure talent to our community.

There are many different way’s to promote our community and develop new leaders. Mentorship. Mentorship helps ease the barrier for entry into our community by providing guidance into how our community operates. Our community does have some great efforts taking place in the form of mentoring such as Drupal Diversity & Inclusion (DDI) initiative, the core mentoring initiative and of course the code and mentoring sprints at DrupalCon and DrupalCamps. These efforts are awesome and should be recognized as part of a larger strategic initiative to recruit the next generation of Drupal professionals.

Companies spend billions of dollars a year in recruiting but as an open-source community, we don’t have billions so

… what else can we do to attract new Drupal career professionals?

The Drupal Career Summit

This year’s Atlanta Drupal Users’s Group (ADUG) decided to develop the Drupal Career Summit, all in an effort to recruit more professionals into the Drupal community. Participants will explore career opportunities, career development, and how open source solutions are changing the way we buy, build, and use technology.

• Learn about job opportunities and training.
• Hear how local leaders progressed through their careers and the change open source creates their clients and business.
• Connect one-on-one with professionals in the career you want and learn about their progression, opportunities, challenges, and wins.

When and Where Is it?

On Saturday, September 14 from 1pm -4:30pm. Hilton Garden Inn Atlanta-Buckhead 3342 Peachtree Rd., NE | Atlanta, GA 30326 | LEARN MORE

Who Should Attend?

Student and job seekers can attend for FREE! The Summit will allow you to meet with potential employers and industry leaders. We’ll begin the summit with a panel of marketers, developers, designers, and managers that have extensive experience in the tech industry, and more specifically, the Drupal community. You’ll get a chance to learn about career opportunities and connect with peers with similar interests.

REGISTER

Are You Hiring?

We’re looking for companies that want to hire and educate. You can get involved with the summit by becoming a sponsor for DrupalCamp Atlanta. Sponsors of the event will have the opportunity to engage with potential candidates through sponsored discussion tables and branded booths. With your sponsorship, you’ll get a booth, a discussion table, and 2 passes! At your booth, you’ll get plenty of foot traffic and a fantastic chance to network with attendees.

BECOME A SPONSOR

What you can do?

If you can’t physically attend our first Career Summit, you can still donate to our fundraising goals. And if you are not in the position to donate invite your employer, friends, and colleagues to participate. Drupal Career Summit.

Drupal. The Next Generation. They Are Out There. was originally published in Drupal Atlanta on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.