Cue the Bowie…
Although it’s been largely quiet (and really not a huge deal), before the rumours spread too far: I’ve left my position as the Director of Education for Lullabot. I’m leaving behind a totally awesome team and a wonderful job (in the midst of a recession). Why on earth?!
Let me be very clear: Lullabot isn’t in danger, stopping Drupal training, nor is there any backroom drama. The ‘bots are wonderful people and chances are very good that we’ll continue to collaborate in the future (at the very least, there’s still hugs).
This was a very personal decision - and one that was a long time coming. For the morbidly curious, it boils down to three things (and those of you who know me well, know it always comes down to three things):
Travel: Anyone who is friends with a ‘bot on Dopplr or Tripit knows that the job entails a lot of time on the road. With over 230 days on the road in the past 2 years, I needed and my kids deserved a break. While we (Lullabot and I) largely worked around this - it’s still just part of the gig.
Drupal: I stood up in front of a rather large group of Drupal folks almost a year ago and explained why I hate Drupal - so it’s obvious, right? While I feel the points I tried to make still face the community at large (such as smallcore/drupal is not a product, or even rethinking the maintainer structure), I don’t actually hate Drupal (as those of you who grok sarcasm might have noted).
However, Drupal has been my full-time job for 6 years. In that time, the community (and the software) has grown and changed considerably. It has been an amazing ride. As Dries mentioned to me on the phone a few weeks ago, “once a Drupal guy, always a Drupal guy”. This is probably true - I have no intention of leaving the community, but I am ready for some new challenges.
Open Web: One thing people may have noticed is that when I have had the chance to hack on Drupal lately - it tends to involve “open web” or “open standards” implementations (notably, OpenID etc). Many folks have also noticed that my contributions have trailed off lately. When your “after hours” time starts including more things like “sleep” - your after hours projects take a hit.
I’d like to get back to building cool, new stuff. While I certainly get a lot out of teaching people how to make the most of the tools available, I’m passionate about building the next tools (which doesn’t exclude Drupal). These are interesting times on the internets, I wanna have my nose in the middle of it.
Officially, I will be freelancing (technically have been for a few weeks). I’ve already got some interesting things lined up that I’m excited to start talking about soon.
]]>… on the rest of the web
First off, this is not a critique of the Google’s and Facebook’s of the internet. They are incredibly valuable to the growth of the openweb. The fact that Google, Yahoo and Myspace all three have various OpenID and OAuth initiatives in the wild and are actively pursuing additional ways to open their data is awesome (and Facebook wants to get there). It helps raise awareness and bring (slash confirm) “legitimacy”.
The big guys also have resources. They can attend the conferences (and camps!) and have dedicated resources to write the standards, participate in the discussions and help shape the future.
However, they are only part of the discussion.
The issues the major providers face are different from the rest. They have a few sites with large numbers of users (hundreds of millions). Out here on the rest of the web, we have millions of websites, each with a “small” number of users (hundreds or thousands). We all understand the necessity for open data, identity, standards and protocols, but our reasoning tends to be slightly different.
The big guys recognize the benefit of exposing their data and most are providing OpenID and various levels of OAuth. How many are consuming it?
Sure, the big players want to be the primary authority for your identity and your information. In some cases, it is their business. But, rather than ranting against ‘the man’, I ask: have we - the rest of the web - given them a compelling reason to yet?
It’s one thing for a major site (with hundreds of millions of users) to act like a silo, but on the rest of the web it amounts to isolation.
Those of us working on open source web platforms have an enormous potential for influence here. Implementing the various open standards “from scratch”, while possible, is not realistic or even necessary. Increasingly, individuals have Wordpress blogs or perhaps their company, organization or club has a Drupal site. Web developers are increasingly turning to these platforms, or development frameworks such as Rails and Django. These platforms all have a real opportunity to bake in implementations of these open standards. The DiSo project offers a central place for co-ordination around these efforts.
We have data - gobs of it. We also, collectively, have the users and, in most cases, have more authoritative information about them (we know ourselves, our employees and our members).
We - the rest of the web - need to join the conversation: attend the events, participate in the mailing lists, and build the code to power the open, social web.
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