Drupal Association Board of Directors – At-Large Position

This year the Drupal Association Board of Directors has an opening for a single director At-Large position. With this opening, the association reached out to the community to allow anyone to self-nominate for the position. As of the closing of the nomination round, there were 24 candidates, from 14 different countries, which I think is an incredible testament to the community.

When I saw this opportunity, I decided to nominate myself along with the other 23 candidates; to throw my hat in the ring so to speak for the chance to be part of something amazing. There are a few personal reasons why I chose to nominate myself for this position. Since I started working with Drupal back in 2007, I have seen it grow from a group of dedicated developers to a very large and all-encompassing community of people from all corners of the web. Drupal has an extensive fan base with many hours of “hands-on” support that is contributed back to the community. This support ranges from core & contrib development, documentation writing, creating testing procedures, and marketing the benefits of the platform and the companies who are able to sponsor the multitude of events and meetups available all around the world.

Here are a few reasons why I put my name up for this opportunity:

• A chance to put into the community with something more than just dollars through sponsorship
• Getting to be part of something bigger than myself
• Learn from some amazingly smart people on how to better promote Drupal and bring it back to our area here in the Okanagan Valley

The Okanagan Valley is small when compared to centers like Vancouver and Toronto, but it has had some great moments of being part of the Drupal Community. Some of my favorite examples are:

• Developed the new Drupal Job Board
• Sponsored Pacific Northwest
• DrupalCon Austin ‘14 Sponsors
• DrupalCon LA ‘15 Sponsors
• Designed site and assets for DrupalCon LA
• Presentations at Pacific Northwest 2012
• Sponsors and Presenters at Vancouver Business Summit 2012
• Presenters at DrupalCon Boston ‘08
• Designed DrupalCon Boston ‘08 logo

Even though this list is small in comparison to other regions, we here in the Okanagan Valley are ready to amp it up. The possibility of having an At-Large Director in our own backyard would be a great accelerant to our growth and visibility.

When and How to Vote

Voting starts March 9th and will run until March 20th. To be eligible to vote, you must have a valid Drupal.org (D.O.) user, and if you don’t, you would need to create one before March 1st. Once you have a D.O. user, you then login in at https://association.drupal.org/user to be added to the electoral roll.

The association will be using the “instant run-off” method for this election, which allows for a better representative vote for the position available.

I wish all the candidates good luck in their bid for the position. Regardless of who wins, I am certain they will do a great job of helping further the Drupal cause.