Talking Drupal #507 - International Drupal Federation

John: This is Talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design development from a group of people with one thing in common. We love Drupal. This is episode 5 0 7 International Drupal Federation. On today's show, we're talking about the International Drupal Federation Initiative, why it's important now, and how it will shape the future of Drupal.

With our guest, Tim Doyle. We'll also cover modeler, will also cover modular API as our module of the week. Welcome to Talking Drupal today. Our guest is Tim Doyle. Tim is currently serving as the CEO of the Drupal Association. He has 25 years of experience in the nonprofit and government sectors, and in the past he's worked for a public sector startup that built an IT system, serving 65 [00:01:00] US state agencies.

Tim, welcome back to the show and thanks for joining us. Thank you. It's great to be here. This is my my third time. I'm feeling like a little bit like a celebrity. Yeah, you, you're Don Don't worry. This is about the time where you hit like pro status. You just, you're kind of like, you know, you, you get, you get real used to it folks.

I'm John Picozzi solutions architect at EPAM, and today joining me for the fourth time. Norah Medlin, director of Delivery and Program Operations at Bluefly io. Norah also leads is the lead organizer at MidCamp, and as we said, director of Delivery and program operations at Bluefly IO TekNorah brings her technical program and process improvement expertise as a certified safe AGILEISTS and C-S-S-G-B professional.

Norah, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us for the last four weeks.

Norah: Thank you so much for having me. It's good to have you here, Tim.

John: And [00:02:00] last, but certainly not least Nic Laflin, founder at nLightened Development. What's going on, Nic?

Nic: Not too much Happy to be here.

John: Fabulous. And now to talk about our module of the week, let's turn it over to Martin Anderson Klutz, a senior solutions engineer at Acquia, and a maintainer of a number of Drupal modules and recipes of his own.

Martin, what do you have for us this week?

Martin: Thanks, John. Have you ever wanted to use a common visual toolkit to define and represent a variety of business logic on your Drupal website, including responding to events, defining migrations, and building AI agents? There's a module for that. It's called Modeler, API, and it was created in March of 2025 by Jurgen Haas, who listeners may know from his excellent work on ECA, Drupal CMS and the gin admin theme, as well as other popular Drupal projects.

It has a 1.0 0.0 Alpha three version available, which supports Drupal 11.2 or newer. But I [00:03:00] hear we might have a first beta release by the time this recording is public. It does have, it is actively maintained and has security coverage for documentation. There isn't a ton yet, but if the wealth of documentation available for ECA is any kind of indication, hopefully, hopefully there will be more.

Shortly now, it does have 11 open issues, none of which are bugs and all, but three of which have now been marked as fixed, and it is officially in use by two sites according to drupal.org. Now, listeners may recall that we covered ECA as module of the week way back in episode 3 75, and as a show topic in 4 0 2 for me, one of the things that really stands out about ECA is the ability to implement workflows as visual diagrams.

Earlier this year, discussions began about using that BPMN diagramming interface for other things, including defining migrations and the logic for AI agents. Part of the magic of. Drupal community events like DrupalCon [00:04:00] is the way they can catalyze important work by bringing together the people with the knowledge, skills, and expertise to move innovation forward.

Jurgen Benji Fisher and Chris Weber use the Contribution Day at DrupalCon Atlanta to get this work started. Now we have not only the modeler API, but also new versions of ECA AI agents and bpmn.io, so you can start using these new combinations already. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, Jurgen posted an update on LinkedIn.

We'll have a link in the show notes, which includes a video showing the process of using the BPMN modeler to define an AI agent as well as subagent that can independently handle smaller parts of the overall task. Finally, having a separate modeler, API means that support for multiple UIs as possible.

Many have seen and used the BPM inter interface, the ECA is known for, but there is discussion about developing other modelers potentially based on a reactor, even experience builder and drawing on popular solutions like N eight N or Workato [00:05:00] for inspiration. So let's talk about modeler. API. Oh

John: my gosh, I have so many questions right now.

Okay. So, and I, I heard Nic take a breath. So Nic probably has questions too, or at least comments, but let me see if I if I understand what you're, what you're saying here, Martin, appropriately. So, and I'm gonna use ECA as, as the, as the kind of reference.

When you install ECA, like, I don't know, let's say prior to this module existing, right? You would install ECA and then you install BPMN module as the modeler for ECA, and then you'd build your stuff in ECA using, using BPMN business logic to, to build your, to, to, to build your flows, right? So basically what this is doing is it's abstracting kind of the, the business logic library that you're using into an API.

So that way you can kind of like plug and play the [00:06:00] different diagramming interfacing business logic. Things with ECA and not have to kind of rewrite your stuff every time. Is that, is that fair? Is that, am I like close to to right there?

Martin: Yeah. No, I think that that's a really good way to put it. So, as you say, you know, there, there has always been the bpmn.io module that had some Drupal logic to it, but it was, you know, the, the overall way that, that, that library was integrated into Drupal was sort of, you know, very much written specifically for e ca.

And so, as you say, this is really an abstraction layer that allows that, that drag and drop interface for defining business logic to be used with things other than ECA, you know, most notably, we already have that as a working example for AI agents. But there's, talk about using it for. The other example that I've seen is for migrations, but, but even thinking about ECA, the other integration that I've heard of that sounds pretty exciting.

There's already some, some work started is [00:07:00] around having ECA integrated with the Salesforce suite module. And so the idea of being able to drag and drop, to build out potentially complex Salesforce integrations, I think is, could be very exciting for the community.

Alright. I am

Nic: personally very excited about the migrate integration.

I mean, writing yml files to manage migrations. I mean, the, the thing is with the ui, it's still gonna be very complex. It's gonna be very click heavy. It's gonna be very, I mean, it's still gonna be somewhat tedious. I mean, you can, you're mapping individual fields to individual fields and transforming them.

There's no way to get around that tedium. But moving that back into the ui. Makes it more accessible to site builders. Again, it kind of goes back to the days of like, well, feed still exists, I guess, but it, it, it goes back to like feeds. Like you can start to like map things. Ju you can start doing Drupal things again in the ui, which [00:08:00] while still having them backed by config entities and, and yml.

I think that that is really powerful. Even if you use, just use this as kind of like a, kinda like webform, it is in the standard use case. You know, you, you use the interface to configure it and then you use config to kind of export it and transport it. And so if you can start doing that with migrations and ECA and AI agent that, that's really powerful.

Beyond the ability. I, I think the true power outside of Drupal is, is the business logic piece, like the b-P-M-N-I-O stuff, you know, business folks know how to use that, and if you empower them to make business logic changes in Drupal, that just is another plus Drupal.

But yeah.

Martin: I just wanted to add one thing, which is I think the, the other value of BPMN is that it's visual enough. I think that for a lot of use cases, [00:09:00] even if the overall interface remains complex enough, that it's not necessarily something that you would wanna put the hands put into the hands of a business user.

It's kind of self-documenting in the sense that it creates sort of a visual representation of the business logic that you can at least put in front of somebody and say, do we have this right in terms of the overall flow? And then they can give you feedback on that as opposed to, you know, like a tree diagram or whatever that you'd have from the, the older rules module would be kind of impenetrable for, for some of those same people.

So I feel like it allows you to bridge that gap, you know, significantly easier.

John: So, what I was gonna say I think those are all very good points, and I do agree, Martin, that the, like bridging the gap for, for people that are using, you know, this business logic model and bringing that into Drupal and having it like that common language right, to speak to, to speak to them like between developer and business person is powerful.

But I think overall, like one thing that ECA [00:10:00] and BPMN and, and, and probably now this module as well will, will suffer from is like documentation. 'cause like, and, and I think it's getting better and I, I know that people are working on it and it will get better, but I think like one of the things that was hard initially with ECA was like knowing what to, what values to put in where and like what the fields kind of meant to make it easier for, for.

People to use. So I think that's probably going to be an area where like, hey, we gotta kind of pour some, pour some time and energy into documentation and, and naming of things just to make sure that everything is like, easier to understand for, for dumb dumbs like me.

Martin: So a, a couple of points on that. I guess I would say number one, if you're talking specifically about documentation, actually there is a ton of it for a CA and including sort of a library of, of example models, which is really powerful.

It does potentially require some, some digging [00:11:00] through sometimes to find the exact thing that you need. But there is also a really great ECA channel in Drupal Slack where if there are specific things you're trying to do and you can't quite get your head around how to do it, oftentimes you can get an answer pretty quickly in there.

So if we could have those same kinds of resources for something like, you know, modeler, API, and then you know, the, some of the more specific pieces around using it for AI agents or. You know, building migrations or whatever the case might be, then, then I feel like that would be amazing and a tremendous resource.

The other thing that I, I guess I didn't mention in the, the introduction is that part of, of the work that Jurgen has been doing for the modeler API is also bringing into the interface the actual form API, which I think opens up some interesting possibilities in terms of like leveraging the state's API or potentially even doing things around, you know, form alters as a way to potentially add more custom logic into the way you need certain [00:12:00] pieces to, to work, to specifically meet your own business needs.

So I think there's a, a lot of potential even in terms of, as you say, being able to modify the description of certain things so that if you have a business business user that needs to go in and edit those things, that you can have a kind of a more bespoke way of, of how that's described to make it easier for them to understand.

John: Yeah, I mean, I think overall, right, this is all very positive. So, I appreciate you bringing it to, to us and to the listeners. And Martin, if folks wanted to connect or suggest a module of the week, how best could they do that?

Martin: We always love talking about interesting projects in the talking Drupal channel of Drupal Slack.

Or folks can reach out to me directly as man clue on all of the Drupal and social channels.

John: Perfect. Thanks a lot, Martin.

Martin: See you next week.

John: All right. Let's move into our primary topic, talking about the International Drupal Federation [00:13:00] Initiative. I'm not gonna lie, that's a bit of a mouthful, but we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna try to, we're gonna try to get it all out there every time we say it.

So, I mean, Tim, what's the, what's the elevator pitch or a high level overview of what the International Drupal Federation Initiative is?

Tim: It? Yeah. So in short, it's an effort to look at how Drupal is governed through our existing not-for-profit now, the triple association and revision that on a more global scale so that the common shared resources that the, the current DA takes care of are, the governance includes folks from all over the globe and there's a, there's a greater sense of shared responsibility in managing these assets.

John: Can, Tim, can you give like a little bit of an example of just some of the, some of the assets or some of the, the, the things you're talking about? Sure. Yeah.

Tim: So yeah, I mean, our primary mission at the Drupal [00:14:00] Association is to support the, the Drupal Project and the Drupal community. And primarily through the project.

We do that through drupal.org, through housing, the, the servers that make Drupal free and available to anyone anywhere in the world at no cost. So that's obviously our most important asset, if you will. And that takes obviously it takes technology, it takes staff time, it takes coordination with the project every time there's a release or a new of Drupal constant coordination with the project to best support the project.

Then we have initiatives like Drupal CMS or most recently announced triple ai, and that takes support from staff time and resources and stuff. And so I kind of consider all that the shared, you know, the shared resources that make up Drupal. And right now that's housed at the U that the, drupal Association, which is a US based not-for-profit, although our mission is global.

Nic: And why, why is that something that's being started now? It looks like it was [00:15:00] created on May 20th of this year of 2025. So why is this starting now?

Tim: Yeah, so we were sitting around the office and had nothing to do and it was a Friday afternoon. No, I'm kidding. That was not Just kidding. Just kidding. Really, it's interesting.

So it came out, the board had, the board has a retreat. The DA board has a retreat twice a year before DrupalCon North America in DrupalCon Europe and in Atlanta This past March, we were looking at a number of issues of how to, how to how to get some sustainability in our revenues and in long term support for, and it was noted that like the European community is way ahead in terms of supporting open source, you know, the, the European Union even specific governments like Germany and Switzerland, or they're just farther ahead in than in the us the rest of the globe in terms of supporting open source seeing open source as a part of a larger digital public infrastructure that is necessary to, [00:16:00] to support.

So we're looking at, okay, how do we position ourselves to to, because we're obviously Drupal's big in Europe, we have a lot, there's a lot of Drupal associations in Europe. How do we access some of that funding to do the work that we need to do to sustain Drupal? And that led to this idea that we should be looking at you know, either creating an organization in Europe or having a European presence to better position ourselves to receive funding from the eu.

And then that, that led. More existential question, which is how do we really long-term sustain ourselves unless we have a governance process that includes voices from all over the globe? You know, formally into our governance process right now, our board is more than half our board is outside the us.

We take our global mission very seriously, and we we're doing, we're trying to do as much as we can to live into that, but we're still hunkered, we're still a little bit restrained and by being a US not-for-profit, and there's no [00:17:00] formal mechanism. So it kind of like the discussion started at how do we, you know, help our funding to how do we have better governance?

And it really led to this, to the point now saying, let's kind of solve a number of, potentially solve a number of problems at once. By looking at getting out from under a nation based not-for-profit structure and, and going tru truly kind of, creating international not-for-profit.

Norah: Think of that. You know, I think where my mind goes is you know, naturally being involved in community is, is, is the community effects here. Maybe just to dig into a little bit about how you might think that this initiative will change triple association's sort of involvement in the larger Drupal ecosystem.

Where, where do you feel like that you know, this, this initiative will really shape the sort of changes [00:18:00] that we're all you know, kind of going towards, especially Drupal CMS and other products. But, but this, how does this add to that?

Tim: Yeah, so it, I mean, potentially this could be a big change. What we're looking at is, and, and the reason why it's a big, long sentence of inter, inter, you know, Drupal International Federation Initiative, working group, whatever, but a federation is by definition a, a not-for-profit that is made up of member not-for-profits or member, it could be individuals, member groups that are therefore members of this, not of this international, not-for-profit.

So, unlike the way we're structured today, where where the board, the board is, is appointed by the board members.

What they call 5 0 3 not-for-profit. So it's not-for-profit organized in the US for charitable purposes. We would actually, under this new model, potentially have member organizations, member local Drupal associations like the [00:19:00] Dutch Drupal Association or the gov, you know, or a Drupal association of the US or you know, in any continent, any country, they would actually be members.

So I think the big change that this could could bring into the ecosystem is this idea that local associations and nation associations, Drupal associations at the national level become really important and part of the formal governance. So think about rather the, the board going through, its the current process for identifying who the board members are.

If we had 10 Drupal associations that were members of this international not-for-profit, they would decide who the board is. And so all of a. Activities and the organizations at the local level matter a lot more. And, and that's one of the considerations the board will have to look into, like, you know, how, how robust, how strong are the local associations within countries to support this kind of international not-for-profit.

Nic: So is the, is the YMCA model [00:20:00] then, right, where there's like a governing international board and then each na each nation has a, has their own and then kind of, we probably don't go this granular, but maybe camps come for this, but then each region will kind of have its own group. So it's really just a way to help it's an organ, it's a organizational thing.

It's a structural thing to just give each sub-organization more say right.

Tim: That's, that's a great analogy. I have not, I'm gonna write that one down. I had not thought of the YMCA model, but yes, it is that model where if you know YMCAs, they're, you know, independently run and you know, but then they're all part of the YMCA international brand.

We looked at the Red Cross model, you know, the same thing like the Red Cross are individual and the nation, they, they decide what they respond to in the nation, but there's a governing group above it that has the, the forces, the brand if you will, and the standards, and then runs programs through those, those, those nation based, local not-for-profits.

And that's gonna be [00:21:00] back to your question, Norah, about a change. A lot of the stuff that now that the DA does directly, we may end up be doing, may end up doing through local associations. So our Drupal certified partner program could be run through local associations membership, maybe someone becomes a member of the local association and they're automatically a member of the international one.

So that's the other big. This will likely, in my opinion, require much greater partnership between local associations and the international not-for-profit, obviously. So that for the, for our programs, you know, to, to run effectively.

Norah: And just to expand on that just a little bit the, currently, it's my understanding that there are local Drupal associations in the European region and that there's several of them.

But I, I don't think that there's any, anywhere else. I mean, I know that there's not a local Drupal Association here in the United States or North America but there may be some others in [00:22:00] other regions that I'm not aware of. So I, I do wonder the change in respect to that as well. Like, are we saying that we're this effort would also, I.

Create like a, a, a sort of structure and programs around how other regions could form local associations?

Tim: Yes, I think it would, it would, it could provide a roadmap for how to, how to form an association that can carry out programs and be effective and be kind of an ongoing entity. Entity. But I think you're a hundred percent right.

And one thing I wanna acknowledge is that there are obviously Drupal communities all across the globe, and we've we've we've pon we've sponsored two years in a row now, the the Perino FASA Drupal Meetup, but there's also a great variety of what we meet. So, you know, some are formally organized, they're, you know, the Dutch Drupal Association is a legal not-for-profit in in the Netherlands.

The but then some are just meetups and groups that are informally organized. [00:23:00] Some have kind of structure on a website. Some don't even have that. The particular model that we're looking to incorporate under, which is a Belgium law allows for a great variety of members. So it, it's pretty flexible.

So we can incorporate, you know, different membership levels depending on the, the organization that, that happens to, in effect in certain areas. So if you're, if you're formal not-for-profit, and you have a bank account and maybe even a paid staff or part-time staff, that could be one kind of membership class.

But if you're more, you know, if you are more volunteer based and, and there's no legal organization and that might be a separate, so it's, it's flexible to have different folks come in at different levels. It doesn't have to be all one, you know, you have to meet these strict requirements in order to be part of this governance.

Norah: Well, for the smaller groups, I think that that, that they might, you know, have a breath of relief. You know, it comes to that, oh no, I have to become a nonprofit. Well, okay, that's not the case here. That, that, that's being taken into account.

Tim: I appreciate Exactly, [00:24:00] exactly. That's the, this Belgium wall that we're looking at to incorporate under just provides a lot of flexibility.

And that's one of the things the working group is gonna be looking at is how do you know what, what are the, what's out there and what are the different types of organizations that local Drupal communities have? And then how do we fit them into a structure that into, into a governance structure that works.

John: So I'm, I'm thinking of this and, and I'm wondering if you know it you know, at some point makes the current Drupal Association obsolete, right? Or, or unnecessary. Right. And, and the way I'm thinking of this is you know, Norah brought up that. EA has Drupal associations, right? In the US we have you know, fiscal sponsors that are nonprofit orgs that, that fiscally sponsor all of the camps, right?

So I'm wondering, do you see a model where all of those organizations [00:25:00] report into the federation? Or do you see a model in the US where all of the fiscal sponsors report into the Drupal Association and then the Drupal Association reports into the federation? And, and I will say in my first example, you know, it seems like at that point maybe the DA as we know it today, isn't necessarily needed.

And maybe they get absorbed into the federation. I don't know. But like, is that, you know, is that something that is kind of in the back of your mind as far as like, maybe someday the, the da, you know, the US-based DA isn't, isn't a thing anymore.

Tim: Yeah, no, that's don't tell my board, but that's definitely a possibility.

Right. The the, the current, and, and I would say definitely the way, if this happens, if we're investigating right now, no decisions has been made, you know, but if this fulfills its promise, the current Drupal Association in the US would change dramatically. And the way we're thinking about right now is that nations would [00:26:00] have, you know, there would be a national Drupal that would be a member of this international.

Mm-hmm. And then, and then under that national association, there might be, you know, in the US there might be groups that feed into that, that national association. It would fundamentally change. Now one of the issues we're, we're, we're addressing though, is thinking about, you know, like Europe has lots of.

Lots of nations, and if they each had one Drupal and they had one vote, US has one nation, and you know, and, and they've had one vote. Is that, is that equitable fair? Is that the right way to do governance? So that's one of the, we have to kind of, we're not, we we're not decided upon that nation national approach, if you will, as members, but that's kind of our starting point of thinking about it.

But there are some, some things to think about there. So yeah, so the DA would change a lot and we are, we've we are in contact with the fiscal agent in the US and with local groups, and we want them to be involved because even if they're not ultimately directly a member [00:27:00] of this as association, they would be indirectly and, and we would want them to be involved.

And, and so we're, we're kind of, you know, trying to include as many voices as we can in this process. We recognize that there are things that will change. So, one thing for local associations, they have to decide what they're gonna get outta it. Like how is this beneficial to them? And so ultimately what we need to create is they're gonna get something outta it that's helpful to them in their local association.

And then they're gonna help the international association, you know, maintain the servers and deliver the programs and, and, and do that. You know, and, and, and so both parties have to say like, this is a good move forward. And the fiscal agency in the US I know there's a not-for-profit that's done a lot of that and, and address that, but in other areas, being a fiscal agent might be important role that the da, the international DA

Nic: plays.

And so, so those kind of

I'm trying to think of the word. So those responsibilities that the Drupal Association currently takes would mostly move to the International Federation, like. [00:28:00] Managing the website, managing Drupal cons in Europe, Asia, in us, all that stuff would kind of still stay with the sa stay with the same group of people.

But it would just be part of the International Federation now, right?

Tim: Yeah, probably. Yes. Again, nothing, nothing's been ultimately decided, but the thinking is responsibility from the servers, the trademark responsibilities that the association had, both, both for Drupal and for DrupalCon. The marketing efforts that we're doing underway to market Drupal all that would, would move eventually to the international association.

And, and then, but I think the change part would be, you know, under a federated model, how does the, how do the DrupalCon operate in Europe and in North America? And it might be a little bit different than the way it's now. Right now we're doing it from our current organizational structure and trying to build good relationships.

I imagine DrupalCon Europe under a federated model where there's many [00:29:00] European countries that are members of this international federation. It would be much more control would be devolved down to the local associations to actually run it. Maybe even a host country, you know, when it's being held in Austria, the Austrian Drupal community really takes the lead on, on running it, you know, it, it would support the DA obviously in the way we do it, but like they have a lot more ownership and control over it.

John: Yeah. Kind of feels, kind of feels similar to like, you know, when when DrupalCon North America goes into a, goes into a specific state or region with a, with a Drupal camp, usually a lot of those organizers are, are involved in, in organizing. So, I'm wondering, I'm wondering if you see any downside to.

Creating an international Drupal Federation. I know it's super early in the, like, discovery process, if you will, but I'm wondering if any any downsides have been identified yet?

Tim: No. No downsides have been really identified, [00:30:00] but I think there were some challenges that would, that would, that may turn into downsides.

So the flip side of, of how much of our conversation so far about how involved these local triple groups and communities would be, means that local triple communities and groups need to be involved. And so, you know, one risk is, is there enough, you know, local organization and local energy, you know, around Drupal in enough communities to really make a federation live into, its, into its goals and, and purposes.

We may start with. You know, under the law we're looking at, we could start with as few as two or three members but we would not fulfill the promise if we only had two. You know, if we had the two or three Drupal Associations running this international not-for-profit, we really need, you know, many groups over it you know, across the globe to really fulfill the promise.

So I do have some concerns there. I know since COVID, some, [00:31:00] some local groups have had a hard time coming back with their local camps and they've been, you know, and, and, and some have come back very strong. And, and I think we're seeing in the last year and a half, we're seeing a little bit of an uptick in, in groups coming back, getting activated.

But that's, I think is, you know, under this model right now, if the, if the, if the servers go [email protected], it's a DA's responsibility and my 13 member board that, that two are elected and, and 11 are appointed, you know, if under a federation the, the servers go down, then it's the federation staff and board and the members that have this responsibility to kind of figure out, you know, how to, what to do about it.

So it, you know, it will require strengthening of local, of local community, you know, community groups and associations.

Nic: So I'm thinking about this project and, and I'm realizing I wouldn't even know where to begin or something like this. What, what do you see [00:32:00] as kind of the biggest challenge or blocker? I mean, is it, is it financial? Is it legal? Is it coordination? Like, what's the biggest challenge to this initiative?

Tim: Yeah.

I'm Nic, I'm right where you are and it's, I'm trying to think. There's so many aspects to this problem. Like, I don't know how to begin to, you know. How do you begin to, what's the phrase, eat the elephant or whatever, like what, you know, like it's huge. So I talked about the local association we need and we've done a good job getting the word out and we're getting a lot of responses from people that are, you know, throughout the globe wanna participate.

So I think we're, we're on the road to like getting enough input. The second, but I think, so the second challenge I see is and the second approach is just kind of putting a framework to the approach. The law that we, that we're going under Belgium that we're right now targeted on is called the A-I-S-B-L law.

And it's say what it stands for, it's in French or Flemish. But it's basically built for international, not-for-profits. And it's been around for a while. Those, [00:33:00] it was intended to be for not-for-profits. So it's pretty light, which is good that it, it doesn't require a lot of things. It requires, there has to be a national assembly of member.

All members have to meet once a year. They can go virtually and they have to vote on the budget. And then they, and they elect a board that then runs a not-for-profit throughout the year. And then beyond that, you can, you know, there's a lot of flexibility in how you structure it. So I think that's that's the challenge we're having is coming up with a model that will meet the, the what the needs of the da, which is we need a kind of a, a transparent, super inclusive governance process where everyone who cares about triple is involved, but then also at the end of the day, delivers the resources necessary to keep all the responsibilities that we have going and, and to grow those responsibilities.

And then the flip side of that is what do local associations need to, to find a beneficial relationship with this international to become a member. So crafting that kind of agree, it'll [00:34:00] come down to basically an agreement. If you become a member, you will get these things and, and, and you'll also have these responsibilities.

And so, there's a lot of components to that, and I think the biggest challenge has been just trying to detail what all those questions are. We've asked people and we have a list. We're working on a list of questions now, working groups coming together this week. And we'll begin kind of chopping through that.

And I hope over like many things we do, you know, we'll set up a Slack channel for those who are interested in involved. We have a, we have a project page set up on, on drupal.org already. We'll be building that out. We'll be doing surveys and, and really targeted to local association leaders to get their involvement.

So there's a lot of unknowns and their unknown unknowns. But, you know, I think that's enormity of the, of all the issues that we have to think about is what I see as the, the biggest obstacle right now. Like, kind of put some structure on that so we can all be talking about the right things at the right time to, you know, to, to figure out [00:35:00] the direction we want to go.

John: It's like a, instead of a bottom up, like a bottom up approach, it's like a top down approach, right? Where like, you almost have to create the Drupal Federation and the board. And then, you know, in my head I'm kind of like, all right, there need to be regional, regional, you know, organizations, right? You know, either North America or US, and then emea and then, you know, apac and like, and then they can, they can kind of help to manage the more local you know, of groups, right?

Within their, within their, you know, geographic location. But I mean, along, along with all that comes a lot of governance, I would imagine as to like, okay, what are your membership dues? What are your structures? What are your responsibilities? Like, definitely a lot of a lot of, a lot of boxes to check before you just kind of run down, run down the road, right?

Tim: Right. And what's a, you know, what's the right appropriate level of all these things that's, you [00:36:00] know, where, where people feel like it's worth it, that they're getting the advantages that they want to get by joining the Federation. You know, part of, like, what we found is we looked at the data on this.

I shared some of the data on, on the webinars we've done, but just looking, last year we had 7,200 individual contributors to the Drupal that made contributions and 45% of those came outta Europe. And and about over a quarter came from North America. So, you know, that's a huge cohort of folks that are, and, and how do we actively get them engaged formally into our governance process Right now, we just try to do a lot of that.

We have board members that are European, they represent that, those voices, but we don't have a formal way to your point about the different levels we might have you know, very possible there'll be a couple. Type groups that will help organize activities within a continent or something, you know?

Yeah,

Nic: makes sense.

Norah: Well, maybe just to expand on that a little bit you know, I think [00:37:00] we talked about it already, but I don't know if you can really think structurally, you know, if the current US-based da does in a way move to a national organization what do you think maybe the structure and or other services besides website things, you know, might look like as an organization?

Tim: Yeah, so that's a, that's a great question. And I think so one thing that I think we also uncovered in so far in this process is, and, and I'm most guilty of it is that. US based not-for-profit. The DA has been so focused on building the globe, supporting the global community, that we haven't done some of the things that other nations, Drupal associations do internally or supporting their community.

So our connection with local Drupal associations has not been, you know, has not been where we want it to be. You know, I have joy on, on the team is, [00:38:00] has done a lot, but she's one person, right? And, and she has global responsibilities to try to build these connections. So the, you know, where I see things changing in a positive way would be that the us you know, Drupal Association changes a lot.

A lot of it would now start to become inward focused to the US or to North America, depending on, on what the, the reach is. But it would be, you know, how do we support the local gaps? How do we, well, how do we, you know, both in, I think there's a wide range of things that we could be doing and that would be dependent on what each country needs, but.

Do we host the websites that are controlled by the local groups, but then we can kind of host them on a common platform with common, you know, updated branding. Do we host you know, the, do we take off some of the back office work off of local camp organizers? So registrations, and do we build the systems and provide the systems to these camps to do that?

And then you know, so we can provide that kind of stuff. And then the, the, the, you know, a marketing camps on, you know, getting new [00:39:00] people on. When, if someone comes in they're first time contributor to d.org, are we able to connect them to local resource? You know, hey, you're, you're out of Asheville, you should go to the Asheville Triple Camp.

You know, that sort of thing. Like, we don't do that right now. Those, those are the ways I see, certainly the US not-for-profit changing. But that, that those be the same questions that other members of this international association would be asking themselves. What can this, what can this international not-for-profit provide for us in terms of infrastructure and support so that we can do, you know, a better job of focusing on, on the community that's in our, in our area.

Norah: Now, it's interesting because I soon took a call, a recent conversation with the folks over on the European side and they brought to my attention that there are some other na nation, top level domain, Drupal domains that exist and for instance, Drupal, NL and you know, so there had [00:40:00] been some thought at some point to, you know, make more like sort of regional outreach efforts, you know, and, and, and, and brand, not branding, but I would say like, organization, you know, around these sort of regions.

So, you know, I think. It. I don't know if that came up down to conversation previously at your summits, but but it would be interesting to have a world, right, where you'd have a Drupal US or a Drupal whatever other country, you know, sort of version. And it would be not only translated potentially for different languages, but, but regionally sort of speaking to that group of either users or potential clients or, or whatever as well.

So I almost think of this to some degree as tangentially being a marketing mechanism for Drupal as a whole, as well as being like sort of more cognizant of the localized needs of the market and or the users [00:41:00] and developers in that group, right?

Tim: Yeah, no, Norah, that's a great, that's a great point. And that you know, what you referenced about, like the Dutch Drupal Association has a really good website and they've started I think they've partnered with France and a couple others to try to extend it. And then exactly what you're talking about, they have a good structure. It's updated with our branding, with a new branding. Now can they do this for France?

France can translate, you know, French can translate it into, into French, you know, and then you go to Germany and so forth. And then as a marketing, definitely you can use local brands that are relevant to that community and to those sellers. And then if you're a buyer in the European Union and you're going to the French Drupal Association website and the Dutch and the German, you all look kind of the same.

There might be differences, different language, but they all kind of are consistent. And so you're, you feel like you're looking at a single product, which we are across the globe, you know, and, and this is exactly what major proprietary brands do, right? They have local, but there's a consistency that's there.[00:42:00]

So. The Dutch are already ahead on that in Europe. And part of this, it was interesting when our board was talking about this in March, Europeans were already talking about how do they organize themselves better at a regional level across Europe on initiatives like this. And so part of what that is also part of what's sparked our thinking about we need to, we need to think about this international federation, not just try to solve a, a narrow problem, but really think about how to get governance, the right governance into, into our, into into the system.

But it's exactly examples like that where it would allow us to have the y you know, Nic's YMCA reference, you know, we could have the branding that's international and the standards that are international. And then, but local application, you know, local decision about when to hold camps, how to hold camps, what's the content, what's, you know, what are the companies to highlight, et cetera, you know, all

John: that.

So something comes to mind. And I wonder like, do we [00:43:00] risk becoming more isolated in this model or, or developing silos of like, Hey, Drupal Group A is doing their Drupal and, and national Group A is doing this and Drupal National Group B is doing this and C is doing that. And like, like, you know, now it's, it's, you know, what flavor of Drupal, you know, what national flavor of Drupal are you, are you using, seeing, promoting, so on and so forth.

Tim: Yeah, no, that's a good point. That's a risk that hasn't been raised. John. That's a good, that's a, that's the first time I'm hearing that. But that, that is a good point. And I think we've been so focused on the other side of that, which is people not connected, people not doing things consistent when they could and sharing information and getting involved in governance.

But you know, like right now when my, when my board says we're gonna go in this a certain direction, they vote on, they all agree. Then we can all run like we meaning the DA and, and all our programs can run all in that same direction. And, and there's no, whether you like it or [00:44:00] not, but we're gonna be consistent at running in that direction, right?

What you bring up is the risk of that, which is under a federated model. The international can do some, but there's gonna be more local decision making and, and control basically on some of these things like branding and marketing and so forth, that could make it look not as connected or, or kind of in silos.

So, I mean, typically the way these are solved, solved in like the Red Cross example or the YMCA example, is that there's an agreement. And so there'll be an agreement between international and the local, and the local has to look at this agreement and say, yes, we agree to this. And it might have things like, you'll use the updated brand, you know, or whatever.

Like, and, and then there'll be the, you know, the, the, the need to kind of enforce that at, at certain times. So that will definitely be an aspect of it. But so the flip side is more inclusive governance, but more inclusive governance can lead to more pockets of people doing their own thing and it not always looking as consistent across, [00:45:00] across the world.

And that's, that's just kind of a trade off and where we land on that line, I, I'm not sure where we'll land, but I do think this is a better model. Like the, the, the pros of this model outweigh the cons from what I've seen now so far.

John: Yeah, and I mean, governance goes both ways, right? It's a, it's a way to, to, to lack of better words, control, control what the lower the lower organizations are doing.

But it's also a way to ensure that everybody's kind of moving in the same direction, right? And with their own kind of regional flavor of that. I, you know, I liken it to Drupal camps for example, like, Norah can speak to this, like Ned Camp and Mid Camp are two very different camps with their own flavor of doing things.

And but we, you know, we have a lot of similar, similar aspects as well. So yeah, I can definitely see what you're saying with applying that governance layer at a more global level can help kind of bring good ideas and, and common, [00:46:00] common practices across the community. Yeah, so I'm sold Tim, I'm sold on this idea and I'm wondering how many, how many months, years do you think it's going to take for us to kind of roll this, roll this change out, or begin to start seeing, you know, the the Drupal Federation you know, spring into.

Tim: Yeah, that's a, that's a a little bit of an unknown question. The, we've laid out a pretty aggressive schedule to do our evaluation. We want to know by DrupalCon Vienna, is this gonna work and do we have the details worked out? So, and, and so the board, the board will meet at DrupalCon Vienna the weekend before.

And, and then at our public meeting, we'll, if we're ready, we'll vote to say yes, move forward with this. The application process takes months and all that. If we lived into that timeframe, the you know, the fastest this would happen would be quarter one of, of 2026, which would be very fast and very [00:47:00] aggressive.

But there's another layer to this, which is we need at least three members, or two or three members to create the organization. But as I said before, we really wanna know that there's gonna eventually be 10, 12, 14, whatever the right number is across the globe, that this isn't just three or four strong associations, you know, creating this.

So that will take throughout, you know, let's say if we do launch in Q1 of 2026, then it's throughout 2026 and 2027, getting those other groups to the point where they also become members of the association. So, actually launching an international federation could happen in six to eight months. Fulfilling everything we want out of this would be 12 to 24 months.

Okay. You know, like, and that's, that's ideal case. Okay.

John: Well you heard it here first, folks. You can hold Tim to a 12 to 24 month timeline of, of success here. This isn't recorded, is it? No, not at all.

Nic: [00:48:00] So it, I mean, that's way more aggressive than I expected, but I, I guess, but before I ask my next question, I guess one thing that I haven't heard is what's the estimate of the extra, I mean, obviously there's benefits. We've been talking about those and I think it sounds like a great great thing to explore at least, right? Even if, even if the decision is we shouldn't really do this at this time, it still lays the groundwork for the future.

I I, it sounds to me like the biggest point of failure will be if you can't find those 10 to 12 future associations, right? That and Right, and like I said, that that's not the kind of thing that's like, Hey, we're not gonna do this ever. That sounds more like, Hey, we're gonna do this later. We just need to help those more.

But what, what's the estimated kind of time and money cost? Because splitting the USDA into, not the U-S-D-A-I said that many times, and the International [00:49:00] Federation into two is gonna have. Some inefficiencies, which is why you kind of need that critical mass for it to make sense. Do you, do you have an idea of what that cost is yet?

Or, or No,

Tim: no. We don't have any numbers on paper at all, even in my head. But I would acknowledge, so a couple things. One, I acknowledge that an international federation will require a lot more facilitating work and communication work than we do now. So there, you know, there, there is a little bit just because if you have 10 members and they're all voting members, they have to meet once a year and vote on your budget, that's a lot more facilitation than what we do now.

But not huge amount of costs. We don't have, what, what I see happening in the real, like realistically is we have the dral association in the US operating, we run our servers, we run our programs, we enforce our trademarks, we, we all that's operating now. This International Federation will get created, and then there'll be a process of moving assets and people at least on [00:50:00] paper over to the new association.

So in the short run, there'll be an MOU between the international association, which is governed by its members and the us which has, you know, 17, 18 team members, the, you know, all the keys, Tim Lennon, all that, you know, and there'll be an MOU that says, okay, for the next 12 months or whatever time period, the US not-for-profit will set, will provide services to the international not-for-profit.

That's, you know, in accordance with everything we do today. And that will buy us time to, to figure out how to move things over legally in the right way. And an MOU

John: is what Tim,

Tim: Memorandum of understanding. Thank you. Ah. So, yeah, no, I've been called on that. So I was on one of my webinars and I said, MIU, and they're like, what is that?

You know, it's so yeah, so there would be an, basically a legal agreement. So let's say there's a legal entity, international, the DA is still a legal agreement. There'll be boards on both, and, and we don't know what the board will look like over here, but it may similar board, maybe some of the same board members, depends how they're elected [00:51:00] and identified.

And then over 12 months or whatever time period at, at launch, the international not-for-profit will contract with the US not-for-profit, to provide all the services. And then over time, whatever schedule, it'll move officially under the not-for-profit. And at some point in the future that MOU, that agreement will go away.

And, and then probably the US not-for-profit will restructure. And back to our previous conversation, kind of think about what its future is in terms of how does it, you know, what is the role of the US-based not-for-profit going forward, if it's no longer responsible for the servers and for inter directly interfacing with the project and, and all that.

John: So very similar to a spinoff of a, of a company where it's like, hey, for this period of time you have like shared services or one's providing services to, to another, one thing that I, I wonder here is like the national organizations, right, of the basically the founding members of this, of [00:52:00] this you know, federation, right?

If they don't exist, they'll have to be created, right? So like, if you wanted to have a EU Drupal Association, right, that doesn't really exist. You'd need to create it. And same thing for, you know, south America or Asia Pacific or, you know, is there any thought or or mechanism being discussed about potentially having to do that?

So we haven't

Tim: done that, but that's been flagged as an issue. But we haven't started mapping out what that would look like. What we have done is we've, we've pulled, as I said, my teammate, joy has spent last year and this year talking to a lot of the groups around the globe, Drupal groups. So we know that we have contacts with folks from all, all over the world, not just individual contributors, but really camp organizers or event organizers for Drupal community associations.

We know which ones right now, well at least we have a running list of which ones are legally organized right now. Like, there, there, there's a legal identity. So, and [00:53:00] there's, there's actually more than I, I thought. I mean there's I don't remember off the top of my head, but there's at least 20 to 30 right now that are legally organized at the local level.

And I think, you know, so there's, they're more than I thought. And then and then we're looking at groups that aren't, that are maybe active or they meet up or they have a website, but they're not, they're not legal entity. So we will have to, if. If the decision is that there needs to be a legal entity to be a full member of the association because maybe you need a, you know, the ability to have a bank account or, you know, you need to be able to legally enter into a, into an agreement.

So if that's, if that's where we end up there, there have been thoughts that there would be this kind of associate member that's a pathway. So you could become an associate member, get right involved in the governance from day one, and then work towards getting incorporated whatever's necessary in your country or local area.

And then once you do that, you become the full member of, of the association. That, that's about as far as we've gotten in terms of, of [00:54:00] thinking about that.

Nic: Okay. I mean, that makes sense and I mean, it's so early, right? Stuff that.

Who will have final say in the creation of the International Federation? Is it, is it just the current DA board? Is, are you gonna put it up for the community? Who,

Tim: who makes

Nic: the decision?

Tim: Yeah. So legally there'll be the board, right? So from a legal perspective, the current Drupal Association board 12 voting members will decide, well, you know, if they decide they will vote to approve myself to submit an application to create an international, you know, not-for-profit under this Belgium law.

So they will the, because they're, 'cause the DA owns these assets now, you know, like controls these assets whatever they are. And the board would be the one, the, the, the, they had the responsibilities for, you know, steering the governance of these assets. So they would be the ones legally to, to vote for it.

But through this [00:55:00] process, we wanna have, obviously, we'll. We're appropriate. We'll be doing as much outreach to local community leaders and camp organizers to, and we've already sent out one, you know, we had webinars a week and a half ago where we've contacted the people we knew, try to get tell 'em what we're doing, get them involved.

So we do think there'll be, there will be, you know, engagement with the community, but specifically with the community that are involved in actively running camps and actively running a local association because they're the ones that have to, that, that have to be able to come to the table. And then lastly, I'll say like, while the official decision to apply for an international not-for-profit is based on the board, if we don't have local associations willing to, to join, who won't apply.

So local associations have, have an ultimate role in this too, in kind of the ultimate decision. We need to have at least two, but the board will set a certain number, 3, 5, 10, whatever. Like we will not submit an application until we have at least x number of associations willing to become [00:56:00] NARAL members.

And so, so that's, so obviously those folks have a say in it because if they don't sign up, then we won't be able to move forward.

Norah: Move forward. So just to kind of wrap this up here, you know, I, I feel like there's lots of next steps and you know, I hear that you're asking that, you know, or, you know, setting expectations that local associations and or local groups likely will need to be involved in some way, shape, or form. Yes. Do you anticipate having something similar to what's going on over at the, drupal CMS Marketplace channel where you're, you know, asking for folks to provide feedback within the community every week. Or, or just generally, like where can people best get involved? Yeah. With this initiative?

Tim: Yeah, that's a good question, Norah. I think the we w we do wanna mirror what's happening in the triple CMS marketplace engagement, which Tiffany Fally with Palantir has done a tremendous job [00:57:00] of work of getting broad based input on that initiative, but with a little bit of a twist.

And I think the difference is we in this initiative, we're looking for a. Local groups that come up with a consensus, opinion on ideas, and we'll work through a representative from that group. So Dutch Drupal Association would kind of hold its members about different topics and then send in a single response.

And obviously that's because ultimately we'll need groups, you know, a single, a group to make a decision to join or not to join. And so, we'll be working in that way. So we've communicated with, with with we have a list of the local leaders we're communicating out. And then in general, we will have we will post on the project page and probably create a, a Slack channel so people can stay up to on.

To to participate in the in the project. We have a working group that's smallish, that's representative of the globe with board members, two people from Europe. We're getting people from Triple South India, south [00:58:00] America, and Africa, and probably Japan to kind of represent the globe. And then we have the law, like all the association leaders is like the larger advisory council that we'll be

John: communicating with.

Tim: So for the, for the, just for the person that may not be affiliated with a local group, try to get connected to a local group and, and they should hopefully be your, your best source of information or go to our project page and and, and if we have a chance, we'll have a sign up for just getting regular updates, the Slack channel or through email or something.

Norah: I noticed you several others are on there as maintainers on the project page at the moment. Would you see anyone in particular is gonna take on those communications?

Tim: So, IMRA is, is the chair of the working group. And so he will likely be the one to kind of take point on, on kind of formal communications, but at the, we'll be running this at the staff level a lot.

So folks will be hearing from me and my, my associate Joy a lot on this. So I don't want, I don't want people to flood imre [00:59:00] with questions, you know, but he is he is like the official chair of that working group and will be kind of guiding our process on it.

Norah: Well, thank you so much for your time with answering these questions.

You know, I feel strongly that that that, that something like this has been a long time coming, you know, I feel like that there's been good work already done, like we discussed in other, other regions and you perspective. There's a recognition of like, breakdown in communication and siloing has actually happened, you know, with the existing setup.

And this is an effort to really bring those, you know, communications or groups back together to communicate more effectively. And I'm really hoping for, for, you know, great success with this. For sure. Thank you so much. Thank

Tim: you. Thank you. And thanks for having me on and giving your chance to kind of, you know, talk about this.

I know it can be a little bit of a dry subject when people are talking about governance and organizations not as, as cool as new features and so forth on [01:00:00] Drupal. But I do think it will be if, if we move down this road, it'll be transformational in how the community we're already governed well and govern.

We have governing principles that are strong already. Dr. And I think this will just take it to the next level and really lock it in for the and avoid, you know. Mishaps and governance issues by making this change. So, I'm excited about it, but in slightly nerdy way. So I appreciate the opportunity just to kind of get the word out here.

John: It'll, it'll definitely make Drupal a global, global entity and definitely bring, bring Drupal to, to the masses, I think as a, as a, a more, a more global, global open source project. So, yeah, Tim, thank you for joining us and I look forward to maybe hearing more in six months to a year.

I'll, I'll keep you posted. Thank you Nic and John

Tim: Norah,

Nic: do you have questions or feedback? You can reach out to talking Drupal on social media with the handle of talking [01:01:00] Drupal or by email with show at talking drupal do com. You can connect with our host and other listeners on the Drupal Slack in the Talking Drupal channel.

John: You can promote your Drupal community event on Talking Drupal. Learn [email protected] slash td promo

Nic: and get the Talking Drupal newsletter. To learn more about our guest host, show news, upcoming shows, and much more, you can sign up for the newsletter at talking drupal com slash newsletter.

John: Thank you patrons for supporting talking Drupal.

Your support is greatly appreciated. You can learn more about becoming a [email protected] and clicking the become a patron button in the sidebar. Alright Tim, if folks wanted to get ahold of you and talk more about the Drupal Federation or DA going Ons, how could they go about doing that?

Private simplest way

Tim: is just to shoot me an email if people still use email. Tim Doyle at association drupal org.

John: And and I'll [01:02:00] respond. Perfect. And I, and I do feel, I feel like email's gonna be one of those timeless communication methods that just people just continue to use. So that's, that's a good one.

Norah, what about you?

Norah: Yeah, you can find me as Tech Norah, T-E-K-N-O-R-A-H, on Slack, LinkedIn, Reddit, wherever you hang out, I'm there.

John: Awesome. And Norah, thank you again for joining us for the last four weeks. It has been amazing. And we look forward to having you back soon. Awesome.

Nic: Nic, what about you?

You can find me pretty much everywhere at Nics man, N-I-C-X-V-A-N,

John: and I'm John Picozzi. You can find me [email protected], on social media and drupal.org at John Picozzi, and you can find out about epam at epam.com.

Norah: If you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking.

John: Thanks a lot, everyone. Yeah, thanks. We, thanks.