TD Cafe #012 - Johanna Bates & Jess Snyder

Johanna: there's a steeper learning curve and more abstraction layers of development tools required for Drupal eight and above.

Even though the upgrading in place is much better than the horrible rebuild that we all had to do between seven and eight, , you know, it does require, , you know, a, a more sophisticated development development tool set to keep it going at all. I think that there were some hard feelings among some folks in the nonprofit com community, nonprofit technology community, because that felt like a bummer and it felt like Drupal was kind of being led by the enterprise sector.

Johanna: Okay. Well, hello Jess.

Jess: Hi Johanna.

Johanna: Um. We have known each other for a very long time. Um, but I'll introduce, I'll introduce myself and you can introduce yourself. Mm-hmm. Um, I'm Johanna Bates. Um, my pronouns are they them. I'm hamper sand on drupal.org and I'm co-founder, um, and co-principal of Dev Collaborative, which is a, um.

Boutique sized agency that, um, builds Drupal and WordPress sites exclusively for nonprofit, um, organizations. And we also support Drupal and WordPress sites, um, that were built elsewhere. Um, and, um, we focus on long-term sustainability in our builds and, um, on accessibility. And, um, I started my career in 1999, um, and, uh, as a front end developer and, um, I don't write code anymore, but I started.

My formal training as a front end developer, um, at WGBH in Boston, which is public broadcasting in the year 2000. And, um, I started working with Drupal in 2004 and I started a Drupal community within the non, the, uh, nonprofit technology enterprise network or n ten.org, NTE n.org. Um, and I've been. That was a list serve that I started back in 2004 and since 2013 there have been, there's, there is a monthly call that Jess and I co-run with two other folks, um, that's sort of seeded in that nonprofit technology community, but is about Drupal for Drupal users in nonprofits.

Um, and um, I started. Organizing, uh, nonprofit summits back in, um, a nice camp. I think they were. Initially by Molly Byrne or Mafi, um, at Bed Camp prior to that. And then Molly and I did a couple at NICE Camp in New York City at the un, the United Nations, um, around 2015 ish. And then we were asked to bring it to DrupalCon, um, in 2017.

And we can talk about that in a, in a few. But, um, Jess. You're in public broadcasting. I'm, but that's not even how we met.

Jess: Well, it's, it's sort of how we met. So yes, I'm Jess and, um, I work for WETA, which is the public media station for Washington DC and in Byron's where you PBS on television. And we also have radio where we play classical music.

Um, and I have. Been doing Drupal at W-E-T-A-I-I joined WETA in 2002, but we switched to Drupal in 2007, um, and have been there ever since. Uh, I started with Drupal five, skipped six, moved to seven. Um, and now we're currently on Drupal 10, I believe, uh, for all of our sites Getting ready for the, the move to Drupal 11.

Um. If I remember correctly, we met in 2013. I had joined your listserv because I as an in-house person at a nonprofit, um, I don't have a, uh, an internal community I can lean on. I don't have senior, junior developers or other people. It's me. Um, I have, there are other people in the, the digital department with me, but I'm the only one who does.

The website code, that kind of thing. Everybody else is on the content side. Um, and so it's lonely and I had found that the listserv and it was wonderful. And I had just done the relaunch from Drupal five to Dral seven, and he reached out to me, um, and asked if I would be willing to present at Drupal Day.

Which was part of the NTC, which is the N Tens Nonprofit Technology Conference. And um, and I said, yes, it was my first presentation ever. Um, and yeah. And then I think that was the start of a beautiful friendship. You can say it that way. Yes. Um, and then you, uh, I, I continued showing up to calls and, uh, you, uh, asked me to join you as a co-moderator to the group in 2015, if I'm remembering correctly.

Um, and we've been partners in crime in this whole nonprofit Drupal space ever since. Um, and I started helping you officially with the summit. So it was, I was always in the background, but not, yes. Didn't have an official role. Um, but I became an official co-organizer, um, when the nonprofit summit returned post pandemic in, um, was that 2023 in port or two in Portland?

It was Portland.

Johanna: Oh, was that, was it 2022?

Jess: I, oh, I can't remember.

Johanna: I thought we, we have our, we have a timeline, but. It's confusing.

Jess: We do.

Johanna: Yeah.

Jess: It wasn't, it was, it was Portland Triple Con, Portland, the second one.

Johanna: Okay.

Jess: Yeah.

Johanna: Last year was, where was last year?

Jess: Last year was Atlanta.

Johanna: Oh yeah. Oh. This year. Yes.

Portland was 2024. I don't know. Anyway, it's

Jess: confusing.

Johanna: Yeah, the really, like the origin of the, so we're, we're kind of here to talk a little bit about the intersection of nonprofits and Drupal because that is a space that Jess and I have been occupying for our whole careers and Okay. The nonprofit summit and there's gonna be another one in Chicago.

Yes. Um, on March 23rd, Monday, March 23rd. Um, it's an all day event, includes a lunch, and, um, it's like, I don't know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, if you count the virtual ones. This is like the eighth nonprofit summit that I've helped co organize. Um. And the third one, I think that Jess has helped co organize and we have two other co-organizers, um, Steven Musgrave of Capelli and, um, Karen Hoax, who works at an nor org called PCRM Physicians for Committee for Responsible Medicine.

And they are, uh, co-organizing with us this year. Um, but the original. Thing that happened to me was that I was working in a Massachusetts statewide advocacy organization that worked on healthcare access back in the year 2004. And I was, um, you know, I, I was a self-taught developer and they asked me to rebuild their website and it was, you know, it was built in.

I don't even remember what, like, I think it was just built in HT ML and I, you know, I, um, had become a member of the nonprofit technology network, N 10 and, um, I, you know, had had some experience building, um, a, a content management system for public broadcasting. And so I was like, all right, let's look at open source content management systems and.

At the time there was this one called Mambo that eventually became Jula with an exclamation point at the end, and that one was in pretty good shape and that it was that versus Drupal 4.7. And I remember. Making the decision to go with Drupal because Mambo, Mambo was forking into Jula, and I was like, that looks like trouble.

And, um, it was the right decision. So, um, and, but I was really lonely. Um, I didn't have, I didn't know anybody else who was working in Drupal, and I just, I really, really do better when I can solve problems with. Other community members. So I started a listserv using n tens like listserv software for N 10 dash Drupal.

And over the years, that evolved into a community of practice or like a group with a call and notes and um, and that's what we do monthly. Um, but for a while there was enough. Sort of interest in the nonprofit sector, um, in using Drupal. And there's just a wide, like large amount of use all the way up through Drupal seven being the biggest, the biggest one.

And during those years, um, we were able to add a Drupal day that I helped co-found to. The NTC, the National Technology Conference. The Nonprofit Technology Conference. Yeah. Um, and that, um, that ran for a couple years and, and, and just, just presented at one of my dral days. Um, and then they sort of went away.

And the NTC conference is less focused on platforms now and more on, a little bit more on marketing communications and less like technical.

Jess: Yeah.

Johanna: Um. How tos And so, um, more of our focus has drifted back to Drupal cons, I would say is probably the best way to explain it, but more or less. And Jess like, tell me your thoughts on this.

I feel like the main reason that we do all this stuff is because, you know, folks in nonprofits tend to be self-taught. And or don't have a lot of resources. They don't have large departments. I mean, just your organization's. A little bit of an exception, but even then, like there, you know, you are like not, there's not a million Drupal list on your team.

Right. And, and that's a larger org. And you know, there are. Things that we do in the nonprofit sector that are just a little different from, I think the for-profit sector. I think, um, some of them are that we are a little bit behind the curve, um, on purpose, um, you know. In terms of technology, because nonprofits can't necessarily afford to sort of move fast and break things in the same way that a for-profit organization can funding cycles and funding move more slowly.

So. Building sites and iterating on them slowly over time. So building them really, really well so that they can be iterated on and enhanced in the future. Um, making sure they're as accessible as possible, but that's like an, you know, an usually an unfunded mandate, um, is really important in nonprofits and higher ed.

Um, and that's really. Drupal is fantastic at helping to make, um, websites that are accessible to, um, people with disabilities, um, and to Google and ai.

Jess: Yeah.

Johanna: Um, yeah. Go

Jess: ahead. I, um, I can't really speak to the for-profit space because I've spent my entire career in nonprofits. Um, WETA was my second job out of college.

Um, and, uh, and I've been very happy here ever since. They, they, uh, to your point about nonprofit technical staff being self-taught, um, WATA hired me back in 2002 on the basis that I would learn HTML, um. I had not had any kind of technical job previous to that. I was a receptionist administrative assistant type person at my previous, uh, job.

Um, but I, I was ready for a change. Also got kind of laid off. It's complicated. Um, is it a, is it a layoff if you're given 14 months notice? I don't know. Um, but anyway, um, I followed someone from that organization to WETA and, and, uh, they, as I said, um, I had to promise to learn HTML and I was like, yes, I can do that.

Um, and they sent me to a two day HTML class and a two day PHP class. And here I am. Um, you know, I, uh. It's, it's interesting sort of thinking back on that, um, because I don't know that that's a career path that's necessarily open anymore. I, I feel like things have moved on now and, and you're expected to come in having done a bootcamp or have a CS degree or something.

Um, but I've always thought that that sort of broad range is useful. Um. There's sort of a game when, when a bunch of nonprofit technical people get together there, there's a bit of a game we, we tend to play where we, we, uh, tell each other what, what our undergraduate degrees are in because

Johanna: Yep.

Jess: They're rarely in anything connected to computer science in any way, shape or form.

Johanna: Yeah. Why don't you reveal yours, Jess?

Jess: Mine is in medieval British history. Uh, if I remember correctly, yours is in. Religious studies,

Johanna: religious studies with a focus on, um, cults. Um,

Jess: yeah.

Johanna: But UFO cults, like UFO cults, you know, have had websites, you know, um, more recent ones. So there there's at least that crossover.

Um,

Jess: yeah, sure. So, but people are often saying things like film studies, theater studies, English literature, I mean, philosophy. Philosophy. Yeah. A lot of, lot of philosophy majors end up in tech. Um. But you know it, and I think that's good because it, at least in the nonprofit space, as somebody who is sort of the technical person, I don't spend all day just writing code.

I can't, I am a, I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. Um, you know, anybody in a nonprofit wears multiple hats unless it's like a super, super large nonprofit. Um, and having that sort of breadth of experience is, is just. And knowledge and curiosity that I think is something that comes with a liberal arts degree as well.

Um, I think it is really important and really useful and I think, um. It gets lost a little bit in the larger Drupal community where you have got like these, these like hardcore programs who are super brilliant and super smart and I could not do what they do at all. And I'm so glad that they are there and thinking about these hard problems, but I think they get a little lost in the weeds sometimes and don't necessarily, um, take that step back to remember how people actually use the CMS.

And, um, nonprofit technical people are using the CMS. We give back where we can, but for the most part, we are using it. We're using the the heck out of it. Um, and you know, to go back to something Drees has been saying in many of his latest DRIs notes, I would say that most nonprofit technical people fall neatly into that ambitious site builder category.

Um, we take the tools Drupal gives us and we stretch them to the max because we don't have the resources. We don't necessarily, um, have the funds to pay for a full-time programmer. We may have a partnership with an agency, but we always have to keep an eye on those, those budget hours. Um, and we have to sort of take the, the pieces that are out there and put them together.

And Drupal is amazing for that. Um, but it is, um, I think with the. As you were saying that the, the Drup nonprofit Drupal committee community really hit its height in Dral seven, and there's been a drop off since. I think a lot of that is due to how Dral eight, nine and 10, to a lesser extent, lost that ability to just kind of go module shopping and put things back to put, you know, create your own little jigsaw puzzle to fit your organization's needs.

Um, and, you know, watching Drupal CMS come together with recipes and everything, I feel like it's. Starting to come back, that that focus is coming back. You no longer need to be super proficient in object oriented PHP to get anything done, which it really was feeling like that was an issue, um, or a necessity.

Um, so I, I am, I'm kind of excited to see where that's headed. Um, but to sort of bring this back to the nonprofit dral side of things and the importance of things like summits, it's just so. Valuable to get all of these people in a room and talking to each other, uh, because it is lonely. As I said, I'm the only Drupal on, I, I have a team at least, which is kind of rare sometimes in nonprofits.

Uh, but I'm the only Drupal list on that team. Everybody else is a content creator of some sort. Um. And, uh, which is great 'cause that means I don't have to write content. Nobody wants me to write the content. Um, but, you know, it is lonely when I hit a wall. I don't have very many people I can talk to, um, except in these communities that I've built for myself through things like nonprofit Drupal.

So I feel like I rambled a bit, but

Johanna: Yeah. But I mean, you really touched on. Like the crux of sort of the last several years, there's definitely been a lot of, there's, there's been a loss of. Of organizations using nonprofit organizations using dral. Many of them have gone to WordPress, um, if they've chosen to stay in open source at all.

Um, and I do think that I've always believed that open source is best for nonprofits, well supported open source because the organization owns their content and their code. And that's just, I've seen so many things in my 25 years in this. In this career space, I've seen organizations on proprietary CMSs, then the company closed and they lost everything.

Um, I've seen that more than, more than a couple times. So it does happen. And I do think that, you know, if your site is small enough for Squarespace, that's great, but you know. Um, Drupal is a much more robust, much more accessible, um, content management system, um, even than WordPress. And I like WordPress for what it, you know, it does certain things well, but I've always preferred Drupal as just as a developer myself.

Um, and I do think that there have been. There's been a, a huge change between Drupal seven and Drupal eight and up, um, because people who were self-taught were more able to do things in Drupal seven and prior than they are. Um, it takes a, there's a steeper learning curve and more abstraction layers of development tools required for Drupal eight and above.

Even though the upgrading in place is much better than the horrible rebuild that we all had to do between seven and eight, um, you know, it does require, um, you know, a, a more sophisticated development development tool set to keep it going at all. And, you know. I think that there were some hard feelings among folks, some folks in the nonprofit com community, nonprofit technology community, because that felt like a bummer and it felt like Drupal was kind of being led by the enterprise sector.

Um, which it is. Like that is a real, a reality of like a, an open source project with a nonprofit behind it. Like it's, you know. It's just that's how things work.

Stephen: Yeah.

Johanna: Unfortunately in this current system, however I do, I have seen an attempt to sort of compete with WordPress. Um, obviously like Drupal, DRAL, CMS, Drupal Canvas, those are sort of attempts to do that.

Um. I do, I really would like Drupal to get back to a place where an an ambitious site builder can put together a site and maybe, you know, under the hood it's kept running by a professional developer. Um, but most other things could be built out by someone who, you know, can stay in touch with the Drupal community and understand what they're doing, but they don't have to be an object oriented PHP.

Developer or even a front end developer to do anything. So that's what I'm hoping for. It's been slow and I don't know whether Drupal's gonna really pull it off, um, because WordPress, um, has been able to move more quickly. That said, um, and I know there's a Drupal podcast, so it's safe to say, you know, I still.

Find WordPress to be spaghetti like underneath that it's hood. And if I have found that when you build out WordPress to do Drupal thing, things that Drupal does just right out of the gate, like, um, basically views, um, SQL queries, like, you know, filterable sortable lists of resources that every single organization needs.

Those can be done on WordPress, but. The more complex the content model has that point, the more brittle WordPress becomes, because it doesn't do those things natively. You need to add a bunch of plugins and they're good plugins, but you do have to add them. And then once you, once you're talking about like relating pieces of content to each other or doing a complex Salesforce integration, um, content that.

Is related to each other, not just by taxonomy, but directly like entity reference. Like WordPress cannot handle stuff like that. And I, I mean it can, but you've basically built, at that point, you've built Drupal and WordPress and some people want that. I don't understand why. 'cause I actually, um, and I'm actually have concerns about experience builder.

Is that what it's called now? Canvas? Canvas?

Jess: Yeah.

Johanna: I, I, I would like to, you know, I would like to understand it better, and when I go to DrupalCon, I plan to spend some time getting to know it better, because I don't think a, I'm going to design my own page in my CMS is, is a good model for most organizations.

Like giving them a limited set of components to play with and mix and match is, is a great. Model, and that was previously done with paragraphs. There are other ways to do that, but giving them like an open canvas, like a, a whole, you know, Squarespace experience, right, where they can like design in the browser, that is not ha you know, that's great if, if you're trying to mimic a Squarespace experience for somebody who doesn't have a website and needs to build one.

But if you're stewarding a, um, a website in an organization and you're trying to support users to enter content within certain parameters correctly, accessibly and enforce standards and consistency. In visual content design and tone and length of titles and all those things, then Drupal is a million times better.

Jess: Yeah, I mean, I can't really speak to the Drupal versus WordPress because I've spent the bulk of my web development career in Drupal. Um, prior to that it was a CMS called zeriah, which I'm pretty sure is dead now. Um, but 'cause that, that, that is the lifecycle of an open source project sometimes, um. But I, I, I, I share some of your concerns about Triple Canvas, and I am going to be watching it carefully.

I was a, a little distressed by some of what I saw last year at Triple Con, um, as somebody who builds sites that content editors will then use. For the most part, I do very little content updating myself. I build it and I set it free. Um, I spent a lot of time building guardrails Yeah. And ensuring that mm-hmm.

My content editors, who often have the best of intentions, can't do things that they should not be able to do. And this, I mean, this even goes beyond just like having access to specific content types. This goes to, I don't want them to decide that their thing is super important, so their headline should be in 40 point red, bold letters, because that does not match the rest of our site.

I don't want them to decide that they are special, special people and their page should not have the main donate button on it. Which is a discussion I've had with people here in this organization. Um, because they, they felt like their content was being, it was being dis, the button was distracting from, from their, their own message.

And it's like, no, you, there are certain aspects of the site that are global by design and should not be overwritten because you think you have a better idea. Um, and. I do worry a little bit about some of the things. Yeah. As I said, some things I saw last year. Mm-hmm. I don't want my content editors thinking they can paste in JavaScript.

I just, I don't want them to do that. I don't trust them to be able to do that. I don't trust them to know what they're doing when they do that, and that just feels like such a huge security vulnerability to me. I'm sure that folks have thought, like, as I said, the Dral Canvas folks super smart. I'm sure they're already thinking about these things, but that was sort of my initial reaction to this idea of putting React components in.

What was then Experience builder. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I just was like, I don't, I've been spending my entire career trying to get away from doing that.

Johanna: Yeah.

Jess: Yeah. Um,

Johanna: yeah.

Jess: So, and this gets back to, um, making sure that, that the needs of the, the end users of this who could be mm-hmm. Incredibly sophisticated because just because we're a nonprofit and our budgets are small, does not mean our needs are small.

Um, you know, right. That, that we are. Heard and our needs are being taken into consideration. Yeah. As, as we're putting together these tools.

Johanna: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting because I do think, okay, the one thing I'll say is that what's nice about Drupal is, is that it's modular and it was designed that way, um, from the get go.

And that means that, you know, we don't have to use. Canvas Right. Slash experience builder if it doesn't suit our organizational needs. Um, really I do feel really strongly that I, I want Drupal to continue to be able to be the kind of content management system that lets people focus on the content and not, not the, the website.

Um. And it's in mechanics, like the, you know what's so amazing about Drupal to me is that, you know, you can say, okay, you know, all of these headers are gonna look similar. You have a couple options for a button, you've got a co, you know, you've got five options for. Photo layouts and captions, right? Um, that you can choose or not choose.

And you've got an embedded couple kinds of embedded video and that you can put in here. Um, there's a, you know, a nice call out that, you know, for a pull quote that you, you have, you can use, but you know, really like your job is the content and like. It's really important that when people are trying to consume your content, that it's not only accessible in terms of, you know, screen readers for people with low vision or who are blind, um, people who can't use a mouse, um, who are maybe tapping around the screen.

All of those kind of accessibility things. But also there are people who need content to not be moving. When you a page loads, there're like, because they have cognitive, um, differences or, um, you know. Other kinds of issues where it makes them sick to have content be moving without their, without them initiating it.

Right? So that's another kind of accessibility. And then there's sort of like the reading level of the folks who you're trying to, to reach with your content. And there's also just the voice and tone and the brand, like those should all look consistent, especially in this time of. AI nonsense. You want the front end of your website to be consistent and tr look trustworthy and not sound like it's been written by ai, not look like it's been generated by ai.

You want it to look authentic. And those are human crafted decisions that help make that happen. Um, all of our triple sites. Ship with, um, this, uh, module called editorially, which is maintained by, um, I think one of the co maintainers of it comes to our call, our end 10, call Jess. Um, uh, but I think it's out of.

Now I can't. Princeton. I think originally it was, um, a, a module that came outta Princeton, but it helps content editors make sure that they're using headers in the right order and make sure they're putting alt text on inline images and, you know, all of those things. It can be customized Yeah. But to, to help editors do their work and

Jess: as I said, guardrails.

Johanna: Guardrails. Yeah. And sometimes you don't want a giant body field that can, you can throw a JavaScript into as well as words, as well as video, as well as audio, as well as like an animated gif, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, although like, shout out to animated gifs, you know, like that was one technology that came back.

Jess: Yes.

Johanna: Or, and or just never went away that I'm ha you know, I'm like, thanks. Like that's, those, those are usually funny. And, um, I appreciate that. Um. You know, um, JavaScript was bad and then it came back. I, you know, I have mixed feelings about that one, but, uh, animated gifs, you know, that's, thanks. Yeah. But yeah, you don't, you might not want an animated gif and with papyrus font under it, Jess, on, um, your donate page.

Um, and someone could do that if you don't have guardrails in place. We've seen it all.

Jess: I had a content editor ask me seriously if, uh, he could use the marquee tag.

Johanna: Yeah.

Jess: I was like, no. And to be fair, this was even before it got deprecated. But still, I was like, no,

Johanna: what a, what a tragedy. That that tag got deprecated.

Yeah.

Jess: Yeah.

Johanna: Quite a tragedy.

Jess: Yes. But he thought it, he thought it would add that special something to his page and I was just like,

Johanna: I mean, yeah. Yeah. Um, so, um, okay, well now that we've sounded like curmudgeons for a while, maybe we should talk a little bit about our summit. Um, so. The, the nonprofit summit. Um, yeah, I, I noted that it had roots in bad camp, um, where it was sort of bootstrapped originally.

But Jess, you also noted that it actually also grew out of birds, of feather gatherings. Yes.

Jess: Yeah. I, I think, um, you know, as a lot of community things, do you, first, you, you see if anybody shows up to a birds of a feather, um, and, and you kind of go from there, um, I know. I was attending Birds of a Feather Sessions at DrupalCon long before the summit started.

Um, and again, it was this, it was a place to find, find my people, my other nonprofit folks and some of the folks I've met there are in. And so of those very, very early buffs, we're talking like 20 12, 13, 14, um, are still very good friends of mine within the Drupal community. Um. Like I, I met one of our summit co organizers at a Drupal nonprofit BI think back in 2014, I think.

Johanna: Yep.

Jess: Yeah. So, um, so yeah, I think that, that those are, are incredibly valuable ways of drawing the community together and yeah, I think they helped show the viability for a summit, which is of course, a much larger endeavor than just gimme a room and we'll talk. Yes. I would say that the nonprofit summit still, you can definitely see its roots in the birds of other sessions.

Johanna: Oh yeah.

Jess: You know, we've attended, um, and all the ones I've attended and even, even before I started helping to organize, you know, they, they lend themselves to, um, breakout uh, discussions where people just gather around a table and talk about a specific topic within the greater nonprofit Drupal.

Johanna: Yeah. Um.

Our goal is to, is not to torture you in the summit with boring, um, boring talking heads, but to get folks comfortably talking around tables, not in a high stress way about. What they're seeing, what they're worried about, what they're struggling with, what successes they've had, and really just get to know folks over a day.

And, um, we keep, we in the, in the beginning of the day, we have, we, what we call a fireside chat. And we only call it that because I, we put up a fake YouTube fire because why not? And, um. That is sort of like a broader theme, um, that we bring. We're probably gonna be talking about Drupal CMS and, um, you know, Drupal Canvas and recipes and sort of the evolution of Drupal.

And sometimes there are conversations between the Drupal people who work on the Drupal project directly and, um, the nonprofit folks in staff, folks in the room,

Jess: right?

Johanna: Um, yeah.

Jess: Yeah, because we, we think it's really important, don't we? That, um. Because people in nonprofits do tend to be isolated. We don't always, we're not always a hundred percent on top of what's going on in the larger global project.

Yeah. So we, we see the nonprofit summit as a really good way of, of, of, um, bringing that content directly to the nonprofit folk. Um, especially since it's at the beginning of the conference. Because that, um, gives everybody a really good grounding on what they're going to experience over the next few days.

Yeah. And, um, our format, because there is such an emphasis on meeting everybody else who's in the room, allows people to make those connections again on that very first day before the primary, the main conference starts, and now you've got Drupal friends. Throughout, you know, so when you go into that big exhibit hall and you're looking for someplace to sit down to eat your lunch, you recognize somebody and you can sit down next to them and you can continue the conversation.

Yeah. Um, and that'd be introduced to the people that they are sitting with. And, and it just helps grow that, that community even further. And I feel like that is just such a valuable part of any conference.

Johanna: Yeah. I've also seen people. Um, at these summits and in this sort of nonprofit Drupal community work over, over many years, not only form friendships, but like also work together, partner on projects, move to in and out of each other's organizations.

Um, it can be a way. To make career connections as well as social connections. So, um, that's how we really designed the day to be as friendly as possible. Um, we do have some lovely sponsors who sponsor the day, but. There, the sponsorship content is kept to some really kind of corralled areas during the day, so that, um, it's really a community driven, community focused event and not a sales pitch, um, shark tank situation.

Um, and yeah, um, I think that this year, um, yeah, we, I guess the first official. Um, nonprofit Summit, um, was in Baltimore in 2017. Um, and then I did it in Nashville. That was before you, Jess, and then Seattle. And then, um, in 2019, and then there was some virtual time in 2020 in 2021, and then we brought it back.

I don't know. I, I think it was 2024. Ja.

Jess: I think, I think you're right because I did not, the first in person was Portland 2022 and I did not attend that one.

Johanna: Yeah. I didn't

Jess: either. Uh, because nonprofits have a, a lengthy budget cycle and, um, I was not feeling confident enough to travel in time to get my travel request in

Johanna: Yes.

Jess: The budgety season things. Yeah. Um, but I, you know, I, I did attend in 2023 in Pittsburgh and I remember, um. Talking the ear off of a couple of people in the Dral Association about how upset I was and disappointed that there was no nonprofit summit. Um, thanks. Thanks Jess. Yes. Um, and I continued that campaign.

Um, I. At Drupal GovCon, which, um, disclaimer, I'm an organizer for Drupal GovCon, but, um, there's someone from the Drupal Association was there and I had talked his ear off as well. Um, and uh, we, we got the nonprofit summit back then in 2024. Yeah. And Portland. Yes.

Johanna: Yep. And so, and then we did it last year in Atlanta.

And, but it was at the end of the conference. At least one of those times.

Jess: The first one, it was at the beginning. Oh yeah, it was at the end of the conference that, that first time in of 22.

Johanna: Yeah. And then we had to put it at the beginning of the conference. Right.

Jess: Um, which actually for 2024, that actually worked well.

Yeah. That it was at the end very specifically because that was the year that DRIs sort of announced star shot, which became Drupal CMS. Um, and uh, we were able, with our, our liaison to the Drupal Association, we were able to get, um. Folks who were working on it to come and talk to us at the nonprofit summit specifically about what the impact it might have for us and for them to hear from us what we would hope to see from it.

And I thought that was really, really good. Yeah. That said, I prefer having it at the beginning of the conversation. That kind of an announcement doesn't happen very often.

Johanna: No, no. That was a great like impromptu like user, um, maker conversation session that we had in the middle of the summit that just like, was serendipitous, like, yes.

So many things that happen at Dral Con. Um, that's what's so nice about. Conferences that we missed when we couldn't have them for a brief bit there is that there's a lot of serendipity and opportunity to just like, have conversations and meet people in, in hallways and do all that stuff. Um, but yeah, so our, um, yeah, so the Monday of DrupalCon is the Summit Day and there's other summits, um.

But the nonprofit summit will be on that day. It's, again, it's a whole day. There's a lunch included. And, um,

Jess: there will, and if you're, and if you are a nonprofit staff person, uh, your ticket to the summit is free with your DrupalCon ticket.

Johanna: Yes.

Jess: That's really, really cool. Thank, thank you. Drupal Association.

Johanna: Thank you. Drupal Association. Yeah. If you are, um, an agency person like I am now. Um, you have to pay for the summit ticket, but that, um, helps subsidize, um, nonprofit staffers not having to pay for their summit ticket. So thank you. Um, if you do attend and there will be more details coming out, um, this, this podcast that we're recording right now is, it is December.

And, um, so we're talking to you from the past, um, very shortly. The, um, in January, um, more details. January into February. More details of of the summit are gonna be released. We're still working on it. Um, and there will be another episode of, um, of TD Cafe and, uh, that will. Have our other co co-organizers talking about what is actually gonna happen at the summit.

Um, Karen and Steven Musgrave. Karen Harks, and Steven Musgrave. Yes. So, um, we'll kind of probably start to wrap this up and leave this here, I guess. Jess. Well,

Jess: Johanna, if somebody wants to get more involved in the nonprofit Drupal space, where should they go?

Johanna: Oh my gosh, that's such a good question. Um, okay, so yeah, Jess, well, first of all, um, in the show notes, there's a link to the N 10, um, Drupal community, um, that is free to sign up for and it has, um, what worked fine as a listserv and less fine as a, as a Salesforce.

Email list, an email list that you can sign up for, which is really quiet. But, um, we do have monthly calls that you can join for free. Um, and you can learn more about them on n ten.org and t n.org. Link on the show notes. And also on in Drupal Slack, there's a nonprofits channel. Um, it's just nonprofits as nonprofits.

Mm-hmm. Um, and that is more where folks chat between, um, calls and, um, I think that mostly covers where we are.

Jess: We do also have a community page on drupal.org.

Johanna: Oh,

Jess: yes. Um, it, it's drupal.org/community/nonprofit. Drupal. Um. And that's also where we publicize that monthly call. Um, not much else happens there, but yes, we are, we're grateful to have, have that presence on drupal.org.

Um,

Johanna: yeah.

Jess: But yeah,

Johanna: and the monthly call is the third Thursday of every month, but we take, we skip December and August,

Jess: right. Uh, December because a lot of us work in nonprofits and that tends to be a very busy time for us in terms of fundraising and August because it's summer. Um. But, but yeah. Um, I would say just, you should go

Johanna: raise some funds now.

You

Jess: better go raise funds. I should, I should go raise some money. Um, but I, I would say we are most active in Dral Slack in that nonprofits channel. That, that's where you can find us regularly. Um, you can find me, you can find Johanna, you can find the rest of our, our, our wonderful bunch there. Um, and you should consider joining our monthly call.

It's basically this. Honestly, but with more people. Yeah.

Johanna: Yeah. We just have a rolling agenda where folks bring something, they wanna talk about something they're struggling with, or if they just want like a social break with other Drupal Drupal working in nonprofits, we just have an hour zoom call.

Jess: Yep.

Johanna: And it's pretty, pretty mellow. Um, sometimes people vent about, um, things that happen in Dral because open source software. Can have things you wanna vent about, um, in them, just like all software. Yep.

So I'm gonna, um, I guess we're gonna sign off so that, um, so Jess can raise money and, and so that

Jess: support your local public media station.

Johanna: Yes. Do support your local now more than ever. Yes. Now more than ever. Um, the more you know, that's a different thing.

Jess: Okay. That is a different thing.

Johanna: Okay. Um, well thanks for listening everyone.

And, um. Keep, keep drooping and take care.

Jess: Yep. Lovely chatting with you, Johanna.

Johanna: Yeah, as always, Jess. Bye

Jess: bye-bye.