Where do I: Get support in promoting Drupal in our country?

Hello all!

It's been a year full of surprises with Drupal. Even at every second you glance at this node, it gets more worldwide attention.

However, in our case here in the Philippines... we are slowly becoming a Joomla country.

Here's one evidence:
1) Google Trends for Joomla! in the Philippines
^-- will return a good trend for Joomla.
2) Google Trends for Drupal in the Philippines
^-- will return no result.

I'm not worried whether Drupal is preferred by developers or not. I'm worried because our developers doesn't have much to hear, see, feel and even try about Drupal, unlike how the Joomla community do it here in our country. Because I love Drupal so much, I'm a bit anxious (depressed sometimes) about it.

A list of experiences --that I hope could explain myself:

[A] A client wants a community website developed using a CMS, all he can say at the top of his lungs is the word "Joomla!". Don' worry, he did not faint. I did (trying to convince him about the benefits of Drupal. Alas, I got his consent.).

[B] I spoke in front of some of our top businessmen to pitch the goodness of open source (esp. Drupal & Plone for CMS/Enterprise CMS); after the talk they asked, "How could we make big money with it (open source)?" To provide an answer, I lured them to the concept of a service-oriented architecture. They'll eventually use it anyway.

[C] I showed demos of some of my client projects to my industry colleagues and all of them gave a big WOW with what we can come up with views, cck, og, panels and most importantly, jQuery --with not much hard-coding. Then came the time that they will sinked-in and tried Drupal for their projects. After a week or so, they revealed to me that they'll use the other CMS instead.

[D] As an alumni, I take pride in sharing my knowledge of Drupal and all the technology behind it to our younger students. For a while, they encounter no problem installing, customizing, and configuring their Drupal sites. They enjoy Drupal a lot! Realizing that their sites all look the same (they have no extensive background on templating/themeing yet), they search for the keyword "themes". Most hits that pops out are labeled "Joomla themes free download"... and you've guessed it, they too switched :(..

For some time I thought there is something wrong with me, so I stopped and assessed things that could be wrong with my approach in introducing Drupal to other people. I halted all my Drupal projects and tried the other CMSes. After a week of love-hate relationship, I ended up doing three sites in a row with Drupal and eating popcorn while watching over 5.7 GB of downloaded movies from the Drupal Dojo, Dudertown, Blip.tv and other sources. That was my only learning aid since most Drupal experts at the irc channels are asleep when we are awake due to timezone differences. I did learn a lot and applied them in my projects. However, I was not able to finish all the movies because I became entangled with theming. I never reached Forms APIs, Node APIs, and module development at that time. Thanks to my best friend named "Google" who pointed me to the right direction.

[E] Scouring for more information, I discovered and joined our local Philippines Drupal group. I met people with the same passion for Drupal. There, I met Benc and other cool Drupal lovers. We had simple meet-ups, exchange of practices and the like... nothing too messy. Many deadly storms have come yet I still stick my lips to Drupal even though Quentin Tarantino had a taste of a casual Philippine flooding.

[F] After 6 months of freelance work, 6 months since I graduated from college, 6 web sites, 6 Druplicon logo modifications, 6 Drupal wallpaper designs that I managed to create, the arrival of Drupal 6 and Dries' decision to establish Acquia... a new situation presents itself to me: Companies are literally wanting to hire me because of my average knowledge in Drupal.

How do i feel? Nervous because this is new to me, but most of all: confused. Confused of all the choices and decisions that I need to make. Should I go freelance instead of taking a chance at being employed in an international ad agency? Should I leave the country and look for greener pastures abroad given my age? How can I have time to learn deeper German or Japanese knowing that I should try to learn Drupal on my own and at my own pace? Who will be there when I fall from the mountain of Drupal's learning curve? What can I significantly contribute? And most importantly: where can I find a big hand to support our diminishing Drupal community here in our country?

I know that this is not a dramedy writing contest so I'll end this now after I plead for S.O.S from our global friends. Helppp!

--marc.robinsone caballero