Announcing Drupal.org Community Tools Leadership Team

The Drupal.org Software Working Group was chartered to provide vision and direction for Drupal.org by working with the community on Drupal.org software in a number of ways. The first duty on our list is establishing team leadership for all areas of *.Drupal.org, to establish clear decision-making processes.

In January we appointed the first team - Developer Tools Leadership Team, and started working on the next one - Community Tools Team. We worked with the community to establish the scope of Community tools and a set of roles, that would allow the leadership team to collectively set the direction/roadmap for all facets of these tools and help ensure that both DA staff and volunteer contributors have a clear set of decision-makers to talk to during feature development.

After several weeks of talking to community members, we hereby announce the following as the initial structure for the Community tools team. Note that in most cases, we chose to go the route of "blessing the do-ocracy"; that is, appointing people already doing the work to each position, in order to both ease the transition to the new leadership structure, and also to respect the contributions made by our awesome Drupal.org contributors. Where there was more than one person doing the work, we first narrowed it to people interested in accepting the responsibility, then chose based on availability.

Product Owner

Vacant. Unfortunately we were not able to find the person for this role so far. We don’t want to hold off the team appointment until we find one, therefore we appoint the team with this role being vacant. If you are interested to take this on, do let us know!

Project Manager

Jeanne Cost (jcost)

Jeanne has been working with Drupal as a PM for about 7 years as part of a Drupal development firm in Seattle. She plays multiple roles as PM, including business analyst, site builder and tester. She loves working with Drupal to help provide her clients the most value for their budget (most are non-profits). Since attending her first DrupalCon in 2013, she was looking for ways she could contribute back to the community. Not being a developer, this role seems a perfect opportunity to utilize her PM skills, and she is looking forward to working to improve the community tools on Drupal.org.

Jeanne can be reached using the Drupal.org contact form and on IRC (jcost on #drupal-infrastructure) usually in during the day hours (PST).

User Experience Lead

Dani Nordin (danigrrl)

Dani started using Drupal in around 2008. She cried her way through her first three sites, then fell in love with how much more she could do with Drupal than she ever could have with Wordpress. Since then, her main role has been as an advocate for designers in the community, as well as providing Drupal training for designers and UX professionals. She wrote a series of books for O'Reilly called "Drupal for Designers" in 2012, as well as the print edition of “Drupal for Designers" in 2012. She co-organizes the Design 4 Drupal Camp in Boston every year and was part of the Boston Ladder initiative. Part of her Master's thesis research is a study of the tools the community uses for collaboration, and how they can be improved, as well as how to get more designers and UX people into contrib.

Dani can be found on IRC (danigrrl in #drupal-contribute), if not she can also be reached through her Drupal.org contact form and is usually available on Friday from 12-5 EST, and Wednesday evenings from 7-10 EST.

Section Owner: Forums

Joann aka WorldFallz (WorldFallz)

Joann began with Drupal 5 in 2007 and is one of the most long-standing and active forum webmasters on Drupal.org. She started out strictly as a site builder and progressed to module developer and contrib maintainer over the years amassing much of her Drupal knowledge through forum participation while helping others with their questions and issues. In this role she hopes to make the forums better, and serve as a conduit for folks wishing to contribute who often don’t know where to go or how to start. For her day job she does both Drupal development and site-building.

Joann can be found on IRC (worldfallz in #drupal-contribute, #drupal, or #drupal-support), in the Drupal.org Forums, or reached through her Drupal.org contact form. Usually available on and off during the day weekdays EST.

Section Owner: Planet Drupal

David Hochhausen (dddave)

David is one of the most active Drupal.org webmasters. He is primarily taking care of various Drupal Planet related requests, service listing requests and project ownership issues. Being a site builder not primarily occupied with code-related Drupal work he saw this as a good way of giving back to the community.

David can be reached via his Drupal.org contact form. He is available on IRC (dddave in #drupalorg) mostly every day during the European morning hours but often enough also at other times.

Section Owner: User Profiles

Tatiana Ugriumova (tvn)

Tatiana works on Drupal.org full time and did various things around User Profiles during Prairie Initiative and Drupal.org D7 upgrade.

She is available during European afternoon hours in #drupal-infrastructure and #drupalorg.

Section Owner: User Dashboard

Neil Drumm (drumm)

Neil build the Dashboard during the Drupal.org redesign in 2010 and is interested in making it better. He is a maintainer of the homebox module, which powers it.

He is available in IRC, #drupal-infrastructure, #drupal-contribute, during working hours in Pacific time. Otherwise, he is watching issues and has a contact form.

Section Owner: User Groups

Scott Reynen (sreynen)

Scott is one of the 2 current groups.drupal.org maintainers. He is the main person to provide user support and leads policy discussions for the site.

He can be reached via his Drupal.org contact form, or on IRC in #drupal-groups as sreynen most weekdays between 9am and 5pm Mountain Time.

What next?

Going forward, Jeanne is the person to talk to when in doubt about how to get involved or how to proceed as a volunteer contributor to Drupal.org Community Tools. The Community Tools team will be generally available in #drupal-infrastructure and use "Needs DSWG Community Tools Team feedback" to escalate things to their attention, and "DSWG Community Tools Team priority" to see what we're currently working on. The team will also meet bi-weekly for scheduled "face time" with the community and to help push along any stuck issues.

Please join us in congratulating the second formal Drupal.org leadership team!