Starting a Drupal Community in Peru

What is it like to move from Sydney and start a Drupal community across the world in a city in Peru? We started with just two members and now we are just starting to build an ecosystem where people are getting trained and finding work in Drupal.

I moved from Sydney to Peru three years ago to work with a Christian mission. I used to work as Drupal developer in a bank in Sydney before my move and I’ve been fortunate to get to know several of you in the Sydney Drupal community.

Getting Started

As soon as I got to Peru I looked up the local Drupal group. There was an active community in the capital Lima and some other cities but not mine. I was in Peru’s second largest city - a beautiful city called Arequipa (pronounced AR-RE-KEE-PA). I posted in Peru Drupal groups to see if anyone wanted to meet up. I had a lot of encouragement from the community and more importantly there were a couple of people who wanted to meet me. The first meetup was just two of us, a local Drupal developer called Carlos Tamayo and myself.

Failures

I quickly realised that we needed to train new developers. There were no companies or organizations training new people. My primary job with the mission was to work with the Christian student movement. Through this I met lots of students and naturally some of the Comp Sci students were interested in learning Drupal. So in my spare time I began teaching one student. After a couple of months he got a part-time job and no longer had time. I started from again with another student and again in a couple of months he began a part-time course and had to drop learning Drupal. I realised that this wasn’t going to work. For both these students Drupal was something to do on the side and had little value. As a teacher, I too was learning how to teach. My mistake was I didn't inspire the passion and didn't show them the value of Drupal. They didn’t have a vision of what they could do with Drupal and they dropped Drupal as soon as some other option was available.

I had a long chat with Fernando Paredes (@develCuy) who founded the community in Peru. He lived in the capital Lima and had a lot of community building experience. We formed a plan. The training process needed to benefit me as well as help students ultimately find Drupal work. Through the mission I found some simple projects I could build with Drupal that would provide students with real experience. At the end of the course we would see if we could offer the best students Internships. I knew several Drupal employers in other cities.

Small Successes

I spoke to the director of Systems Engineering at the university and offered to teach a course in Drupal at the university. It was going to be a free course and I would volunteer my time. I wanted a small handpicked class of students who were absolutely committed. It began with a presentation at the university to about 45 interested students. I gave a quick introduction to Drupal and spoke about the value of learning Drupal. 32 students gave me their names and were interested in signing up for the class. I emailed them an exam and 15 responded. Fernando and I interviewed 12 students and we selected 8 students. 2 students had a clash in their timetable. So finally we had a class of just 6 students - which was perfect. We studied Drupal 4 hours a week for 12 weeks. With a groups of students who understood the basics were able to take on several little projects.

Students from our first class

I’m now about to do this for the third time and I’m pleased to say that we are slowly building a Drupal ecosystem. We've run a hackathon. I’ve taken groups of students to Drupal Camps which have taken place in other cities, sometimes paying for students who couldn’t afford the trip. Now several students have had the opportunity of working on commercial Drupal projects and slowly more will find work in Drupal.

Other helpful factors

Things are getting easier at the university with a change in the curriculum that includes subjects on web programming. Previously there was no hint of web programming and worse still, there were lecturers who suggested that if students wanted to study web programming they should be at an institute (like a evening college) not a university. Bizarre! Another factor is that students here are used to rote learning . They’re not used to playing, experimenting and being creative with technology. Fortunately now the culture is changing - very slowly but it’s happening.

Students at a local cafe, doing an exam to apply for a Drupal summer intensive

The Future

The most exciting development is that we’re starting on a community project that will involve lots of students. It’s a web platform for university students where they can share their experience, study notes etc online. We’re hoping that this will be used in universities across Latin America. We won a small innovation grant to get started. More about that some other time.

I’d love to hear your ideas. What could I do better? Ideas that could help us build a community here in Arequipa, Peru - especially with limited time and resources?