Things I wish I knew when I was a student
Why?
Needed site for non-profit
People actually use your code!
Interesting IRC conversations!
Committers/month: '00–'10
Source: knaddison.com/drupal/contributors-drupal-org-cvs-2000
I joined between points 1 and 2 (Drupal 5 in beta, about to be released). Point 2: peak of Drupal 5 module development taking off. Point 3: Drupal 6 released. Point 4: Drupal 6 development taking off.
Drupal usage stats: '08–'11
Source: wizzlern.nl/drupal/when-will-drupal-7-beat-drupal-6
Drupal 6 had an optional "update statistics" module. You had to manually install it. Drupal 7 included it. So: finally fairly accurate usage statistics!
All of this to show that even the smallest projects can grow extremely big. It was originally something that a student (Dries, above, in Antwerp, Belgium!) started for dorm mates to discuss which parties to go to and for how many people to get pizza.
⬇
Drupal grew from a tiny funky hobby project to powering 2 to 3 percent of the web. Now it's powering whitehouse.gov, Harvard, NASA, Tesla and yes, the King of Belgium :)
Today's contributor is tomorrow's expert
Many people grew or even built their careers on Drupal! Because those hundreds of thousands of sites of course need to be built, maintained and supported. Plus, lessons are learned that must be applied to the next Drupal version.
OSS = hiring strategy
Companies that are known to do this intentionally include GitHub, Facebook, Google and many more. In Belgium: not so much.
OSS contributions = resumé
Your GitHub profile overall (pull requests, forks), plus of course contributions to open source projects started/maintained by a company.
Better job thanks to OSS
Contributing to OSS, whether it's through code or peer reviews, constructive discussions or writing tests to make problems easier to reproduce… it all adds up to very valuable experience. The sort of experience you will need in your job anyway.
⬇
⬇
⬇
I started studying in 2006, and graduated in 2011. Some of these things I learned along the way — outside of the classroom. Others I only learned later. I was thoroughly frightened of math, worked hard, and managed to pass them.
Konstantin Käfer and IDrupalCon Barcelona, Sep 2007
This is me, at that very first DrupalCon. My first time abroad on my own. My first time flying. Sharing a room with a guy I had only ever talked to via IRC! But other people seemed to know him, so I took the risk. I had a superb time at DrupalCon!
Probably the only photo with a barefooted ZuckFacebook, Dec 2011
My involvement in the Drupal community plus my impatience led to me blogging about how to make Drupal pages load faster. I did my bachelor thesis about integrating Drupal with CDNs. And then I did my master thesis about data mining applied on web performance data, to automatically pinpoint root causes, allowing developers to just focus on optimizing.
12 DrupalConsMade friends across the world!
I first took a risk — I went to DrupalCon Barcelona without really knowing what to expect. About 400 people there, had a great time. Paid my own way. Also went to DC Szeged paying for it myself. Then the DC in DC was the first one to have scholarships for students. My first time in the United States!
Drupal 8 code sprintDecember 2014
This is me working. Yes, working. People in deep concentration fixing bugs at Drupal code sprints wearing bunny hats (bugs bunnies!), that's OSS too :) 🐰
Spoke in front of 800 people 😱DrupalCon Barcelona, Sep 2015
I used to be afraid to talk in front of more than 2 people. Presenting in front of a classroom was hell. Slowly I gained the confidence to stand before people at a DrupalCon. First consciously to get out of my comfort zone. Then for my job — first hesitantly, but now with ease. I still can't believe it.
OSS can bring ✈️🏖🌅🌎🎉🍺
OSS is about more than just software. It's about seeing a bit of the world, about experiencing other cultures, about learning how 🇺🇸 tend to hug faster than 🇪🇺 and how varied hobbies and backgrounds can be. Sometimes you have fun over beers, other times over wonderful vegan food.
Thanks to
VCS: topical commits
peer review
consequences of features/tech debt/adoption/…
pros and cons of freelancing
understand how business works
…
no more 💩 summer jobs!
At Acquia, I work in the Office of the CTO. This means I work as one of several "right hands" of the CTO — which is that same guy you saw earlier, Dries Buytaert, in his dorm room, where he started Drupal. I work full time on the open source project. When Drupal grows, Acquia grows. So Acquia is one of the biggest sponsors of the Drupal project. But there are many, many more companies that contribute back, and even more individuals. Drupal 8 was built by over 3000 individuals! That puts it in the same league as the Linux kernel — it's one of the biggest open source projects in existence!
These are some of the companies that rely on Acquia for their web experience. What Acquia does, is offer rock-solid hosting plus around-the-clock support. We host mission-critical Drupal-based sites. We guarantee success: that your webshop never goes offline, that your real-time information boards are always online, and so on. We are proactive: we work to prevent problems you may encounter. And the pain points that we see multiple times, those we fix in Drupal itself: that information helps inform what improvements we should make to the next version of Drupal.
😄 + 💰
For me, I've gotten satisfaction (code that is actually used), happiness (great experiences, making new friends) and a great alternative to summer jobs out of contributing to OSS. Later, that resulted in a remote Drupal job, allowing me to work from Belgium with awesome colleagues spread 9 timezones apart. A job that is paid much better than most programming jobs in Belgium.
Contribute to OSS for 😄 or 💰
So… find a cause you’re passionate about, and contribute — good things will come.
