Thursday, 17th March 2016Ask the Angels: Drupal.Contractors & Drupal.Agency

Home is where the heart is

Last week I visited my mother back in Essex. It was good to see her as it was Christmas last time I visited and I only went for a day as I'd taken on a Drupal 8 project which needed a huge amount of work to get ready for when everyone returned after the holiday period. In some ways I wish I hadn't have bothered, I was told it looked more like three days work than seven and it took me a long time to get the money out of them. By the way they were demonstrating it to the client within a few minutes showing what I'd built, I presume it worked fine ;)

My mother never stops, she's always doing something. I looked over from the sofa and she was trying to fit a thread through the smallest needle hole I'd ever seen - I said to her after a few strokes I think I'd just be happy to have people wait on me all day if I ever made it to her age! I thanked her for the determination though as I see that she's passed that down to me. We seemed to talk differently this time, as if we knew there was no point in saying anything that wasn't of importance as we never know if we will have the opportunity to do so again. My mother has been ill most of the time I remember, I hope she will be around for many years to come but of course we simply don't know, I've had two friends die in the last year alone, both with young children, both for seemingly pointless reasons - one was out jogging, the other out cycling when hit by an airshow plane doing stuff it seems by all accounts it shouldn't have been doing, but that's another, still ongoing, story.

Later on I looked out of the window and saw a blackbird really up close to the door and, with the slurred speech that she has now post-stroke that upsets her because it's annoying not to be able to get the words out, my mum said "I've been talking with my angels. They say the blackbirds are grandma keeping an eye on us".

Now, I'm open-minded but skeptical when it comes to blackbirds being grandma, but who is to say one way or another? We don't really know they aren't, we just use our 'common sense' and move along with our day. Well, that's what I did, but it did make me think about angels in the business sense of the word and how they help businesses get up and running with their support. It also made me realise that I want to be closer to my mum than I am now, and with synchronicity as it is I saw a 3-bed house with the same rent as my 1-bed flat going which is literally one minute's walk away from her house. It sure would be great to go back and be of help taking her to appointments and driving around various sheltered housing schemes as she realises she needs to be somewhere with help. I wish I had a big villa in Spain we could all live in, but I don't. I did, back in my Ecademy networking days, bring her up to London for a meal at the House of Lords, that was nice. Mostly I'd just like to be with her to help where I can, I feel helpless here in Brighton.

1st Community Business BoF at DrupalCamp London

The previous weekend I had spent at City University in London where they were holding the fourth DrupalCamp London and the second I was giving a session at. I am incredibly fearful of giving sessions but I realise that is one of the major ways of communicating your message so I forced myself to apply. Last time I kind of chickened out and made a video, and I felt really bad about missing the opportunity I could've had if I'd turned up even more than turning up and playing a video, so this time I did a proper 'session'. I am sure some found it strange, but I also got great feedback, and we continued the conversation in a BoF on the Sunday.

I was incredibly encouraged that, after eight years of championing community-business in Drupal people were starting to "get it" at last! It would be great to have Community Business BoFs & sprints at every camp!

I even said to one of the organisers who mentioned they were presenting Drupal at a marketing event that next week that it was great to see them starting to work together like a Virtual Enterprise Network. When we come together as a community, we shine. 

Launching Drupal.Contractors & Drupal.Agency

In the BoF I mentioned I'd managed to break the concept down into workable chunks aligned to existing business flows - one site focused at contractors, one for agencies. This way communities could be built around existing money-making activities in order to redirect the flow inwards, so for example agencies could put money in to exhibit at non-Drupal events, contractors could find better suited projects via skills tabs, etc.

At the time I was awaiting Dries' response as to whether I could use the domain names as they have the Drupal trademark in them. I believe they are needed in order to raise projects which are community-owned, not just "Steve's Sites", so it was important I went about the correct way of asking permission, and of course ensuring that the project itself would reflect the community well.

I was surprised and shocked when I saw a tweet from one of the agencies who had gone to this show that they had set up a site utilising the Drupal trademark, but mainly pointing to these three companies. An obvious lead-collection tool which I've used many times having come from proprietary software houses many years ago. I'm glad to have left that world behind, and knowing quite how much other people and companies have put into the latest version of Drupal, whilst I appreciated the efforts of these companies I didn't like their approach and tweeted as such. A further tweet I posted with information about the ownership of the domain seems to be causing an issue at the moment, to me it seems more diversionary tactics as the site still seems to be up there, but that's another story too and one I guess I will hear about soon enough. Seems people's time should be being spent on other, more worthwhile things than trying to alter history and cover up evidence.

So I asked Dries what the deal was with using the trademark, to which he replied "as long as it's owned by the community and open to all then I have no problem with it". So, instead of chasing another most probably unsuitable paid project I decided although I didn't have much resources I'd start to build Drupal.Contractors and Drupal.Agency. I'd also applied to DrupalCon New Orleans with my two sessions and a grant application, sadly I heard last night I didn't get either of those. I understand 700 sessions submitted and they have to choose 130. I've always thought a VR conference would be good, we'll see.

Startups Come & Go

One the way to DrupalCamp London I walked past the office where I worked for a company called RemoteApps back in the dotcom days 1999ish. I was the sixth person to join and we went up to sixty before investors pulled out of all the tech stocks in the 'dotbomb' - I was worth over a million dollars on paper at one point, then it was just paper the next.

We had a brilliant product, it was the first modular web app software, modules for Content, Collaboration, and Commerce. We built the first diy.com site and the New Beetle for VW when it came out. But we couldn't scale well - started off as a consultancy, then a software house and we worked with a number of integration partners to deliver the product to end clients. It was in J2EE but at the time Java needed rewriting for every server so although portability was a great idea, it was a massive job getting it to work in each big implementation.

I did however get a good grounding in Content Management Systems, pitching and winning against Interwoven and other big players of the day. We were put in the same Gartner Quadrant as Acquia is now, we had pretty much the same product - except Java and not Open Source. In fact my boss on the way out when asked what he'd do differently next time he said he'd Open Source it. Little did I know when I was walking out the door that Dries had just released Drupal!

I promised myself at the time I'd never be in a position where I wasn't in control - I was being given mortgage advice the week before I was made redundant by my boss who knew all about it, I don't like that sort of thing, I like people being upfront.

Modular Business for Modular Software

Since that day I was made redundant back in 2001 I've managed to stay independent but today I find myself back in the position of having no money and looking at the Wonga site (it's Drupal did you know) thinking about how it could buy me that coffee which will stop this massive constant headache I've had all day due to lack of caffeine. I'm being evicted from my flat because my landlord refuses to fix the mice infestation problem so after it taking three years to get a working boiler I decided to stop paying rent until it was sorted, of course that's not happening, he just sent me eviction notice.

I started up Drupal.Contractors and Drupal.Agency and working on Drupal.Contractors for just a week has brought members but it hasn't brought revenue. Last time I tried this was drop.coop back in 2013 after I'd spend a year being the first Community-elected Director of the Drupal Association. It was a pretty interesting year but I couldn't get much done, I think it is a top-down institution trying to support a bottom-up community however all that seems to happen is the ones who pay the money get listened to. We have the opportunity to vote another board member in and voting closes today but I've not voted, I honestly do not currently see the benefits of something which is trying to do too much - I appreciate the work the DA does, but it can't do everything, and that's where I think member-owned platform cooperatives come in. Along with FairShares model where customers can invest alongside investors, founders, and workforce, provide a realistic and scalable way forward.

I truly believe we need to set up these institutions which will go to serve us, the members as a whole, not just a select few. I need capital to do it though and that's where I asked an investor. He said I need to do my lean canvasses. I can do those, if I can eat.

So I need your help. I don't want to make people pay for their profiles on the sites (am hoping pantheon will give me a community account anyway), that was a silly idea and only done out of desperation - if everyone just stares at me and says hey isn't it buit yet, it's not going to happen. I need to eat, and I don't want to borrow more, I've already invested hundreds of thousands in this and many years, now I need to know you are there supporting too.

If you are a contractor, please register on the site, if you are an agency, please register your interest. Think of it as NHS-like support - if we only let the businesses make the rules then we will end up with a very different Drupal than we have right now. The one right now offers opportunity for all, not just those who can afford it. To do this, I believe I need at least £100k/y, ten times that amount if we want to show at shows other than DrupalCamps which will be good for signing up contractors. Would be great to have drupal.agency at events around the world though, no? And I hate having to write begging blogs like this but we really have to come together now as a community and realise stuff like this costs money to make, we have a lot of catching up to do!

Are you the Angels I'm looking for? If you'd like to invest in drupal.contractor and/or drupal.agency and help make them great and the best resource on the net then please get in touch. If you have any amount you can donate to the feed Steve fund, please make payments to Stephen B. Purkiss:

Nationwide Building Society

56/57 High Street, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 1DH

Sort code: 07-44-56

Account No.: 06093285

IBAN: GB11 NAIA 0701 1606 0932 85

BIC: NAIAGB21

SWIFT Intermediary Bank: MIDLGB22

I also have PayPal at steve@purkiss.com but would prefer transfer so don't lose a percentage.

Investors please email me direct, the above is for donations only, no return apart from the fuzzy feeling you kow Steve's been fed ;)

Thank you, I hope I can keep continuing to work for the Drupal & larger Free Software community for many years to come.
tags: drupaldrupal8drupal contractorsdrupal agencyDrupal PlanetPlanet Drupal