Thursday, 30th August 2012DrupalBAM Branding and Marketing - Setting the 'ends' before working out the 'means'

(first published earlier today on What I Drupaled Today)

After tidying up the DrupalBAM ('Drupal Branding And Marketing') group homepage and structure last night I saw the conversation had started to flow so today, after getting my own personal chores and meetings out of the way, I caught up on the conversation.

I wasn't sure what I was going to see, sometimes in the community these sorts of discussions can easily go off-topic, run on forever and never get anything done, or not pick up at all. Luckily none of those had happened and a good discussion is getting going. This said, I saw the discussion was talking about the means and not the ends. "More developers", "grow grow grow", etc. are all ways of doing something, but you need to work out what that something is first, and to me, growing more developers is not an ends but a means resulting from the way we've done things so far. I've met many great developers who simply cannot find work because they're not in a particular supply chain and/or they don't/can't do 9-5 in an office in London. A better way is to work out at a higher level what the 'ends' are - for example "to be able to find a great drupal developer with ease", and to find means to support that, preferably from existing community efforts which we can support, grow, and bring closer to the community.

If we solely focus our means on growth and more developers then I believe we are only solving an ends which comes from companies who want to grow the amount of staff they have, and that's not what Drupal is about - we do that and we end up potentially putting a lot more strain on those who do lots to support the community and who don't get paid for doing it.

Have a read of my post "Ends not means please!" on the DrupalBAM group and please post and have your say, whatever your role in the community is do please make sure your voice is heard and tell them what you think about it all.

Till tomorrow,

Steve

tags: DrupalBAMBranding and MarketingJohn CarverDrupal PlanetPlanet Drupal