On a sunny Amsterdam morning, we catch Morten (Tag1 Consulting, Geek Röyale) as he speeds through DrupalCon’s RAI Convention Center on an urgent Viking mission. We waylay him long enough for this brief, Danish-accented, rapid-fire chit-chat.

MORTEN: I am Morten, also known as MortenDK.

RONNIE RAY: You gave a talk this morning?

MORTEN: Yes, I gave a talk about the Drupal 8 Twig project, which is the new theming layer for Drupal. And I gave a demo on all the new and exciting things we have in it.

So that was really good to show off from a front-ender’s perspective everything that was done over the last couple of years and how the new system is going to work in Drupal 8. It was a real gas to finally really show it off. People could see we’re not just lying, but it’s actually real.

RR: So, can I ask you, what are you reading now?

MORTEN: What?

RR: Any books, any magazines?

MORTEN: Ah – oh – uh – (bleep) – what’s the name of it? I actually have it on an audio file, it’s a fantasy story about... uh.. a lot of blood, a lot of personal vendettas. Good clean fun. But actually I haven’t had the time to read for a long time because I’ve been doing so much work on the Drupal project and I’ve been moving. Also, I took up my old hobby of painting miniatures again, just to geek out.

I’m a metal-head so pretty much anything... been into a lot of Opeth, a Swedish metal band – kind of a grown man’s metal. (Indecipherable.)

RR: Do you follow anyone on Twitter or FaceBook?

MORTEN: A couple, but normally not. Interviews with musicians are not always the most interesting thing, it’s the same thing as interviews with sports people, “So how did it go today?” “We played really hard!” “On the new album, we’re going to really show off.” So that’s kind of like... a couple of people... there’s a Swedish band called Arch Enemy I’ve been following closely.

RR: What’s the most exciting thing about Drupal 8 for you?

MORTEN: It is the front-end, the Twig system and the templates, and the way we have shifted focus in the front-end completely around, from being an afterthought to a whole new system that is built for front-enders instead of built by back-enders to front-enders. It’s kind of, we’ve taken control over our own destiny, and that I think is going to be the killer app for Drupal 8.

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