In this installment, join us for our talk with prolific contributor Matthew Saunders. Currently at Pfizer, Matthew shares his journey into technology through the Arts, where he discovered his passion for technology after becoming a Webmaster for an experimental dance company in 1995. With over 15 years of continuous involvement in the Drupal Community, a former board member of the Drupal Association, and current long-time organizer and contributor to Drupalcamp Colorado, we hope you will enjoy this trip down memory lane.

As part of our 20 years of Drupal series, Tag1 Consulting's Managing Director, Michael Meyers, interviews leaders from the Drupal Community who have been instrumental in creating one of the largest open-source communities and one of the most popular Content Management Systems that powers over 3% of the Internet.

[00:00:04] Michael Meyers: We're celebrating over 20 Years of Drupal with an interview series featuring community leaders that have been instrumental in creating one of the largest open-source communities and one of the most popular content management systems that powers 3% of the internet. Our goal is to give you some insight into how to run and grow an open-source community and how there are opportunities for everybody to contribute.

[00:00:41] Michael Meyers: Tag1 builds large scale applications for Global 500s and leading organizations in every sector using a variety of open source technologies. And we really pride ourselves on our open source contributions. We're the number two all-time contributor to Drupal We created Goose, which is the most scalable open source load testing framework.

[00:01:16] Michael Meyers: And please, do so. I am super excited to have Matthew Saunders on the show today. You guys have all heard of the 10x developer. While even more rare is the 10x business leader. And I can tell you firsthand from working with Matthew around 15 years ago, that he is a force to be reckoned with.

[00:01:50] Michael Meyers: He's run working groups to organize and run conferences. He's also been a board member of the Drupal Association, which I'm really excited to talk about because that's a pretty rare and unique thing. Professionally, he's worked in pretty much every capacity you can. co-founders, COO, CTO, VP of Project Management and more.

[00:02:23] Michael Meyers: So really we have a lot to talk about. Matthew, it's so great to see you. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:02:36] Michael Meyers: Awesome. So I thought we'd go way back and talk about first like how you got into technology. Did you always want to be in technology?

[00:02:49] Matthew Saunders: Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm an accidental technologist. I fell into it, in, purely by chance. If you go way, way back, I played around with with computers, like lot of people, back in the eighties did, I built a Sinclair ZX 80 at one point.

[00:03:26] Matthew Saunders: When I completed high school I felt like I needed to spend a little bit of time before I went off to university. And so I, I did a vocational art program and I worked in a coffee shop as a barista. And during that period of time I figured out that that I was going to go to school to do fine arts and theater.

[00:04:07] Matthew Saunders: They were in their late thirties, early forties .

[00:04:11] Matthew Saunders: They're, they were ancient. They were so old. But what I saw was guys that were getting really worn out. And I realized after talking to some of the older ones particularly that it's not uncommon for Technicians in theater to literally be held together by the work that they do.

[00:04:54] Matthew Saunders: This is back in 1995. What the heck is a webmaster? You couldn't Google webmaster because Google didn't exist. But I was on this little this little, board called Lambda Mu, and I had friends there who I knew something about the web, and asked them questions and found myself in a situation where I was the webmaster for this experimental dance company back when there were less than 10,000 websites on the internet.

[00:05:40] Matthew Saunders: I'm Canadian. And they set up live. High speed video links between five dance companies and five, five different dance studios with five different audiences and produced a piece of work in real time. And I nearly fell over. I couldn't I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

[00:06:21] Matthew Saunders: And basically they gave me six weeks to figure out what I was gonna study and what I was gonna do. And that turned into. A series of technology-based projects that that integrated theater it integrated software development networks.

[00:06:56] Matthew Saunders: I worked with Visit Virginia developing the first database driven Database driven site for tourists. Where you could type in when you, you were gonna start start your visit in Virginia, when it was gonna end what city you're gonna start in, what city you wanted to end in, and you'd hit a button and it would oh.

[00:07:53] Matthew Saunders: Which you could use like a little book and it would take you to the places that you wanted to go. Anyway all of that led [00:08:00] me down a road where I ultimately got offered a job in Colorado to lead up the technology practice at a nonprofit that built software for other nonprofits and state arts agencies and state agencies of different kinds.

[00:08:22] Matthew Saunders: So it was accidental.

[00:08:29] Michael Meyers: That's insane that that's such a cool story. And that database you talked about, I back then, like you didn't have the ability, like everything was static, simple html sites, you typically didn't enter in data. So not only were people didn't know what a triptic was, but damn, like way, way ahead of things.

[00:08:46] Michael Meyers: And AAA side note, big longtime user, of Drupal. So become full circle. So then I, I assume that's when you ended up at Ping Vision. And is Ping Vision where you discovered Drupal Or, or like how did, how. [00:09:00]

[00:09:11] Matthew Saunders: Web 2.0, everybody was talking about Web 2.0. And and my boss at the time sent me off to take part in a think tank in Vancouver, British Columbia. And that think tank really, it had all kinds of thought leaders ranging from people in publishing to people who who were in the hard sciences to, to people who were working in open source all over the place.

[00:09:57] Matthew Saunders: I never, that's something I never need to do again because it's been done for me. And that turned into a series of workshops. So I actually even have a little certificate from Bright for a theming workshop that I did with them in Vancouver a few months later. And that was way back in, 4.5 0.1, 4.5 0.2, something like that.

[00:10:39] Matthew Saunders: And I came to the conclusion, no I wanna do something different. And Ping Vision was a vendor of West staff at the time doing some light Drupal work for the nonprofit. And it just so happened that they were look looking for somebody who could help manage their project management and work and also do some of their operations.

[00:11:02] Michael Meyers: Wow. That's crazy. Do you still have that theming certificate? Please tell me, yes.

[00:11:07] Michael Meyers: Oh my God. I was introduced to Drupal by Boris Mann in Yeah. Van. That's such a small world. That's crazy.

[00:11:15] Matthew Saunders: It is online somewhere. I'm pretty sure that I posted on Twitter or Facebook or something like that. I'll dig it up. I'll dig it up and send you over a link. It's pretty funny.

[00:11:25] Michael Meyers: wild, especially where you are today. , I, I I wanna transition a bit, but cause I wanna keep talking about the professional stuff and but since we're at the origin here of your connection with Drupal you have gotten really engaged in the community

[00:11:39] Michael Meyers: And so I wanna talk a little bit about that. Do you remember when you went from, I discovered Drupal to, the first time that you got engaged in the community, and do you remember like an in, what that was or what capacity,

[00:12:03] Matthew Saunders: And and I stuck around after the interview. Felt like such a dork. I was in a suit. Everybody else was in jeans and t-shirts, right? But I sat around the table with with with a bunch of bunch of other guys eating pizza and and enjoying each other's company and talking about things that we're working on.

[00:12:35] Matthew Saunders: It was small. It was only about 10 people. It was more of a glorified meetup than anything. But the next one after that was was at, one of the technical schools in Metro Denver, where we rented a rented a room actually we might have even gotten for free.

[00:13:09] Matthew Saunders: So I was right in, at very beginning of planning that camp and being involved in that camp.

[00:13:35] Michael Meyers: The food was great, the speakers it was just on every level. It was fantastic. And I'm wondering, there are a lot of people out

[00:13:52] Michael Meyers: What do you think the secret to your success was? And, do you have any advice that you would give to, would be [00:14:00] organizers?

[00:14:12] Matthew Saunders: Lots and lots of young energy, right? And lots of people getting super excited about, about Drupal as potentially as being a career. And as we got closer and closer to DrupalCon in Denver, and I was one of the, one of the organizing committee members on that before it was taken over by professional organizers, which by the way was a very smart thing for them to do because everybody after organizing DrupalCons would be pretty much burned out cuz it became a full, nearly a full-time second job.

[00:15:08] Matthew Saunders: Having that extra energy going on and having really good supporting organizations that we worked for who wanted wanted the camp to, to do well as well. And lucked out. In terms of venue. We've got a great venue right close to downtown Denver that we use pretty much every year now.

[00:15:43] Matthew Saunders: And we're one of the first camps that ever that ever started. The first one was in 2007.

[00:16:02] Michael Meyers: Fast forward a little bit. You decided to get involved in the Drupal Association. You mentioned how they played a big role in taking over the DrupalCons and bringing in, professional help. I'm curious what inspired you to become a board member? How did you one day say, I wanna get more engaged in that aspect of the community?

[00:16:24] Michael Meyers: Oh, Lord, there's a lot. I don't even, no.

[00:16:54] Matthew Saunders: Most of the people who were organizing it was from our, were from our team. And it was, you [00:17:00] actually at one point that said, Hey, Matthew, they run elections for this thing, right? And you'd be pretty good at doing this, like given the organization stuff that you do around the camp and what I've seen in terms of Drupal Con and the stuff that that you're doing for us I think that you should, I think that you should run, and I laughed at you at the time.

[00:17:22] Matthew Saunders: But later on I was working for an agency called AT and Design Group. And during that period of time that sort of seed that you put into my head it grew at that point. And and I ran because I felt there was a need for folks out in the in the Drupal community to see that That people who are generally non coders can be just as active and just as committed and just as effective as coders.

[00:18:09] Matthew Saunders: And But it felt like there was this sort of gap and there, and I felt like there needed to be, there needed to be somebody who could act as a role model and help other people out there who felt like maybe they were maybe they were considered as a second class citizens within the community that, no, that's not the case.

[00:18:46] Matthew Saunders: Because my experience in other nonprofit organizations is when you hit one year. That's when you're just starting to understand what it, what the heck you're doing and when you start to be effective. my claim to fame on the [00:19:00] association is that I got board terms for elected board members, increased from one year to two years.

[00:19:22] Matthew Saunders: Like I'm super happy that that that I that I ended up on the board of directors because there was another board member there who introduced me to Pfizer where I work now. And and that's ended up being a really wonderful partnership.

[00:19:38] Matthew Saunders: That would be, yeah.

[00:19:43] Matthew Saunders: Yeah, so every year, and I apologize, it's been years since I did this, so I don't know quite what the timing is. But every year there's a call for for folks to nominate others or self-nominate and when you self-nominate or somebody else nominates you [00:20:00] and you say, okay I'm a chump. I'll take the nomination. When you agree to be a nominee what happens is you go through a series of of public debates, interviews with other nominees.

[00:20:29] Matthew Saunders: 50 per 50% plus plus one. But basically that's the process where you get nominated, you talk a lot, you do a lot of social media stuff. You do some interviews. And then there's an election.

[00:20:51] Michael Meyers: The networking component, right? You think about your story and the different, like steps. Boris introduced both you and I, to Drupal, which [00:21:00] changed our careers. As part of your stint on the DA board, you ended up meeting Mike Lamb, who's, he's the VP of Tech now, or the SVP or, he's, huge at Pfizer in, in technology.

[00:21:24] Matthew Saunders: Yeah, that's for sure.

[00:21:43] Matthew Saunders: But in reality, I think really are building relationships and and those relation and how those relationships can can lead to professional opportunities. I would say to folks out there who are watching go to camps, go to meetups, talk to people make friends especially if you're earlier, early in your career.

[00:22:22] Matthew Saunders: What if they say no? What if I'm rejected? But frankly almost everybody that I've met within the Drupal community has been kind and generous with their time and generous with their information and skills. And why wouldn't they be? We're an open source community. It's built into our DNA.

[00:23:01] Michael Meyers: And since we're a little dreamy-eyed before we jump back to the professional stuff, cause we there's so much to talk about still on that front. I'm wondering if you have a and this is like such a broad question, but, do you have a favorite Drupal memory or experience?

[00:23:46] Matthew Saunders: That was probably the best. It was so bizarre getting out on a stage, looking out. We had a lot of people who showed up at that at that particular DrupalCon. It was probably, I think, 1800 people or so and so forth. And just making an ass outta myself, it was fun.

[00:24:15] Michael Meyers: In just such an impressive job in, in, in putting that together, like you said, Bohemian Rhapsody with like Drupal specific lyrics was just an aspect of a show it was really, impressive what they did and always entertaining.

[00:24:33] Matthew Saunders: They're all the pre notes, I believe are, or many of them are available on YouTube. You can look 'em up and they're funny.

[00:24:46] Michael Meyers: You say if you're not having fun, you're doing DrupalCon wrong, right? A big part of it is going out there, meeting people, spending time together, enjoying yourself. And I think the pre note really, really did that well. It was just too early in the morning for everybody who was having fun the night before.

[00:25:22] Michael Meyers: In particular Examiner was the first top 100, first top 50 website to run Drupal. But most interestingly in the context of this talk is that we were responsible for creating, I don't know, 33% or more of Drupal seven, which today is still the most popular version of Drupal ever

[00:25:43] Matthew Saunders: Don't forget that we were literally flying the airplane and putting the airplane together at the same time. We wrote taxonomy for Drupal seven. While we were migrating content and tech, the using taxonomy into the it was crazy. There's no reason that project should have succeeded.

[00:26:04] Michael Meyers: It really was. We were fortunate to have a really group of amazing people, which, gave me confidence in our ability to pull that off. But it still, stretched the edge of reason. It really was insane. And but it was a lot of fun and I'm just, I'm wondering if there are any, lessons, is there something that's replicable?

[00:26:50] Michael Meyers: Navigating the community process, while running a business, looking back on that, do you remember. Anything in particular where you say, look, if you're interested in getting more engaged as a company and creating Drupal as part of your build process, here's something that you should never do or here's something that I, I, that, that work well for us.

[00:27:41] Matthew Saunders: Producing, producing something that is, is technologically awesome but also it's a social experiment. That and I and it's an accidental social experiment. Let's face it. I don't think that Dries ever could've imagined that it would've exploded like it did. And became, to become the.[00:28:00]

[00:28:18] Matthew Saunders: And it could help the next organization with their project. And I know that there can be this sort of notion of I don't wanna give up my intellectual property. But in the end, I think that that you lose so much potential. Vibrancy and you lose you, you lose possibilities when you aren't willing to share at least a little bit of what you've been working on.

[00:29:07] Michael Meyers: Yeah. Examiner getting involved in the community is how we were able to go out and hire a lot of the top talent. It really, did it in a self-interested fashion, which is, how open source works. We tremendously benefited from doing it. I think, you made me just think of something.

[00:29:41] Michael Meyers: We were always developing in the community and pulling it back in. And that was a much better process, to build your modules publicly and then to use them, we, our code repos were coming in off of Drupal.org as opposed to the other way around. And that workflow [00:30:00] tremendously changed things as far as our ability to, contribute.

[00:30:12] Matthew Saunders: I'd agree with that. I think that I think that I think open source in and of itself is counter counterintuitive, right?

[00:30:44] Matthew Saunders: And that could be anything from a bookstore setting up an e-commerce site, which allows 'em to sell their books online. Or, it could be something like Examiner where we were driving revenue through, through ads and then and then paying our writers with micropayments through a, through, a special system, right?

[00:31:17] Michael Meyers: Yeah. We only have a little bit of time left, but we, I really want to talk about Pfizer and I don't know how much you can talk about Pfizer, so perhaps it's good that we only have a few minutes left.

[00:31:49] Michael Meyers: Everything is really, thoughtfully done at scale and, to the degree that you can share some of what you know you are working on. I think it would be great. Not to put [00:32:00] you on the spot, but I'd love to just hear a little bit about, what you guys are doing and, I know that for example, have a lot of static sites.

[00:32:22] Matthew Saunders: Sure. Yeah I'm gonna say off the bat anything that comes across as a fact or something like that probably isn't, it's my opinion, not my, not the the opinion of the company that I work for necessarily might be, might not be. But I want to, I wanted to be clear. These are my words.

[00:32:53] Matthew Saunders: And it was also the rendering engine for for the sites. And as you can imagine, if you're talking about using basically a [00:33:00] Distro model for all these all these different markets utilizing the same sort, sort of core software, but you've got 40 or 50 of them and they're all doing a little bit of their own things.

[00:33:29] Matthew Saunders: It means that we're in a position where sites can be can be deployed more quickly than than if you're using Drupal as a rendering engine. But there are also all kinds of things that a JAMstack site can't do which we're, or it's very hard for 'em to do. Like how would you use a JAMstack site to do a tool that allows a doctor to dynamically figure out what the dosing should be for a patient who's, male or female certain height, certain weight certain age.

[00:34:15] Matthew Saunders: And we've logically come to the conclusion that we're gonna use Drupal for the things that Drupal's really good at. And in some instances, we'll, you'll, we'll use something else. It may not be Drupal. We might use we might use a different services based backend.

[00:35:06] Matthew Saunders: It's it's a, we've made that choice consciously. And I think it's put us in a position where we're far more efficient around around site management as a whole. And that's super important when you think about the volume of websites that that a company like Pfizer needs in order to effectively get medicines to patients who need them.

[00:35:44] Michael Meyers: It's a big part of what we do. Keep it relevant, and also recognize that it isn't always the best solution for every use case in need. And you know that it's okay to use lots of other technologies and it's great to use lots of other technologies to meet your needs.

[00:36:14] Matthew Saunders: Oh, Who have you interviewed recently?

[00:36:25] Michael Meyers: I'm really trying to get, individuals that have an outsized impact, not just because of what they're doing today, but because of what they've done over the last, five, 10, 15 in some cases, like yourself 15, 20 years. But you can email me after the fact.

[00:36:43] Matthew Saunders: I think somebody that you should interview that I bet you haven't, who could be really super interesting would be Rachel Lawson. She is she's quieter around the sidelines, but everybody knows who she is because of the amazing work that she's done around in the Drupal Association, but also, interviews with folks like Dries and so forth.

[00:37:17] Michael Meyers: That's a fantastic recommendation. This is exactly what I'm looking for, are interesting, unique, different perspectives and.

[00:38:00] Michael Meyers: If there's folks you'd like us to interview, you can reach us at talks@tag1.com, that's t a g the number one.com. And once again, yeah heartfelt. Thank you to Matthew and to everyone who tuned in. Take care.

[00:38:17] Michael Meyers: Thank you, man. Sorry we ran up to time. Really appreciate you doing this.