Developers aren’t the only people involved in making Drupal great. It takes the input of designers, writers, product managers, marketers, and end-users to help make the best software for the most people. In this Tag1 Team Talk celebrating 20 years of Drupal, we have one of those non-developers: Dawn Aly. Dawn has been an open-source proponent throughout her career, from her first use of Drupal to VP of digital strategy at Mediacurrent, and on to product manager for customer digital experience at Red Hat. Dawn’s long experience exemplifies how non-developers are critical to the success of Drupal. 

Tag1 Consulting Managing Director Michael Meyers interviews Dawn about her time in open source software as a non-developer, and how that has shaped her career path. Not only is Dawn a strategist and product manager, she is a Certified Scrum Product Owner. Join us today for this different perspective on Drupal, Drupal projects, and being part of the community.

Hello, and welcome to Tag1 Team Talks, the blog and podcast ofTag1 Consulting.

We're commemorating the 20th anniversary of Drupal with an interview series,

featuring community leaders talking about their Drupal experiences.

I'm really excited to have Dawn Aly on the show today.

Dawn is product manager for customer digital experience at Red Hat, and

she brings a really fresh, new and unique perspective to the series.

I'm Michael Meyers, the managing director of Tag1.

Tag1 is the number two all time contributor to Drupal.

We build and manage large-scale applications for Fortune 500s and other

organizations in every sector using Drupal as well as many other technologies.

We're also one of the few Drupal 7 extended support providers,

and we can help you run Drupal 7.

After it reaches end of life next year.

Please reach out if you want to learn more.

So let's kick it off.

Uh, please welcome me in joining Dawn to the show.

Dawn is the person that you go to when you want to talk about why Drupal's a

really great fit for your organization, for your projects, for your products.

Prior to joining Red Hat, as the product manager for customer digital

experience, she was VP of digital strategy at Mediacurrent, which

I'm sure all of you have heard of.

It's one of the most well-known Drupal agencies out there.

Uh, she also has a lot of experience in the creative side of things, both

from her time at Mediacurrent and through her work as a brand manager

at the Rise Creative Group, she's a certified scrum product owner.

Uh, as far as I know it on the first CSPO on the show, which

is another exciting thing.

And, um, uh, she's also given many talks at, at many conferences,

including DrupalCon uh, on topics like GDPR compliance, content

strategy, analytics, and SEO.

Uh, so there's a lot, a lot to talk about.

Uh, Dawn, thank you so much for joining me today and welcome to the show.

Super excited to be here.

Thank you for that really warm introduction and having me.

Definitely.

Um, so when I was putting together some notes for the show, uh, I was looking

at your Drupal.org profile, uh, and I noticed that you set it up around

eight years ago in a, roughly 2013.

But then I also looked at your resume and I was like, wait a minute.

She has been working with Drupal for so many more years.

And so I'm wondering, you know, why, uh, why is there that multi-year gap between

when you first started using Drupal and when you first created that profile?

Yeah, I know it's um, so first it took me forever to make my profile.

I am not an engineer.

So for the longest time I felt like it would be really weird for me to be on D.o.

And I didn't always see myself represented in the Drupal community.

So I think I finally jumped in when my DrupalCon Austin talk was accepted.

It was about how to get the most ROI out of your Drupal website.

So again, not developer centric.

Uh, I made the cut and I also remember very specifically a meeting with Dave

Terry, founder of Mediacurrent and Adam Wade, our marketing director at the

time saying, Dawn just make the profile.

Um, so I think that was the nudge that I needed and the validation I needed

to just jump in and make it happen.

That's really interesting because you know, coming from an engineering

background and you know, um, I'm not always attuned to these things.

Do you think that we've made progress as a community?

You know, do you think people come to drupal.org today and

say, Woah, this is for engineers.

Like, um, you know,

Okay.

So even women.drupal.org.

There are a lot clearer paths into contributing that just were

not there at the time when I was getting started in Drupal.

It's much easier to jump in with editing content or testing.

Um, I see a lot more diversity in the talks at DrupalCon too,

which has been really nice, but imposter syndrome is a real thing.

I had a double-take even when I was invited to this podcast, I

almost emailed you to be like, you know, I'm not a developer, right.

That was one of the main reasons.

I, well, first of all, I was told to invite you.

I don't want to give away at the end of the show, uh, and what I do, but,

but you know, I will, I ask everybody.

Uh, you know, you have to volunteer one person who would it be?

And James Rutherford at Pantheon was like, didn't even hesitate.

It was like, oh, you got to talk to Dawn.

And so I was like, okay.

And I, and I looked you up and I was like, this is, this is awesome.

We need, we need more perspectives.

And, you know, and, and I, I think that, you know, I'm as guilty of

this, as many people, you get.

So in the zone of here are the people I know, and I, I tend to gravitate

towards, you know, a lot of engineers.

And so I was really excited that you said that you would join us because, you

know, you, you have that perspective.

It never occurred to me that Drupal wasn't friendly.

And as soon as you said, it was like, oh, of course not.

Um, and we've made, I'm really glad to hear that we've made

inroads because there has been so much effort in the community to.

One encourage people to do more contribution to show people that code

is not the only way to contribute that, to thrive as a community.

We need contribution to all these areas to, to bring in the

talks like yours, to DrupalCon.

So I'm really happy to hear that we're, that we've really made a lot

of progress over the last, you know, eight or so years in doing that.

And it's always going to be a little weird for people like me, cause

I don't fit in 100% everywhere.

So I'm not an engineer, so I don't always fit in those hardcore engineering spaces.

And I have a strong preference for open source and Drupal

as content management system.

So I don't always fit in, in the more dogmatic branding circles, either,

who believe to be a real designer.

You shouldn't care about the technology, let alone prefer something.

It's a tricky space to be in, but I think people like me, my profile does technical

marketing, strategic people it's growing.

So it's been really nice that Drupal has been at a place of the very welcoming.

That's great.

Well, we need more people like you in the community in tech in general.

Uh, we're certainly open, open source at heart is how I like to call it.

Um, so how did you first come to discover Drupal?

It's kind of a long story.

So back in 2010, I was working for this really boutique digital

agency called rise creative group.

We were out of downtown Orlando.

We were doing cool branding for people like Grant Hill and

companies like Hart and Huntington, the Florida Bar Foundation.

And we were a branding company.

So custom was like our thing for a long time, like custom design, custom

mobile apps, custom website.net is cool.

So for the website in particular, um, it became a frustration

point for a lot of people to have to go through the development

team, to make a content change.

The development team hated it.

Customers did that want to wait to get in our queue, wait to get the content change.

So we started looking at what technologies existed and looking at

content management systems in the market.

At the time there were three main players and we picked Drupal.

It gave us all the things we needed.

Let us still scratch the custom itch, you know, and enabled us to

help customers build their business really fast because we weren't doing

everything from the ground up and on a really reliable technology.

So that was the first kind of taste.

And is that what got you hooked on open-source because, I mean, you went

from there to Mediacurrent, which was really, you know, hardcore into

Drupal and open source and from there to Red Hat, which is, you know, the,

the pioneer of so much of open source.

So it's crazy to go from, you know, the, the sort of bespoke boutique to, you know,

I know my career path has been so strange, so I feel like moving from

rise, where I had to spend a lot of time selling people on why Drupal was

a good idea to, um, Mediacurrent, where I doubled down hardcore, on Drupal,

um, you know, the people coming to Mediacurrent, especially at that point

in time, they had already chosen Drupal.

And they were coming to find a really strong Drupal technology shop.

So we were outsourcing our strategy and design work, um, either to be done in

house by our clients or by somebody else.

So Dave took a big chance on me and that we found the strategy

department at Mediacurrent.

And I think that's when I really super fell in love with Drupal

because man, we were growing so fast.

I was learning so much from those people.

And when I was looking for my next career move, I knew I wanted to

stay open source and I knew I wanted to stay in the Drupal ecosystem.

And so Red Hat was like a lot of wins for me.

Um, Red Hat's, obviously strong open source and all of the web properties,

including the one that I manage.

Run on Drupal.

So the dug into Drupal hardcore

Real quick, uh, tell us a little bit about the Drupal usage at

Red Hat, because they've been a really long time user of Drupal.

I mean, I want to say like a decade in my mind, maybe more

that they'd been using Drupal.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

So any time we do anything at Red Hat, we look to start with open source,

like literally, everything about red.

How does open source?

The way we make decisions is open source.

The technology we use is open source.

It's a Drupal made a lot of sense for us.

Um, the property that I work with primarily is our

customer portal, massive site.

You can see it at access.Redhat.com and it is a mixture at the moment

of Drupal seven and Drupal nine.

As we go through our migration process.

But yeah, all the portal properties are Drupal.

Very cool.

So from your perspective, what's the best part about being a

part of the Drupal community?

I think there's something really special about that shared Drupal experience.

And I guess it's so obvious that at one point, especially when my husband and I

were first dating, he could pick up on it.

Um, I would introduce him to someone and he could really reliably tell

if this was somebody from the Drupal community or somebody not.

I guess the like energy exchange is really undeniable.

Um, or maybe we just see like other people, uh, who

just, who resonate with us.

Like we have the same sense of humor or the same sense of.

I don't know.

I don't know what it is that makes it so undeniable.

Um, Was it the DrupalCon socks, the t-shirt, the

plushy that, that gave us away

It could be the undeniable love of karaoke.

Um, it could be a lot of things, but it's, I guess it's abundantly clear even

for people outside of the community.

And, you know, the, I feel like my longest friends, I met somehow through Drupal.

So whether that's in a co-working situation where we're colleagues or even

a vendor, client relationship, there's something so sticky about the Drupal

community that I love without Drupal.

I wouldn't have those close relationships.

I got it.

I'm sure.

I mean, if a sociologist hasn't studied the community, they should, um, I'm going

speak, digging and see if we can get someone in because you know, it, there

is something amazing about the people.

And I don't know, I could never put my finger on what differentiates it from all

these other communities that I'm a part of and why that is always the case with

people that I talk to about Drupal or

What is your, uh, favorite Drupal memory or experience?

So I have two.

Um, the first one is I went to the Pantheon party for DrupalCon Austin

and not just to set the stage, I still had that imposter syndrome.

Going strong, even though I had just given my ROI talk earlier in the day, and

I remember walking in to this party out there, party, beautiful party live band.

And before I could move towards somebody that I knew this delightful stranger

came up to me and was like Drupal.

So I was like, yeah, Drupal.

And he goes, Drupal!

It gives me thishuge high five!.

And I don't know, sometimes I still think about that moment

because it was such an icebreaker.

I don't even know this person's name, but it just fills me with so much joy.

So that was, that was number one that like instant acceptance, you're

part of a Drupal community you're in.

Um, so that gave me all the warm fuzzies and then.

Professionally.

I think my favorite memory was going to Manhattan to pitch a

really large insurance company.

They hadn't picked Drupal yet.

They were looking for someone to help them take on an entirely

new direct consumer market.

So it was me as the VP of digital strategy, Dave Terry, as the, of course,

founding partner of Mediacurrent, but also complete genius when it comes to sales.

Uh, Kevin Bass Rabb, who at the time was VP of delivery and Chris Doherty,

um, as our creative director, so real tiny tight team and the odds

were stacked so high against us.

And we nailed that pitch.

Like we just nailed it.

And that was some of my favorite times that Mediacurrent, because it was getting

in the trenches with a customer to learn what they were trying to achieve

with their business and give up those moments of clarity or inspiration.

So in this case, it was telling them something new about their current

customers and helping them reach an untapped segment, because we were really

trying so hard to empower customers with data, to make smart decisions for

their business, to help their customers, which makes a lot of sense, you know,

in an agency environment or even in a customer environment, like where I

am at Red Hat growing our customer's business has been the best way to

grow your own business because we depend on each other to be successful.

Like we need our customers to be successful.

So they continue to come back and invest in us.

And we then get the privilege of continuing to improve the lives of

everyone that interacts with their brand.

It's that kind of, um, reach that you can't get in other industries.

I think that's one of the favorite things about what I get to do is you know,

that interaction with organizations and be able to solve problems in,

in, in meaningful ways and see how it benefits them and their users.

Um, I also think I finally figured out why your husband, you know, understands

who all the Drupal people are because we're walking down the street.

Drupal!

Drupal!

Someone says, yes, we're like, high five!

Our, our secret handshake.

Isn't a handshake.

It's, it's a high five.

Drupal high five.

Oh man.

That's awesome.

That's a great way to be greeted.

Um,

Its so amazing.

Like, yeah, that's the best way to welcome them.

Welcome somebody in

I'm going to try that in my next client pitch.

So at the top of the show, we talked a little bit about this, you know, Drupal.

Contributions to Drupal go way beyond code.

And while code is really important and gets a lot of the credit Drupal, wouldn't

be Drupal unless people contributed documentation and, and where we actually

need the most help are the areas where you're an expert, you know, Drupal needs

to be better marketed, better positioned, you know, we're, we're, we, we desperately

need more people with your background to come to the website and say, not only do

I belong here, but I can really help here.

Um, so I'm curious what your first contribution experience was like,

you know what it was, how it went.

Um, I don't know what you remember around it.

Um, so I don't have a commit to my name.

I remember trying to do Drupal ladder and like curling into a ball.

Crying years and years ago.

So my definition of contribution is different.

Um, my first one was hosting Drupal meet-ups in Orlando and

giving free marketing workshops.

So that's where I really got to know Drupal and help close the gap, which at

the time was, felt like an ocean between marketing, business people, and Drupal.

The unsung heroes, these, these local community organizers, uh, I've talked

about this and some of the interviews in the past to me, they are the

backbone of this community, you know, every well, you know, not so much

with the pandemic, but, uh, you know, historically, you know, every week,

every night, every city, there was a Drupal meetup somewhere in the world.

And because of this robust local community, uh, I think that's a

critical reason as to, you know, what drove Drupal to the, you

know, the success its seeing today.

And, um, you know, being a local community organizer, uh, is, is really challenging.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort and, um, you know, uh, you

guys deserve tremendous credit for, for doing all of that.

Um, its been super fun.

Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you.

Nonsense, um, of all of the contributions to Drupal that you've made.

Is there something that you're like, oh, I did that, like, I'm really proud of that.

Yeah.

So it's, it's impossible for me to detangle the work that I contributed to

Drupal the big organization versus the work that we've done with customers.

And even though I love the thrill of launching some completely new

high stakes, high stress, I think if I were to pick just one thing,

I think it would be the strategy work we did with Truth Initiative.

So the mission of truth initiative is to spread truth about smoking vaping,

nicotine, and that hit home for me.

My dad smoked his whole life and he died from lung cancer because of it.

So working with Truth Initiative.

It made me feel really connected to him.

Cause at that, you know, my dad died when I was a kid.

Um, so being able to help them get that research in front of as many people

as possible and having that instant gratification, like instant in three

months, gratification of seeing in hard numbers, more people reach their website,

increases in organic search, 600 new keywords and search engine result pages.

It was so personal for me and so meaningful, like that felt like

such a win to be able to help them reach that, that new audience.

It's one of the most fulfilling parts of what I get to do, um, is when, you know,

like, I, I love all of our clients and, you know, and, and we get to work on some

really exciting projects with clients.

But when we do something that, that, that helps make the world a better

place that helps, you know, people, you know, be better like that is

fulfilling on a level that, you know, it just feels, you know, so to have

that personal connection, you know, in addition to, to that, Um, it is amazing.

And I think that, you know, I think one of the things that I've always loved

about Mediacurrent is what you described.

Like they did it, right.

You know, the, the way that you give back to and contribute to open source

is by scratching your own itch by, you know, doing things in an open source way

and through the work that they did for their do work, they do for their clients.

You know, they contributed back to open source.

They still are a top contributor to the platform and that's the way it should be.

It's not an afterthought, it's the way that you do things.

And so I think it's great that, that your, uh, favorite contribution is

inextricably linked to what you did as a commercial company in the ecosystem.

If everybody did that, Drupal would be, you know, orders of magnitude

greater, and that's where we need to be.

Um, so what about, uh, Uh, contribution that you wish you could hide or, or

this is all, this is one of my favorite questions because everybody sees, you

know, your success, you know, and, and, and, and, and not everybody gets to see

some of the things that got you there.

And I think it's important to share, you know, that we all learned some lessons.

Um, you know, so if you were to look back, you know, is there something

where, you know, you're turning a little red or you're like, oh God,

I, I can't believe I did that.

Or I really wish I could change that.

Oh, yes.

I will probably turn red just in telling you this story.

So I have a bit of a Type A personality, and I agonize over

preparing for big presentations.

So for my first DrupalCon talk, I remember editing my slides

up until the very last minute.

And of course, the night before I had the brilliant idea to talk about marketing

automation, it was a win-win fit perfectly into the ROI talk that I was already

moving towards at that point in time.

Um, I think this was still in Drupal seven.

We had just flipped over the marketing automation modules, like Pardot,

Marketo, Eloqua into Drupal seven.

And so I started adding the slides.

Did I talk about this ahead of time with Adam Wade or Jay Callicott?

The people pioneering those integrations with Drupal?

No, I did not.

Did I get a designer to help me make these flow charts and graphs?

Nope.

It was just me in my conference room typing away for these slides.

Was it a total disaster?

So no, the content was solid and I think it hit the audience, but I think

I gave Adam Wade a mild panic attack.

The moment I flipped to the slide to this new marketing automation flow chart

that he hadn't seen before, I can still picture the way his eyes opened so wide.

So I learned some lessons through that process.

I you're, you're touching a, a personal note for me because you made me think,

I can't remember off the top of my head, Lullabot you used to have like

a conference series and it was like their first or second one of them.

And they invited me to speak and it was the first time I'd

ever spoken at like a big event.

And I put together a presentation and I don't think it went as well as yours did.

And I remember like, being so grateful for Jeff Eaton.

I think I finished like at least 15 minutes early, maybe even more, because

I was like so nervous and speaking so fast and like, and he like peppered

me with questions and, you know, got into at least, you know, at least 10

minutes early, but it was, oh yeah.

I really hope that wasn't recorded

Those people in the audience.

They're like pure gold.

The ones that can feed you the easy questions and let you run out the clock?

Bless them..

I think

one of the secrets to giving a great presentation is to

have a plant in the audience.

Someone who could like break the ice for that first question, because

then the rest of the audience goes.

Yes.

Definitely.

So when you think of all the things that you've learned along the way, is

there something that you learned the hard way about Drupal where you're

like, I really wish someone had told me about this or I want to share

with other people because damn like,

Yes.

Oh man.

It, especially knowing my background coming from that hardcore branding

focus where, you know, you almost wore it a badge of honor, when you

could bend something to your will.

The lesson I learned, the hard way is.

Don't fight it.

Don't fight the system.

If you can use something the way it was intended, that is a bazillion

percent, what you should do, because there are people who put a ton of

thought into how that module or distribution or whatever works.

And if it fits your use case, awesome, don't fight it.

Don't customize it to over-engineer it spend those innovation tokens wisely

and do it on something that's going to really move the needle for your market.

So on the flip, my advice to anyone working on Drupal projects

is don't be an order taker from your clients or stakeholders.

Don't just say yes and make something that you were going to hate.

making part of your job has gotta be to partner with that person

to figure out the problems.

Those people are really trying to solve, because that's where

we're going to see the most value.

And where I am now in my role, it is the best part of my day when

somebody tells me no and offers to give me a better path forward, because

I know I don't know everything.

And to have that conversation where we make the trade-offs.

Like, if you go down this route, these are the dangers.

If you go down this road, here are the other dragons you may encounter.

That makes me feel really good about the ultimate decision we make,

because we've explored everything.

I've never liked being told.

No, but it is much better when you come to me with a better idea, you

say no, but I've got a great idea.

Um, know, I think that's, I think that's really great advice for people because.

Especially given, you know, the way that the community operates, you know, uh,

you know, you, you can't fight things.

You know, it really is a good, good point.

You got to work within the system to get to where you want to be.

And, um, you know, the, the more effort and energy you spend trying

to fight it, the more you're just tiring yourself out and get nowhere.

So, given your background in strategy, the fact that you've been in the

community for over 10 years, what do you think the biggest threat to Drupal is?

So I don't worry as much about people choosing Drupal for the first time.

I worry about retaining and deepening the usage of Drupal and in existing adopters.

Businesses are always, re-evaluating your budgets, spends, allocations.

And now that I'm client side, I'm more aware of discussions happening around

technology choices than ever before.

And when you are staring down a huge migration from Drupal seven to Drupal

nine, and it's going to take multiple quarters, or even a years, businesses

are naturally going to be evaluating.

If this is a good idea, or if this is the opportunity to pivot technologies into

something that is easier, we all know there's no easy button in this space.

Like it takes a long time because you probably customized your Drupal seven

sites into the ground, but the people who are controlling the dollars, don't always

have that story and awareness and context.

That's my worry.

No, I,

I think you hit the nail on the head.

You know, I've always thought of it as like the revolving door problem of Drupal.

And it's great that eight has meaningfully addressed in solve this

because historically every version of Drupal was a different platform.

And to migrate from the previous to the new was like migrating

from anything to anything.

And so it forced you to step back and say, should I be doing this?

What else is out there?

Um, and so, you know, the easy upgrade path, um, and then the other thing,

you know, it's great to hear you say, you know, uh, you know, w when we

think of like a sales perspective, when you're at an organization, you

think of like, you know, landing and expanding, you know, closing an account

is extremely challenging and difficult.

Once you're, you know, you're in an organization and you're proving your

worth and showing success, you can expand into that organization and

grow your business in a much more cost-effective and scalable manner.

And it's, it's a really great idea that we.

Uh, foster more in the community and it kinda, you know, like kind of blew

my mind when you said it, because we, we talk about this all the time at the

organizations we work at, you know, we're dealing with our customers, but I've

never heard someone even at Acquia when their whole mantra was land and expand.

I don't think I ever heard anybody say, this is how we need to approach

Drupal community standpoint.

Um, so it's really interesting how, you know, I, I think that that's something

that we really got to double down on and, and, and, and get more of.

Um, so where do you see Drupal going in the future?

You know, if you had, uh, you know, uh, look down the telescope, if you could

see, you know, even, you know, five, 10 years into the future, what do you see.

So I personally think Drupal is going to keep lowering the barrier to entry

for marketing, rich content, editorial experiences, and design focused people.

Those groups are becoming more technical and there are often the

people responsible for showing the ROI on digital investments.

So enabling those types of people to iterate really quickly will help

them grow their business, make them a believer and justify the investment

in Drupal over something else.

Wow.

Awesome.

All right.

We're I can't believe how much, how quickly time has flown

by just looking at the clock.

And I'm like, oh my.

So I'm going to jump to the lightning round a couple of

questions before we wrap up, uh, what comes to your mind immediately?

Uh, first question, who are your Drupal mentors?

I knew

this was going to come.

And I agonized over my answer here because I know as soon as we hang up, I'm

going to think of like 15 billion other people that I should have mentioned.

So I'm going to try to nail this.

So, uh, uh, number one, Dave Terry, had a profound impact on my career.

As a mentor.

He let me bounce ideas off of him and gave me the room to try new

things like found a whole department.

And I learned so much about sales through his leadership.

James Rutherford is beyond high on my list.

I would literally follow James into a hurricane if he

told me that was a good idea.

So I've just seen him do the impossible from leading the architecture for

really high profile enterprise Drupal websites to turning really

unprofitable projects into profitable projects while improving customer

satisfaction and driving sustainable revenue while supporting the team.

So I, I think the world of James, his superpower is really being

able to set the context for why a conversation matters broadly and

specifically to the people there.

And he's a true consultant.

He won't just tell you what you want to hear either.

So I feel like every conversation with James is like a master class

in how to be a great human being.

And I have also asked unending questions to all of the ridiculously smart people.

I have been lucky to work with, like Melissa Bent, Brian Gibson, Damien McKenna

Bob Kepford, ----------,---------, Alex McCabe.

So many I could keep going.

That's I think the best part about the Drupal community so far

is they haven't turned me away from asking so many questions.

It's been amazing.

It's a, it's hard.

I, I love asking that question, but I know it's hard because it's like an

Oscar speech you're like, and I, and I left out all these other amazing people.

Like I would never be here without, uh, it's.

It's impossible to answer.

Um, do you have a favorite or least favorite Drupal module or even feature

a lot of favorites or least favorites?

A lot of favorites.

I feel like over time, most of the modules that I've really cared

about have been sucked into core.

And that's been really great to see.

Um,

I know you said you were a big fan of a DrupalCon

Austin, and we've heard a lot about the Pantheon parties.

Excuse me.

The recurring theme on the show.

Um, uh, is, is that your favorite, uh, Drupal Conference or a camp?

Uh, do you have another awesome Drupal conference or camp experience?

I think DrupalCon Nashville might've been my favorite.

Okay.

So DrupalCon Austin had that cool bull in the middle of the conference.

And so that was really fun.

Can't miss out on the bull, but the fun thing about Nashville, I feel

like the karaoke in particular was.

Incredible.

Just incredible karaoke, incredible music scene.

And the birds of a feather for Nashville were just really

amazing, great conversations.

Um,

that's another thing I hope this was never recorded with some of

the karaoke and Nashville pictures.

Oh my God.

You knew, uh, as you were saying that like visions pop in the back

of my mind that I had completely forgotten about, um, that, yeah.

Wow.

That was a really good time.

Um, all right, one more question.

Before we wrap it up, the penultimate question here, uh, where do you

go to learn more about Drupal?

Um, the honest answer is I go to, uh, either Google Hangouts or slack.

So the communities in which I know friends and colleagues for Drupal and Google,

it's honest, but that's where I go.

And I do tend to prefer answers coming out of agencies and of course, drupal.org

and the, the dishonest answer is, the Tag1 Team Talks?.

All right, last question.

Uh, pass the torch.

Uh, James Rutherford said, Hey, you gotta, you gotta speak to Dawn.

Um, who should I interview next?

So first I hope I made it worth your while.

And this has been a fun talk.

Um, second, I would probably say Jason Smith, I feel like Jason is kind of

famous for his work on weather.com.

He's also solving some of our most complex Drupal challenges at Red Hat.

And with interviewing Jason, you get his like off the charts, genius brain,

and undoubtedly, a ton of dad jokes.

Like I think it's a win-win for you.

Um, sold!

I'm a big fan of dad jokes and I had a couple of chances to meet him

when he was working on some of the weather.com stuff with you guys.

And I mean, that was just, you know, that was such a milestone for

Drupal, uh, such an amazing project.

And, and we, we definitely need to talk about that experience more

and, and talk to him in general.

I will be sure to reach out, uh, Dawn, I wish we had more time.

This was awesome.

I really enjoyed chatting with you time flew by.

And, uh, there, there's so much more, I'd love to talk about.

This was a really great perspective.

We need more, uh, folks on the show that can, you know, give

us the insights that you have.

I really appreciate you joining me today, uh, to all our viewers.

We really appreciate you joining us as well.

If you liked this talk, please remember to up-vote subscribe and share it out.

You can check out all of our other interviews in this

series of tag1.com/twenty.

You can also check out our past Tag1 Team Talks and the latest technology

topics@tag1.com/talks, uh, as always we'd love your feedback, topics, suggestions,

who do you think we should interview next?

You can reach out to us at talks@tag1.com.

That's tag number 1.com.

Dawn, thank you so much.

And to all listeners again, thank you for tuning in take care.