Moving to a new Platform

Submitted by Larry on 2 May 2016 - 9:02am

After my last post, a number of people asked if I was leaving Drupal all together. Perish the thought. :-) However, after a decade at Palantir.net and the five-year Wagnerian Saga that was the Drupal 8 development cycle (complete with singing), I have been asking myself "What next?"

Well, what do I like to do? I like to build. I like to teach. I like to make things better. I like to work with smart people, as colleagues, as community partners, and as customers. I want to be able to have an impact in making something better for other people.

To that end, I am pleased to announce that today is my first day as Director of Runtimes, Integrations, Engines, and Services for Platform.sh.

The Director of whosawhat now?

I know what you're thinking... "What the heck does that mean?" Well, aside from having a really cool acronym (think about it...), it means I get to help shape the future of Platform.sh's hosting offering. The formal job description aside, I have been informally summing up the job as "make hosting Open Source projects with Platform.sh stupid easy."

In part, that will mean being a Developer Advocate for our customer base, figuring out anything that gets in the way of developers (and their bosses!) getting their sites and applications launched successfully with Platform.sh and working with the rest of the team to fix that. (AKA, harassing my new colleagues until the problem is fixed.)

In part, that will mean being a Developer Evangelist, making sure the developer community knows "oh yeah, we fixed that, Platform.sh is even better now!" (Which means if you were hoping I was done with the conference circuit, think again. Muhahahah!)

In part, that will mean identifying places where the major Open Source projects we work with (Drupal, Symfony, Magento, and others) could do a better job of managing a continuous integration/continuous deployment workflow and working with them to improve, which makes hosting them on any advanced hosting platform that much easier. (That means I'll still be around the Drupal issue queues; you're not rid of me yet.)

In part, it means being the Product Owner by proxy for all of our developer-facing offerings. (Finally, I'm on the other side of that table and developers get to complain about me now! Er, wait...)

Wait, what does Platform.sh do again?

Glad you asked! Platform.sh is a container-based cloud hosting provider on steroids. Rather than just dev/stage/prod environments, how would you like an infinite number of configurable cheap environments, complete with environment-per-git-branch, all managed conveniently through Git as though it were code? Yeah, I like the sound of that, too.

If you want to know more, let us know. If you like the sound of it but it isn't quite ready for you, let me know. I don't promise to fix it immediately but seeing that it gets fixed eventually (whether on our end, your end, Drupal/Symfony/Magento's end, or all of the above) is what I'm here for.

Still have questions? Look for us at the lunar outpost at DrupalCon New Orleans. (You'll recognize it, don't worry.) I'll see you there.

agentrickard (not verified)

2 May 2016 - 9:27am

If you just change to Director of Runtimes, Integrations, and Enterprise Services, your title could be the DRIES of Platform.sh.

:-)

Damien just informed me I'm responsible for database Engines, too, so... :-)

heddn (not verified)

2 May 2016 - 8:16pm

In reply to by pjcdawkins (not verified)

I was thinking of using platform myself just the other day and got turned off by the boilerplate platform yml. I'll have to take another look. This is very cool.