Community

The 3 paragraph pitch

Larry — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 22:21:59 +0000

The 3 paragraph pitch

Earlier this week a fellow PHP public figure tweeted saying that I write great session proposals for conferences. After I finished blushing I reached out to him and we talked a bit about what it was he likes about them. (Whatever I'm doing right, I want to know to keep doing it!)

Based on that, I figured it would be educational to dissect how I go about writing session proposals for conferences and hope that conference organizers don't catch on to my tricks. :-)

Larry 20 October 2017 - 5:21pm

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Moving to a new Platform

Larry — Mon, 02 May 2016 14:02:31 +0000

Moving to a new Platform

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.

Larry 2 May 2016 - 9:02am

The end of an era

Larry — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 18:06:59 +0000

The end of an era

Today is the end of an era. After just over ten and a half years, this is my last day with Palantir.net.

The past decade has seen Palantir grow from a company of 5 to a company of over 30. From a company that wouldn't touch the GPL with a ten foot pole to a strong advocate for Open Source, Free Software, and Drupal in particular. From a company that did mostly subcontracting work for design firms to an end-to-end soup-to-nuts agency. From having two desktop screen sizes anyone cared about to an infinite scale of screens from 3"-30". From a world where IE 5 for Mac was considered a good browser to one where once again, the latest Microsoft browser is actually good. (Everything old is new again, I suppose.)

After ten years with the same company (which in Internet years is about a millennium) I certainly have stories. There's plenty I could say about Palantir, most of it good. :-) In the end, though, there's one thing in particular that has kept me here for so long.

Palantir.net is the kind of place that has your back.

Larry 22 April 2016 - 1:06pm

On contempt

Larry — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 02:06:01 +0000

On contempt

A few weeks ago, I went on an uncharacteristic Twitter rant. At the suggestion of a follower or two I've turned it into a blog post for posterity. The following is a direct repeat of that Twitter stream, very lightly edited and paragraphed.

Larry 25 March 2016 - 9:06pm

Giving Back in 2016

Larry — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 23:18:44 +0000

Giving Back in 2016

Submitted by Larry on 23 January 2016 - 5:18pm

Three years ago, I ended 2012 with a call to the Drupal community to Get Off the Island. Mainly I wanted to encourage Drupal developers to prepare themselves for the major changes coming in Drupal 8 by connecting with other PHP projects and with the broader community, and called on people to attend non-Drupal conferences in order to visit and learn from other communities.

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Drupal 8: Happy, but not satisfied

Larry — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 07:55:04 +0000

Drupal 8: Happy, but not satisfied

Two weeks ago (hey, I've been busy and trying to sleep for once), after 1716 days of work by more than 3312 people the Drupal community finally released Drupal 8, the latest release of the best community-driven web software in the world. The blogosphere is already filled with congratulatory blog posts celebrating the immense accomplishment, and deservedly so.

A number of people recently have asked me how I feel about Drupal 8's release, especially around the PHP community. Overall, my answer has to be that I'm happy, but not satisfied.

Larry 3 December 2015 - 1:55am

Why I speak

Larry — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 22:51:06 +0000

Why I speak

Submitted by Larry on 7 November 2015 - 4:51pm

A few weeks ago I gave a keynote presentation at PNW PHP in Seattle. It was the second time I'd given that particular talk, Eating ElePHPants, a quasi-history and lessons-learned of the process of rebuilding Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

Overall reception was good, and afterward I was appraoched by a woman who was trying to push for better development practices and refactoring a legacy code base at her company. We've exchanged a few emails since, as she goes about trying to subvert her company's development process for its own good to introduce testing, refactoring legacy code, decoupling, and other concepts that many of us on the conference circuit take for granted.

In the course of that email conversation, she had this to say:

When I first started with this entire effort about 2 months ago, I thought I will never succeed, and I thought I had set myself up to failure - until I heard you speak about your experience. Your talk was highly inspiring and got me excited to invest more time into what I was doing and I believed in myself for the reasons I chose this effort.

And later...

All the tech talks helped me realize that I can get somewhere, made it seem within reach, but you and Adam Culp [who also gave a session on refactoring] left me inspired.

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Visiting other islands this fall

Larry — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 19:49:18 +0000

Visiting other islands this fall

Submitted by Larry on 8 October 2015 - 2:49pm

In case you hadn't heard yet, Drupal 8 RC 1 is out. And there has been much rejoicing! I'm going to save my own lengthy celebration-and-thank-you post for the 8.0.0 release, so for now I will just point everyone at Campbell Vertesi's post and say "what he said!".

But it's also a good time to consider the impact that Drupal 8 has had on the PHP community. The "off the island" movement has grown large, and people outside of Drupal are echoing the same message. In fact, not one but two conferences this fall are actively trying to build bridges between PHP sub-communities: ZendCon and php[world].

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Just how insular is the PHP community?

Larry — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 20:21:07 +0000

Just how insular is the PHP community?

Periodically, there is a complaint that PHP conferences are just "the same old faces". That the PHP community is insular and is just a good ol' boys club, elitist, and so forth.

It's not the first community I've been part of that has had such accusations made against it, so rather than engage in such debates I figured, let's do what any good scientist would do: Look at the data!

Update 2015-08-25: The Joind.in folks have given me permission to release the source code. See link inline. I also updated the report to include a break down by continent.

Larry 24 August 2015 - 3:21pm

Building Bridges: 2015 Edition

Larry — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 21:11:28 +0000

Building Bridges: 2015 Edition

As most who have met me know, building collaborative communities is a minor passion of mine. 2 years ago, I called on the Drupal community to Get off the Island and connect with other communities.

That call was part of a larger movement within the PHP community to interact more, connect more, and collaborate more than ever before. The PHP Renaissance has been driven in no small part by that greater collaboration between many different PHP communities.

To close out 2014, I spoke with Jeff "JAM" McGuire of Acquia Podcast fame about Drupal and community building, and what it means to be the "Drupal Community" when so much of Drupal isn't Drupal.

And as a final capstone, I made a challenge to the entire PHP community: Don't just talk to each other, build with each other. Get out of your comfort zone and learn something new, from someone else.

Happy New Year, PHP. Let's Build Something Good together.

Larry 31 December 2014 - 3:11pm

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