Drupal Association

Yesterday were the elections for the Drupal Association, and much to my surprise and excitement, I was one of eleven new permanent members elected to the General Assembly. I say "excitement" because I'm now more involved in the day-to-day activities of the Drupal Association -- not that I wasn't or couldn't be involved before. And I say "surprise" because there were 57 applicants, many of whom are community members I much admire and respect.

We all sat in an IRC chatroom while the existing Permanent Members discussed and voted on our applications. We were chatting nervously -- you had to almost speed-read to keep up with the chatter. What was happening in deliberations? We had no idea.

Board Member Angie Byron writes:

Trying to decide on where to set the bar for people who want to join the ranks of the Drupal Association was quite a harrowing experience. Permanent members are, well, permanent... unless they either resign or 2/3 of the existing members vote them out, which is likely to only happen in the event of some major drama. They can change the statutes (the legal binding documents) guiding the Drupal Association. They can remove Board of Directors members (and other permanent members). It's a lot of trust to place in individuals, and so we needed to make sure we chose very carefully...

All I can say is it could not have been easy.

Board Member Boris Mann notes:

My main piece of feedback for all applicants and community members is that being a Permanent Member just means more work.

Angie adds:

The down side is that the results obviously are missing a lot of people, too. They're missing new folks, as well as various as-yet "under the radar" folks, or hard-working, diligent folks who've been a little too timid to wade the community waters so far. They're missing folks from places like India and South America, who can't easily get to Drupalcons to meet the rest of us, and folks who don't speak English fluently. They're missing several people on the business/law/marketing side of things, whose important talents we as an organization are definitely lacking. I think that over time, however, as we further build our ranks of rock-solid demonstrated contributors, we'll be a little more comfortable taking calculated risks on these types of folks.

But to those people who didn't make it to the list, I highly urge you: don't get discouraged; get involved! If you wanted to help spread word about Drupal in your local community, do that! And post back to groups.drupal.org talking about your success, and work with other folks organizing local community events to help share best practices. If you wanted to help with marketing, do that! Collaborate with members of the Association to come up with ways to increase Drupal's profile.

Getting involved means you raise your profile in the community, along with your evidence of community contribution, which helps Drupal Association members become a lot less nervous about voting for you. And getting really involved makes your choice a no-brainer. :)

Along with everyone else, I am truly grateful to all the applicants for showing such dedication and interest in joining the Drupal Association. We have a really great community!

What is the Drupal Association? Khalid Baheyeldin offers a straightforward description:

To simplify things, and provide some background, the Drupal Association is the non-profit body that is equivalent to a Foundation in other open source projects. It is composed of so called "Permanent Members (PM)", who as a whole are known as the General Assembly (GA). The GA elects Board Members (BM) among them to form the Board of Directors of Drupal.

The official list of new Permanent Members elect: