In the Esperanto language there was a great writer and activist known as “Kabe“. After creating magnificent translations and reaching a position of authority, he suddenly left Esperanto life, never to participate again. So notorious was his disappearance, the language gained the verb “Kabei” — to vanish suddenly from a position of great visibility.
I’d be flattering myself to compare my position in the Drupal world to Kabe’s in Esperantio — the Esperanto world. But my lynda.com courses and other writings about Drupal made me fairly well-recognized in Drupal circles.
I’ve been absent from those circles for the last couple of years, and feel the need to give closure to — and recognize — those I got to know there.
I got started in Drupal because I wanted to build a dynamic website to promote a book I’d written. It was a period of great growth for Drupal, and lynda.com accepted my proposal to create a seven-hour “Essentials” video course. (I think they agreed because their first CMS course — on WordPress — was selling pretty well.) That led to seven more, a book, a magazine column, various presentations, and a lot of corporate work.
Was I a “Drupalista”? That’s tough to say. I’ve sincerely enjoyed working with it: Although I’ve come to recommend WordPress for inexperienced site builders with minimal needs, I’m still thrilled with how much I can accomplish with Drupal and a free afternoon. As I (like most people) have come to live more and more online, Drupal has given me more control over my environment. For example, I’m not afraid that I’ll lose a major chunk of my history as LiveJournal slips down the tubes: Through Drupal I made a local copy, privately linking commenters to their real-wold contact information. Those tools, those gifts of the Drupal community, are still with me.
We grew apart. Drupal ceded the mom-and-pop market to other platforms, focusing instead on enterprise needs. That’s a fine match… but it’s not what interests me, personally. Coding — a skill I don’t have — eclipsed site-building, evidenced by the increasing percentage of Planet Drupal posts on the subject. And Drupal 8’s unexpectedly long development time caused a major writing project to stall after I’d put in a month of work.
But oh! What a fine relationship we’ve had. I’m scared to list the people who have made my time in “Drupalio” so much fun — I’m sure I’d miss many. But I want to recognize everybody who helped me on Drupal.org; those involved with Drupal companies I’ve worked with (Commerce Guys, Mediacurrent, Acquia, Phase2 Technology, DrupalEasy, Tag1 Publishing, TopNotchThemes); those who corresponded privately about Drupal matters; and those who continue to make Drupal great. I’d be very happy to hear from you directly, and will continue to check in on drupal.org (where I’m tgeller) from time to time.
I’ve gone back to general technology journalism and communications. Lately I’ve been quite happy working in video, and have started a U.S.-based agency, Tom Geller Productions. Making a monthly video for The Association for Computing Machinery has put me in touch with people doing fundamental research. I intend to do for that community what I’ve tried to do for the Drupal community: to make their work clear and accessible to those without specialist knowledge.
Esperantio and “Drupalio” are quite different. But they’re similar in an important way — one that’s shared by any international community of people gathered for a righteous cause. After a time, the cause changes and falls away, leaving intact relationships that linger. As Wavy Gravy said, “It’s all done with people.” Although I might kabei, look forward to seeing you people, wherever we meet.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/moving-from-drupal-tom-geller