The title roughly translates to "Oh, to once work with true professionals!"

This is something which I all too often have to think (and sometimes say aloud) when working on client projects. The nature of my work usually results in working for some kind of web agency which has secured a bigger Drupal project that they cannot handle alone. I then work with the agency's employees and other freelancers to complete whatever the project demands.

On Tuesday, February 17, 2009, the Drupal Association General Assembly held its third election. The Drupal Association elected both new permanent members to the Drupal Association, and a new Board of Directors.

There were 27 candidates who submitted applications to the Drupal Association, which includes existing members re-applying for board positions in 2009.

Of those, we elected six new members as permanent members, and a board consisting of eight individuals.

Specific vote results are itemized below the break.

February 10 is the deadline to apply to be a permanent member or board member of the Drupal Association.

Compared to last year, there are relatively few applications and even fewer for board positions. Bringing in energetic and visionary new members is an important part of the Association continuing to build strength and capacity.

If you're considering applying, now's the time!

Here are some pointers on why you might apply, how to do so, and what to expect.

The Drupal Association website is upgrading! An unfortunate side effect of the upgrade has disabled the membership system. That means for a short time, the membership directory is unavailable and the registration system is disabled. We'll have it back up as soon as we can.

If you would like to be notified when the membership system is back, send a request through the association contact form and select the "Association membership" category or stay tuned to this feed.

As an open source project, Drupal has many strengths. We have strong and diverse technical contributors, a healthy financial ecosystem and a rapidly growing and vibrant community. However, we are not that strong in marketing and there may be an opportunity to change that in 2009.

Marketing can be a bit of mystery to technical people. Traditional marketing practices such as advertising or promotion of poor quality products have earned the discipline distrust. The following video, "A Short History of Marketing" is a good summary.

A few hours ago Timothy Geithner was sworn in as the Treasury Secretary for the United States of America. Among his many duties he will oversee the Internal Revenue Service which oversees arcane sections of the tax policy such as granting 501(c)(3), non-profit, status. Over the last several years the IRS has quietly been denying non-profit status to open source projects.

[Re-posted from Drupal.org]
The Drupal Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the Drupal community with fun­ding, infra­structure, events, promotion and distribution. The current Board of Directors was elected a year ago, so it's election time again!

On February 17 we will elect new Permanent Members (the General Assembly is comprised of all the Permanent Members) and our third Board of Directors (the Board of Directors is appointed by the General Assembly and is responsible for day-to-day operations). All the details can be found in the Drupal Association's Statutes and on the 2009 election website.

In its second year of operation, the pace of the Drupal Association's work has accelerated notably. We (i) extended the drupal.org infrastructure, (ii) raised funds, (iii) helped organize two international Drupal conferences, (iv) resolved many licensing questions, (v) funded several events, and (vi) made the Drupal.org redesign a top priority. Despite the progress made in 2008, we would like to ramp up our professionalism and increase our activity in 2009.

Commerce Guys, a company specializing in Ubercart based commerce solutions, has been chosen by the Drupal Association to run a Drupal branded online shop. Commerce Guys will receive a 1 year license to run the shop which will take it's place among the family of *.drupal.org websites.

The Drupal project has been doing user experience work for several years but the pace has really picked up in 2008. This year alone we've have already completed two studies, both for Drupal 6.

Over the last week Leisa Reichelt, from Mark Boulton design has continued her user experience studies with iteration four of the redesigned Drupal.org site. In testing iteration four here's what the team from Mark Boulton design found.

As part of the redesign we will be developing some new branding for Drupal.org. Once we settle on a new brand we are going to want to start promoting it. Part of that effort will including buying branded merchandise via Drupal.org with profits going to the Drupal association.