Piyush Poddar

About Me:

Back in 2007, I was running a small digital agency where we used to develop websites for our clients using a homegrown content management system. It was a primary page rendering system and would often need custom development for any additional features on every project. That same year I attended an Open Source Software meetup in New Delhi, and came across Drupal, and was digitally enlightened. Coming from an MS stack world, learning about the Open Source Ethos was a huge eye-opener. It was the turning point of my career - I became a loyal user and advocate of Drupal and a passionate Open Source enthusiast since then.

Presently, as an executive leader at Axelerant, I’m part of the revenue team and responsible for the development of strategic partnerships and alliances in the EMEA and APAC regions.

As an active member of Drupal community, I have found the local Drupal user group in my city - Jaipur where we are planning to organize it’s first Drupalcamp this year. Having helped Drupal Association with organizing Drupalcon Asia in 2016, I regularly contribute towards assisting local communities in India in organizing meetups and camps in different cities. I’m also working with the community in Europe towards organizing Drupal Europe 2018 by co-chairing one of the tracks.

While a strong supporter of empowering Drupal professionals for overall community’s growth, I’m a firm believer that Drupal Agencies have to play a crucial role towards the success and adoption of Drupal along with growth and wellbeing of Drupal professionals. Only a growing and successful Drupal agency can provide to a Drupal professional, the required conducive work environment, and opportunities to grow and contribute back to the community. In order to further facilitated agency oriented growth conversations and networking I have also been co-organising Drupal Agency Leader Dinner Roundtables at Drupal Camps. After New Zealand and London, the next one is upcoming at Canberra this year.

I regularly write and speak at events about various topics ranging from the growth of Open Source and Contribution culture in India, helping global Drupal agencies grow their business via strategic account management, transformed outsourcing and success driven partnership frameworks.

In my free time, I enjoy mentoring and advising local technology startups.

Statement of Candidacy Video:

https://rebrand.ly/DA2018

Board meeting attendence:

Have you served on a board or committee?:

If so, tell us about it.:

n/a

What perspective will you bring to the board when discussing strategic topics?:

I hope to bring in a combination of perspective ranging from that of Agency Leader to Regional Representation of Indian, and broadly Asian Drupal community. I would also like to be the voice of all small to midsize organizations and agencies who have invested in Drupal as their primary service/product offering and are subsequently supporting a significant number of Drupal professionals. Having said that, I have been a developer, designer, manager and an architect in the past before moving into leadership roles and as such I believe I enjoy a broad spectrum of perspectives and thus I’m quite sensitive to concerns and challenges faced by many in the community.

What existing board topics are you most passionate about? and why?:

With the recent challenges with Drupal 8’s growth and agencies moving away or adopting other techs as part of their toolstacks, I’m particularly interested in supporting DA towards its goal of growing Drupal adoption through existing channels as well as finding new unique channels. I feel there is a lot to observe and learn from other platforms like Magento, Laravel, Salesforce, Kubernetes, etc. that we can continue embracing into Drupal’s adoption journey. The other ongoing crucial goal will be strengthening Drupal Association sustainability. Based on the principles of Lean Startup and my observation of Indian companies leading successful lean and sustainable operations, I’d like to contribute towards making Drupal Association leaner by exploring innovative ideas of strategic outsourcing and involving community wherever possible. For example, the marketing sprints organized at Drupalcon Vienna and London were excellent examples of initiatives which could be translated to more strategic initiatives along with well-defined goals, timelines, and participants in alignment with Drupal Association goals in a more structured way. Similarly, many other initiatives could be launched for encouraging community participation and proposals invited from the community/member organizations to own/ lead with due recognition and credits given via Drupal.org, Drupalcons and other channels. Another aspect of increasing sustainability could be running custom membership campaigns aggressively for specific regions. India, for example, has a decent number of Drupal professionals yet they are under-represented at Drupal Association via memberships. ( 73 out of total 2431 Individual members, 320 out of 3404 organization members). A lot can be achieved here by thinking local and running campaigns relevant for the region.

What additional strategic topics would you like to introduce?:

Few additional strategic topics I’d like to introduce at Drupal Association are: * Promoting Drupal in Education via supporting training and education programs at schools and colleges. Drupal as a serious business oriented technology solution is yet to be acknowledged in Academia. UK's “The Drupal Apprenticeship Scheme” or India's “Drupal Campus Ambassador Program” currently being run by the regional communities could be adopted or used as inspiration to launch similar pilot programs and subsequently larger such initiatives could be launched in different geographies along with local community support. While this could help address the ongoing technical talent shortage globally, it’ll also accelerate further demand for Drupal. * Advocacy of Drupal in the startup ecosystem as a viable platform for prototyping and development of minimum viable products. Drupal 8’s new suite of tools, REST-first native web services, progressive decoupling, faster delivery, improved editorial workflow, etc.. are perfect qualifying features that can make Drupal a platform of choice with startups. * Taking the Community Spotlight to next stage via Community Spotlight Stories as a semi-track or semi summit at Drupalcons, and providing a stage for awarding due recognition and acknowledgment to community members with worthwhile contributions.

What unique skills would you bring to the board?:

Extensive community experience via being on multiple committees viz. The organizing committee for Indian Drupal camps since last eight years, a regular session selection committee member for Drupal Mumbai, Track chair at Drupalcon Asia and Drupal Europe 2018. As an executive leader at Axelerant and member of recently formed core committee working towards Drupal Association of India inception, I can help bring in a lot of strategic value and regional insights from Indian/ Asian perspective. Finally, having graduated as a Bachelor of Commerce, and having run a digital agency for ten years in the past brings me natural ability to work on financial documents, analysis, and projections, which should be a mandatory skill for any member of an Association Board.

How have your past contributions to Drupal prepared you for board candidacy?:

Most of my contributions to Drupal over the last decade have been in non-code format and always involved interaction with community members, leaders and Drupal Association staff. This has allowed me to observe, interact and solve various challenges and problems associated with organizing events, running initiatives and executing programs both on local and global levels. Working closely with Drupal Association as a track chair and a panel moderator during Drupalcon Asia has been a particularly rewarding and learning exercise. Helping regional communities in India towards organizing local events and running regional programs has helped me gain a deep understanding of regional challenges and knowing what’s possible with local resources and what’s not. Working towards thought leadership activities in the Drupal Agencies space via delivering talks on strategic account management, transformed outsourcing and partnership success frameworks, along with co-organising global Drupal Agency Leader dinner roundtables at Drupalcamps has brought me much closer to the nuances and challenges faced by agencies globally. All of this has given me a perspective that I confidently feel qualifies me reasonably well for board candidacy and be able to add value.

Why should we vote for you?:

Open source has shaped my career, Drupal has shaped my personality, and the community has shaped my character. Being a firm believer in the philosophy of Karma I have always looked forward towards giving back whenever possible. However, I don’t feel I have contributed back just enough. If you vote me, you are essentially helping me achieve this goal of mine via vesting into me a position at the Board of Drupal Association. So do you karma and vote for me. Now!!