About Me: 

I am chair of the Dutch Drupal Association, contributed to Drupal since 2006. I have worked for various agencies in Europe, passionately creating Drupal adoption within regional and international brands, businesses and upcoming talent. Besides being a Drupal volunteer, I am commercial director at Drupal agency LimoenGroen in Amsterdam. I am a community ambassador wherever I go.

Summary of board nomination:
- Will passionately help promote and unite our wonderful Drupal community with business, talent and otherwise
- Focus on consistent branding towards all our audiences, with our events as highlights
- Help increase the Partner Program awareness and bring in more DA partners, whether their businesses or otherwise.
- User testimonials: get our clients on stage
- Focus on crediting system being inclusive to content editors, digital marketeers, event organisers, journalists etc.
- Helped with branding our camp Drupaljam:XL, Helped create Splash Awards in 2014 and Drupal in a Day university training.

Statement of Candidacy Video: 
https://youtu.be/fkxe9XULpqI
Board meeting attendence: 
2-4
Have you served on a board or committee?: 
Yes
If so, tell us about it.: 
Chair of the Dutch Drupal Association since 2018, board member since 2014. Previous board and comittee experience in various roles. Currently part of the DrupalCon Amsterdam Advisory Comittee and Track Team.
What perspective will you bring to the board when discussing strategic topics?: 
I amplify Drupal’s message and benefits towards decision making and executive business audiences. I’d like to help with that and increase Drupal’s reach and unified message worldwide. A business and marketing perspective on increasing Drupal awareness with potential Drupal users. I cross gaps between the development community and business audiences we need to reach and engage with in order to increase Drupal adoption with (new) brands.
What existing board topics are you most passionate about? and why?: 
Diversity & Inclusion: Next to underrepresented people, as a community we can be more inclusive towards business and vice versa. The same goes for upcoming talent. I am passionate about crossing bridges and making sure everyone can be who they are and follow their passion. // Promoting Drupal: Promote the wonderful work we, as a development community do and the way we do this. I will help to make sure the message gets accross, whether it’s tech, business, talent or otherwise. Respectfully and passionately // Branding: I’ll contribute the learnings from many events and will help in making sure the strong brand we have is consistent, while allowing organizers the flexibility to adapt to local and cultural needs.
What additional strategic topics would you like to introduce?: 
Consolidate marketing efforts: Whether in India, Ukraine or Japan, members already part of the Drupal community should identify themselves with this worldwide brand // Users testimonies: Many Drupal users (brands that have adopted and use Drupal) may be aware they use Drupal, but they are unaware of the power and passion of the Drupal community and the benefits they hold for them. We should onboard them, introduce them to the benefits they have from using open source and spotlight them on our platforms. The Splash Awards is just one of the ways trying to bring ‘clients’ center stage. Clients could be ambassadors more! // Increasing Supporting Partner program with more partners and increasing and amplifying USP’s towards potential partners, who are now unaware of the ROI for them. // Highlight the crediting system more: making sure the work of our community is highlighed and credited, whether its code, a website or helping making events great. Let’s make it inclusive for digital marketeers, journalists and others too.
What unique skills would you bring to the board?: 
I’m a gap crosser, I have strong empathic abilities, I blend in well, I get things done. I have an open and outspoken mind while always considering others. I'm Dutch, my background is not, which helps me to connect with people worldwide and see things from different prerpectives. I can (quickly) establish goals and execute to achieve them. I can quickly translate and articulate them back and forth, for different audiences, from tech to executive. As short as 240 characters. I am Dutch, straight forward and considerate. I have worked with small and larger agencies from across Europe and have commercialised other platforms (e.g. Adobe, Sharepoint). I am a strong believer of open platforms and socially sustainable ecosystems. I believe strong profitable brands can be built without exploiting people. Those are rare. I feel Drupal is one of them. Although I understand finances and the business side of things, I am not particularly best in finances and rely on others.
How have your past contributions to Drupal prepared you for board candidacy?: 
The Dutch Drupal Association is one of the oldest Drupal associations and very active on event organising, marketing & advertising Drupal, a well supported Partner program and other board related activities. // Our 2-day camp Drupaljam:XL has 500 attendees, with a Business Day and a Community Day. // Drupaljam:XL has all sessions recorded, keynotes are professionally recorded and edited. Our opening video, social media recaps and aftermovie are also done professionally: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVwXoFYNEkwnH06psmtWxZQ // Drupaljam:XL has its own brand, including brandbook, promo's and other assets: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MQDFsMewR5E-OBhz0wDUojT3E23n6Lze // I’ve helped start the Splash Awards in 2014, to bring Drupal users (clients) and agencies on stage together to celebrate the wonderful Drupal cases. The Splash Awards is now organized in 10 countries plus the International Splash Awards is open to world wide submissions // Drupal in a Day in 2013 and 2014 was attended by over 250 students and teachers from various higher IT educations // I helped create our corporate strategy including 5 focus domains, including IT, Talent Development and Business. // I’ve helped set up a thriving Partner Program with over 30 partners investing in the Dutch Drupal Association to make our events bigger, promote Drupal in the media and to support with other assets, such as branding and video-streaming-technologies. // We have a marketing professional on staff on a weekly basis to connect with partners and media, promote Drupal with advertisement, social media updates and blogs and to support events. // I am actively involved in promoting Drupal to a wider audience through advertising and having the largest broadcasting network in the Netherlands (RTL) contributing branded content and editorials with wonderful Drupal stories.
Why should we vote for you?: 
Only if you are convinced I can add value based on the above. :-)

Questions for the Candidate

rachel_norfolk’s picture
rachel_norfolk:
Comment: 

As Dries stated in his Driesnote at DrupalCon Seattle 2019 (https://youtu.be/BNoCn6T9Xf8?t=2149), work on diversity & inclusion is a key priority of the project (https://youtu.be/BNoCn6T9Xf8?t=5793).
How can your knowledge or experience of diversity & inclusion help the Drupal Association meet Dries' call to action?

imre gmelig meijling’s picture
imre gmelig meijling:
Comment: 

Great question, thanks. I am Dutch, my forefathers were not. I live in a country with liberal values. While those values are becoming more polarized at times, our liberal thinking and tolerance has managed to maintain harmony in a country with a multitude of cultures and backgrounds. I am a strong believer of open ecosystems and equal opportunities, regardless of physical or mental state. These values I will bring into the DA.

Having co-lead organized our camp Drupaljam (500 attendees) for the past years and supporting the Drupalcon organisation, these topics I will bring in to help:
- Reserve prime time on the topics of diversity and inclusion on all events. The opening keynote by Lukas Smith on Drupaljam set the right tone right from the start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRMY6EX894
- Support the diverse and inclusive ecosystem through all of our event CoC's, briefings and brand assets, as was done in creating the worldwide Splash Awards brand: https://www.drupal.org/about/in-the-news/blog/splash-awards-announce-new...
- Make sure all learnings on diversity and inclusion from all the camps, events and initiatives worldwide are shared so others can benefit in their efforts.
- Talk to people and validate if and what worked well. Understanding is key.

To quote the Fronted United team in Utrecht, this year:
"By raising the bar for inclusivity for ourselves as organisers, we raise the bar for our attendees. We don’t do this because we have energy laying around and want to do something bohemian, we do this in the hope we inspire people to personally raise their own bar."
https://medium.com/@frontendunited/the-wild-years-of-frontend-united-489...

imre gmelig meijling’s picture
imre gmelig meijling:
Comment: 

Adding to this: the inclusiveness from the development community towards business and vice versa still needs a lot of work. I have been trying to cross those gaps for years, with passion and will continue to do so.

mherchel’s picture
mherchel:
Comment: 

As a board member, you would be responsible for directing strategies for the DA. What changes would you like to make? What strategic initiatives would you like to start/continue/discontinue?

imre gmelig meijling’s picture
imre gmelig meijling:
Comment: 

Thank you for asking Mike.

I would very much like to 'open up' our development community to even more 'newcomers', business, talent or otherwise. Being on Drupal.org for over 12 years, I have just received my first credits for helping out with the Splash Awards brand initiative and helping organizing the next international Splash Awards in Amsterdam. Because I'm not actively involved in development but very much in other Drupal related things, such as organizing events, promoting Drupal, business and marketing, only recently I started to appreaciate the value of the crediting system. I would very much like to bring in content editors, clients, journalist, upcoming developers and digital marketeers and make Drupal accessible to them as well and making sure everyone gets credits for their work and appreciates the wonderful ecosystem we have for this. It would be a great accomplishment if we could welcome all those different people and have them not only use Drupal, but actually have them take part in making the platform even greater.

rivimey’s picture
rivimey:
Comment: 

I am concerned for Drupal in two ways at present:

- that the project is becoming "enterprise only" (the small users and SME users are being forced out by Drupal's development costs c.f. Wordpress / Wix / ...)

- that contrib projects, even "important" ones, are being left unmaintained far too often, usually because the maintainers are busy earning money elsewhere. This is perhaps a symptom of the first point.

How would you meet these challenges?

imre gmelig meijling’s picture
imre gmelig meijling:
Comment: 

Hi Ruth, thanks for the questions.

By definition Drupal is quite powerful out-of-the-box. In my opinion Drupal will remain suitable to SME users, with relatively little effort of a Drupal professional. In that sense Drupal is quite unique in serving such a broad range of users. Having said that, at some point we may need to consider an Enterprise edition versus a SME edition in order for the project to keep its reach. This is not uncommon and happens with other larger platforms as well. A one-size-fits all solution will, at some point not work any longer.

Having worked with (Drupal) development teams for over 20 years, the call for module maintainers has not been loud enough, I think. There is potential to be exploited in reaching employers and have them make time for potential maintainers. There are many developers that would like to contribute (more) but don't know what's involved. How about a clear campaign website for this with a Convince your Boss and perhaps even some ROI for the employer? :-)

rivimey’s picture
rivimey:
Comment: 

Hi Imre, thanks for replying.

Please note I said "small" and "SME" and in my mind they are not the same -- in that I count a small enterprise as one with perhaps 5 people in it and a medium one as perhaps 50...

I agree that crafting different "levels" of Drupal installation could be a good way forward, though what it would mean to be an Enterprise edition could be problematic... I and others would definitely not favour direct monetisation by, e.g., the DA, without very clear guarantees that funds worked their way back into the community at large.***

I agree we need to put more emphasis on module maintainers. Making it happen in the commercial works, though, will be a challenge. At my last employed job I said in the job interview I wanted to work on Drupal contributions, and they were in agreement. When it came to making time for it I got a different reception! Companies that make a living from Drupal itself do frequently give back, but those who make a living doing things that happen to use Drupal do so very infrequently in my experience.

In a fast-paced and very competitive world we need to rely less on goodwill in this latter group of users, I think.

*** my fear would be that all/most of any money ended up filling the pockets of small numbers of people "in charge" and did not benefit those who put the work in to make Drupal & its ecosystem happen.

imre gmelig meijling’s picture
imre gmelig meijling:
Comment: 

As a strong believer in socially sustainable ecosystems, I totally understand what you mean. I fully oppose rich-minority tendencies and will work and make sure Drupal won't fall to that. I can't solve the issue, but will certainly help where I can to maintain and grow what we have.
Here's my mantra on that when it comes to Drupal: https://twitter.com/imregmelig/status/1160150839459221505

I get to talk to a lot of agencies and clients, by working with the DrupalCon organisation, the International Splash Awards and our camp, all of them involving many agencies that are relying on maintaing the ecosystem healthy. Not of all of them are contributing. I *always* tell each and everyone of them Drupal is based on an open ecosystem *versus* a proprietary, licenses based hierarchy where small numbers of organisations get the most revenue of the product. Free is not 'free goodies', but freedom. By only taking, that freedom will not grow bigger, but eventually may even decline. That resonates, but requires repeat messaging and support by all of us, including the DA.

My company has its own Google Friday, where everyone works on their own projects, often involved in contributing. I have introduced Drupal with global enterprise organisations including the messaging about what it takes to maintain the ecosystem they will be relying upon. My agency has its own Google Friday, where everyone works on their own projects, often involved in contributing. Fortunately for us, there are many individuals and agencies involved that will 'fight' alongside you and show they way for others. Do not fear :-)

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