Talking Drupal Newsletter - New Show!
TD Café is a new series from Talking Drupal. Over the years, we’ve noticed a recurring theme in our guests’ stories—something like: “I was chatting with [name] at [conference], and we decided to start working on [contribution].”
These one-on-one conversations—often over coffee or a drink—are where ideas spark and Drupal initiatives are born.
TD Café brings those moments to the mic. It’s a casual, unscripted conversation between community members about the things they care most about: past stories, new ideas, successes, struggles—just good conversation and your favorite beverage.
We hope you enjoy the new show!
Programming Notes: For the next two weeks, TD Café will replace the regular Talking Drupal episode on Monday, episodes #502 and #503. Then TD Café will be released bi-weekly on Thursdays.
TD Café Episode #001 Martin and Jake
Join Martin Anderson-Clutz and jacob(Jake) Rockwitz as they delve into an insightful conversation exploring the challenges and responsibilities associated with being a module maintainer. Discussing project types, the significance of sandbox modules, the impact of Drupal CMS, and the role of AI tools, they highlight issues around burnout, sustainability, and community support. Discover how the Drupal community can better support maintainers and the importance of continued contributions. This episode also touches on upcoming conferences and the significance of face-to-face interactions in the Drupal community.
Martin Anderson-Clutz
Martin is a highly respected figure in the Drupal community, known for his extensive contributions as a developer, speaker, and advocate for open-source innovation. Based in London, Ontario, Canada, Martin began his career as a graphic designer before transitioning into web development. His journey with Drupal started in late 2005 when he was seeking a robust multilingual CMS solution, leading him to embrace Drupal's capabilities. (mandclu.com)
Martin holds the distinction of being the world's first Triple Drupal Grand Master, certified across Drupal 7, 8, and 9 as a Developer, Front-End Specialist, and Back-End Specialist. (TheDropTimes) He also possesses certifications in various Acquia products and is UX certified by the Nielsen Norman Group. (mandclu.com)
Currently serving as a Senior Solutions Engineer at Acquia, Martin has been instrumental in advancing Drupal's ecosystem. He has developed and maintains several contributed modules, including Smart Date and Search Overrides, and has been actively involved in the Drupal Recipes initiative, particularly focusing on event management solutions. (mandclu.com) His current work on the Event Platform aims to streamline the creation and management of event-based websites within Drupal. (TheDropTimes)
Beyond development, Martin is a prominent speaker and educator, having presented at numerous Drupal events such as DrupalCon Barcelona and EvolveDrupal. He is also a co-host of the "Talking Drupal" podcast, where he leads the "Module of the Week" segment, sharing insights on various Drupal modules. (mandclu.com)
Martin's dedication to the Drupal community is evident through his continuous efforts to mentor, innovate, and promote best practices within the open-source landscape.(TheDropTimes)
Jacob Rockowitz
Jacob is a prominent figure in the Drupal community, best known for developing and maintaining the Webform module—one of the most widely used and feature-rich form-building tools in the Drupal ecosystem. His work has significantly enhanced Drupal's capabilities in form creation, data collection, and user interaction.
Rockowitz began his Drupal journey while working as a consultant for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), where he spent over 18 years. Facing the need for robust form functionality during MSK's early adoption of Drupal 8, he created YAML Form, which later evolved into the Webform module for Drupal 8 . This module has since become integral to many Drupal sites, offering extensive features for form management.(design4drupal.org)
Beyond Webform, Jacob has contributed to other projects like the Schema.org Blueprints module, aiming to improve structured content modeling in Drupal. He is also an advocate for open-source sustainability, often discussing the importance of community involvement and the challenges of maintaining large-scale open-source projects .(talkingdrupal.com, jrockowitz.com)
As an active member of the Drupal community, Rockowitz frequently speaks at events such as DrupalCon and New England Drupal Camp, sharing his insights on module development and community engagement . He maintains a personal blog at jrockowitz.com, where he writes about his experiences and thoughts on Drupal development.(Drupal)
Talking Drupal #501 - 500 with Dries
Last week, we released an extra show—the full interview with Dries—to celebrate episode 500. If you missed it, it’s worth listening to.
Show News
Help Shape the Future of the Drupal Marketplace!
The Drupal Association is conducting a brief survey to better understand how we can align the Drupal Marketplace with our community’s values and governance expectations. Your input will directly influence how we evolve the Marketplace to better serve both users and contributors. Whether you're a developer, business leader, or end user — your voice matters!
Take the survey now https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DMQG98T.
It only takes a few minutes, and your feedback helps ensure the Marketplace reflects the values of our vibrant Drupal community. Thank you for being part of shaping Drupal’s future!
Upcoming Episodes
#502 Talking Drupal Café with Martin Anderson-Clutz & Jacob Rockowitz.
#503 Talking Drupal Café with John Picozzi & Jason Pamental.
#504 The Marketplace with Tiffany Farriss. Recording May 20.
#505 Custom Field Module with Andy Marquis. Recording May 27.
Submit your questions on the #TalkingDrupal channel on Drupal Slack.
Reflecting on 500
by Stephen Cross
I've had some time to reflect on recording episode 500. While it was an epic day for us—from a coordination and technical perspective—at its core, it wasn’t all that different from the 499 episodes before it:
“A weekly chat from a group of people with one thing in common.”
Drupal may be the technology that binds us, but it's what we do with Drupal that truly brings us together. Hundreds of contributors—working both together and individually—freely give their time and talent to create a framework that empowers thousands of others to build digital solutions. Dries expressed it beautifully in episode 501:
Talking Drupal has been one of the ways that John, Nic, Martin, myself, our guest hosts, and guests have contributed to that collective effort.
Personally, it’s hard to express the depth of gratitude and admiration I have for John and Nic. It’s no small feat to show up week after week with passion, consistency, and excellence—they have done just that, and continue to do so. When I needed to step away, they gave me grace and unwavering support.
Through Drupal, I’ve also built lifelong, unbreakable friendships.
Smart Menu Links: Drupal navigation with the power of Views
by Martin Anderson-Clutz
In my recent work on the Drupal Event Platform, one of the most ambitious changes has been changing the architecture to support multiple events. That means that an annual Drupal camp can retain the content of previous years while collecting session submissions for an upcoming event. It also means that the platform can support multiple events per year if needed, similar to events.drupal.org.
A lot of the work involved creating new entity references, and then making them as seamless to manage as possible, even invisible to the end user. For the variety of views that had been built to display sessions, sponsors, and so on, this meant adding contextual filters (arguments) so that the content listed would be specific to a particular event. Continue reading at mandclu.com
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