More and more companies are creating Drupal Departments. More and more well-funded Silicon Valley startups are using Drupal as its core technology. The time of the web applications is here and Drupal is one of the best players in the game.
A lot of people is taking advantage of it but, what about the members of the Drupal Community in the Bay Area? Are we taking a leader role in all theses opportunities, or are we just pawns in the hands on the MBA's and VC's that seem to control the game?
I think Drupal engineers, developers and designers are the core professionals in all these ventures and deserve more credit and more leader roles that the ones they are actually having. I have been on both sides of the equation (first MBA with Entrepreneurial and VC experience, now Drupal themer and developer) and I believe that there are a lot of business opportunities in the cooperation between local Drupal professionals / companies in the Bay Area.
I love Drupal because of its technology and also because of its philosophy. I think both these subjects unite us and make it easy for us to cooperate. I created the volunteer project drupalinthebay.org a few months ago with this idea in mind: push the collaboration among Drupal professionals in the Bay Area. It's just in a very initial stage, and I'm wondering if it is worthy to take it further.
I think the fields for cooperation among ourselves are huge in terms of joining efforts to get bigger clients, develop bigger projects, be able to divide the job and specialize, and specially in joining efforts to start new web application businesses like the ones that get seed capital every day in Silicon Valley.
If there is interest for it among the other attendees of the Sacramento DrupalCamp, I would like to make a brief presentation about this issue and after that have an open conversation with the other attendees about ways to increase the local collaboration and our potential to take advantages of the business opportunities Drupal is opening for us.
