Drupal Global Sprint Weekend

• What is the Global Sprint Weekend all about?
• When is it? Where is it?
  • January 25, 2014 and January 26, 2014: groups.drupal.org/node/332998
  • Oak Park Sunday Jan 26
  • Manchester, UK, January 25th, 2014, added by mikebell_
• We’ve had these before, so how did 2013 go?
  • March 2013 groups.drupal.org/node/277768
  • more than 33 locations around the world.
  • gabor held one in budepest hungary
  • jenlampton, steveoliver, joelpittet did multiple locations for twig in CA
  • at Promet in Chicago
  • stevepurkiss in brighton England
  • comm-press had a two day sprint in Hamburg Germany, Wunderkraut in Munich
  • Australia with Adam Malone, PreviousNext in Sydney
  • Shyamala really made an impression on me, organized one in India
    soo many!
  • Oak Park where I met Will Long from Fox Valley, David Snopek, and Crell came! We had 12 people in total, and ranging in age from 10 years old to 60, almost half female. Manning Pete came, and is now a reliable regular at our monthly sprint.
• How do new locations for Jan 2014 become official?
• What qualifications does someone need to decide to hold a local sprint?
• What are the most important things to plan for?
• What resources are available to help? money, support…?
• What is it like at a in-person sprint?
• What are the long-term benefits?
• What can people do if there isn’t an in-person sprint near them?

Other Sprints

• Are there any other global sprint days going on that you’re not organizing?
  • Friday Nov 15, not a sprint, but it is the next Global Training Day. Drupal Global Training Days is an initiative by the Drupal Association to introduce new and beginning users to Drupal. Trainings on Global Training day are free or low cost training events around the world with one of two curriculums: "Introduction to Drupal," and "What is Drupal?"
  • There is another global community day coming up Nov 19 2013 that I read about on the Top Shelf Modules blog

Questions from Twitter

• Damien McKenna
  With so many of the community leads pulled into D8, and so much community emphasis on D8, do you feel the community is failing D7?
• further detail - there are lots of D7 modules/core issues that need work but aren't getting it because of effort on D8. Thoughts?

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Bob Christenson of @Mustardseedinc joins me to talk about making a living doing Drupal.

Here's what we discussed

Your general background

• What did you do before you started Mustardseed?
• What makes mustardseed different than most Drupal shops?
  • Single employee + freelancers
  • no desire to grow larger...I think this is an old concept
  • VERY niche market
• What made you decide it was a good time/idea?

Freelance vs. Drupal shop

• Before we jump in, let’s take a minute to define freelance vs. running a Drupal shop.

Freelance Drupal Work

• What suggestions would you give to someone who is just starting to do freelance Drupal work?
  • Keep your day job
  • Specialize / Niche
  • Start small and get some work under your belt
  • Be prepared to work cheap (really cheap!)
  • Get a reputation through contributions (d.o, cons/camps, social media)
  • Go where you’re led (instead of determining where you’ll end up)
  • Grow slowly based on your body of work
  • Dont try and be a rock star...just do good work.

Suggestions for small shops/beginners

• more control over clientele
• more pressure to find work
• employees?
• lots more project/client management
• bookkeeping, etc, is more extensive
• ...but you run the show.

Questions from Twitter

• Brock Boland (@Brock): I’d be curious to hear about handling the overhead: client management, taxes, that run-your-own-business kind of stuff.
  • Dont neglect the business but dont let it consume you
  • Start simple (DBA or LLC)
  • Hire an accountant for year-end books
  • Use established client /project management system (basecamp!)
• Michael Potter: We just launched our Drupal web design company a few months ago. So far business has been good but our workload is getting to be too much. We decided that we need to hire at least one other developer we just haven't been able to find any applicants that have Drupal experience.
  • How does a Drupal firm efficiently staff its employees. Wait for the perfect candidate to come along or hire developers and train them on Drupal?
    • This is really a question of growth
    • I’m not interested in training new employees, my dev time is too valuable.
    • Employees mean 10x the accounting, management and stress...