Dries Buytaert

As you might have read, we're in the process of electing next year's Board of Directors for the Drupal Association. I've already posted the the Drupal community's wishlist for the Drupal Association, but I wanted to follow up with my personal thoughts as well.

The chart below depicts an overview of the Drupal Association's Board of Directors in 2007; the green positions were filled in 2007. The graph also shows what I think would be important positions for 2008; the green and the white graphs are positions that I'd like to see filled in 2008 (except for the President, the Treasurer and the Secretary who have terms of two years and who get to run for another year).

Here is an overview of what would be the primary areas of responsibility for each of the Board of Directors positions that I envision:

1. President. Provides guidance and assists with developing and implementing the (annual) goals and objectives of the Drupal Association as set out by the Board of Directors and the General Assembly. Chairs meetings of the Board of Directors and helps assure that the Board of Directors fulfills its responsibilities.
2. Treasurer. Manages the financial assets and liabilities of the Drupal Association. Interacts with the accountants and bookkeepers, and makes sure that the Drupal Association is on track with regard to overall budget.
3. Secretary. Responsible for keeping the minutes of the Board meetings and the General Assembly. The role of the minutes is to serve as a legal record so making sure the minutes are accurate and complete is an important responsibility.
4. Fundraising director. Drafts a fundraising plan and coordinates the execution of it. Should target to raise at least 200,000 EUR/year through numerous channels. This money will be used to organize Drupal events, to purchase hardware, to pay for expenses, etc.
5. Events director. Responsible for making at least two global Drupal events happen; one Drupal conference in Europe and one Drupal conference in North America. Also responsible for supporting local Drupal events such as Drupal user group meetings and DrupalCamps. Manages an event budget and works with local teams of volunteers and professional event organizers to make things happen.
6. Communications director. Responsible for communicating the Drupal Association's activities to the Drupal community, and for improving Drupal's outreach in general. Writes drupal.org announcements and responds to inquiries from the Drupal community or the press.
7. Legal affairs director. Works with the Software Freedom Law Center to provide legal representation and other law-related services to the Drupal community.
8. Infrastructure director. Responsible for keeping the servers running and making sure that we can coop with our growth. Also responsible for the software running on those servers, including the many Drupal installations. Manages an infrastructure budget, coordinates a team of site maintainers and infrastructure maintainers and works closely with the Open Source Lab.
9. Drupal.org redesign director. As a special project for 2008, the Drupal Association would like to redesign the Drupal.org website. The redesign director would act as the principal project manager to make that happen. Manages a Drupal.org redesign budget, and works with the Drupal community, design firms, usability firms and developers to refurbish our home. Instead of just being the Drupal.org redesign director, he or she could also be the Technical project director that is in charge of all the technical work related to the Drupal Association.

Also, the chart incorporates the idea of having the Community Ambassadors be involved more structurally. This idea has been proposed a couple of times in 2007, and I think roles like 'Assistant treasurer' would help us explore those ideas. Ultimately, it is up to the individual Directors to invite other people to help them out.

What is important is not the hierarchy (that is an artifact of organization charts), but rather that we've framed some roles and responsibilities. There has to be some structure so we can divide up the work to be done and so we know who is accountable for what. So if we can't fill all positions in 2008, that is OK. Or if the final positions differ from the positions on the chart, that is not necessarily a problem either. At the end of the day, we always have to match the capabilities of the people to our goals — and not the other way around.

So if you are interested in helping to drive Drupal's explosive growth or if you want to help make a change in this world, you can submit your candidacy by following the instructions on drupal.org.