Starting Monday, you can vote for the next at-large director on our board. Before you do, our candidate sessions: https://t.co/B0lUqmUac4
— Drupal Association (@DrupalAssoc) March 4, 2016
Drupal Association Board Elections are around. So what are these elections? How would it matter to anyone in the Drupal community? Why should one vote?
The At-large Director position is Drupal Association’s way to ensure community representation on the Drupal Association board. ie, you could have a share in shaping the future of Drupal Association by voting for the right candidate whom you think would best represent the community’s interests. You can see the list of candidates competing for this here. More about the election process here.
I have decided to vote for Shyamala Rajaram. I met Shyamala for the first time in November 2008 at a Chennai Drupal Meetup, which she had organized. I had just moved into the city, for my job at TATA Consultancy Services. That was my first weekend in Chennai. Didn’t have many friends around and a lot of time to kill. Drupal, at that time to me, was one of the many CMSs that I had freelanced earlier. Although it was my favorite. But I never saw it as a career option. And was surprised to see a meetup happening in Chennai that weekend and thought of dropping by.
But the meetup definitely had a significant impact on my life and career. I had dabbled a lot with Drupal while in my college (Vellore Institute of Technology). Though Drupal was my favorite, I had always seen it as one of the many CMSs that were mushrooming every day in the PHP ecosystem. This specific meetup gave me an opportunity to see that Drupal and its community existed outside of the internet as well ;-)
And what surprised me the most was that the newspaper portal that I read every day then, one of the largest in India, was actually powered by Drupal, and architected by none other than Shyamala and her team!
Being one of the first adopters of Drupal in India, Shyamala has been organizing meetups in and around Chennai since 2007. She has spearheaded many community initiatives, including taking Drupal to Colleges in and around Chennai.
I believe she has the right mix of leadership and technical capabilities and can best represent the Drupal community in general, and India & Asia in specific, on the board of Drupal Association. All the very best Ma’am!