As discussed in my previous blog post, the organization I have worked for more than twenty years in is moving away from Drupal to a new Digital Experience Platform (DXP). In turn, this change has created a mid-career challenge for me. It means I need to reevaluate my plans in terms of my career, my relationship with Drupal and its community, and the Webform module’s future. To Drupal or not to Drupal is what I am now facing.

The majority of my contributions to Drupal are not sponsored. I contribute code and respond to support requests in the early hours of the morning or late in the evening and travel to Drupal events and conferences on my own dime and on my own time. A close friend quantified my unpaid work on the Webform module as a “professional/intellectual hobby.” That statement stung a little, but hobbies are generally unpaid and motivated by a personal passion, which is an accurate summation of contribution to the Webform module.

For the last five years, my contribution to the Drupal community has focused on the Webform module, one of Drupal’s most-installed modules. If the Webform module isn’t maintained, it could hurt the Drupal community and organizations. It should be a concern that I might not be able to maintain the Webform module. Open-source projects like Drupal rely on the sustainability of the code and the community.

The sustainability of my contribution to the Webform module is why I have decided to share my 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year career plan with a potential Webform roadmap.

1-year plan

Career

It’s sad to me that my organization is migrating away from Drupal. At the same time, I understand their decision to move to a different platform. I recently convinced them to use a Read More