Drupal & Photography: how online communities are good for both

Submitted by adrian@clikfocus.com on 07/15/2011 - 10:54:pm

When I was 14, I was given my late Grandfather's camera - a Pentax MX. This gift spurred an immediate interest in photography and after some time I was able to take some decent photographs. However, I had no understanding of the basic of photography. My "technique" consisted of fiddling with various knobs until the light meter lit up the green LED light. Without a basic understand of aperture, shutter speed, and how the two work together to affect the various qualities of a photograph, I was basically shooting in the dark.

 

What does all that have to do with web development? (or the price of tea in China, for that matter!) I was first exposed to the open source philosophy/movement, call it what you will, in college when I started tinkering with operating systems such as NetBSD and Linux. First for fun, and shortly thereafter to work my way through school. I quickly learned that rich online resources were freely available for my use. The barrier of access was drastically lowered when I discovered that an online search would usually turn up the answer to any given question within seconds. 

 

Fast forward quite a few years. In fall of 2009, after many years of using digital point & shoot cameras, I decided to get back into the SLR world,  A short amount of research indicated that I could use my old Pentax lenses with a modern Pentax camera, and so I settled on a Pentax k-x. I quickly got online to research how to marry the decades-old analog technology with my modern digital SLR. Within a few days, I had learned far more about photography than I had gleaned over many years of taking photographs. This easy access to a community of photography enthusiasts allowed me to significantly improve my grasp of the fundamentals of photography and their application. In my opinion, online communities make a fantastic feedback loop, providing quick (usually constructive!) criticism of one's work. Although it never occurred to me to do so, I could have easily checked out a library book and joined a photography club. However, neither of these options would have afforded the immediacy and depth of the resources now available to me, literally at any moment I choose.

 

In the same way, the huge community that has formed around Drupal drastically increases the power and productivity of any one Drupal developer. As it has vastly gained in recognition over the past few years, the newsgroups and mailing lists of yore have exploded into a gigantic, highly collaborative community. Drupal developers and users meet and collaborate in thousands of venues, from local meetup groups and Drupal camps all the way on up to the drupal.org code repositories and DrupalCon. Web developers in general, and specifically Drupal developers are always communicating about ways to improve the product. Indeed, it might appear that I'm idly browsing twitter, but in reality I'm learning techniques and exploring ideas that will make me more efficient, and improve the products I deliver. (I threw that last sentence in for my boss's benefit...!)

So, what does this mean for someone who's thinking about going with Drupal for a web site? In short, the whole Drupal community is working for you. Almost any given piece of functionality you might want for your website has probably been produced and contributed. We use our knowledge of the contributed code base to put projects together as efficiently as possible, providing the "glue" and expertise needed to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.