The first keynote speaker for GitKon 2022, a virtual tech conference for the global Git community, has been announced: Dries Buytaert, Co-founder/CTO of Acquia and founder of Drupal. 

His session: From the dorm room to The White House – How Drupal grew and became the standard for open source web experiences will tell the story of how Dries was able to achieve commercial success ultimately by embracing open source. 

GitKon brings together developers, technical teams, managers, executives, and thought leaders, united by their passion for software development and team collaboration empowered by Git. 

“Bringing people together under a shared passion is at the heart of what Drupal does,” says Dries. “GitKon is the perfect venue to share our story of scaling by embracing the open source community.” 

What is Drupal?

Drupal is a free and open source web content management system, founded by Dries Buytaert in 2001, just a few years before the creation of Git. 

Originally, Drupal was created as a simple message board that could be easily edited and managed by the college community Dries was part of. The name Drupal comes from the Dutch word: ‘druppel,’ meaning drop. Drupal quickly gained popularity and a community of developers throughout the world started to adopt it.

Drupal currently powers millions of websites throughout the world. While the open code can be used by anyone for any use case, Drupal is particularly popular with government agencies worldwide, universities, and large-scale non-profit organizations.  Millions of people depend on Drupal every day for accessing public services and accessing critical information.  

One of the main reasons Drupal was, and remains, so attractive to coders, is the straightforward method of adding features and functionality through the use of modules. Drupal modules are independently produced and maintained through code projects that can be added on top of Drupal. 

This modular approach means that you can modify Drupal to your needs without needing to “hack the core,” which allows the core codebase to become very sturdy and dependable.  As a community lead project, modules can be added to the Drupal core if the module is deemed valuable and necessary to the project as a whole.

Drupal Themes & Security

There are many other reasons why so many large organizations have adopted Drupal. This includes the straightforward nature of Drupal themes. While you can start from scratch, there are over 2,800 free community-contributed Drupal themes available to use and modify to your needs. 

Another big reason for the popularity of Drupal is the focus on security. The Drupal security team is extremely fast to communicate vulnerabilities and provide security patches to the whole community, adding a layer of trust that can only come from an open and transparent community.  

Drupal vs Acquia

In 2007, Dries co-founded Acquia with a mission to make commercial support available for Drupal projects. Acquia also provides professional services and additional products that can further extend Drupal; plus Drupal training and certification. 

Acquia was created to offer services that complement Drupal, which minimizes the overhead of managing websites and makes it easier for developers and teams to build quality digital experiences. The two tools work hand-in-hand together.  

So when comparing Drupal vs Acquia, you can think of the latter as a commercialized supporting tool of the former. 

Creating a Collaborative Future for Drupal Development

Sharing best practices around teamwork, DevOps, and scaling organizations through the power of Git is at the heart of GitKon’s mission. 

Community is the driving force behind GitKon, and we are extremely proud to announce Dries as this year’s GitKon keynote and are thrilled to hear him share his lessons gained from scaling a project, company, and truly global community.

No matter your background or experience, GitKon can help you learn from peers and thought leaders to discover new approaches and philosophies for  working smarter and being more productive. 

Register for the GitKon Global Git Conference Today

GitKon 2022 is an event you do not want to miss. GitKon registration is open now, so reserve your FREE for October 11-13, 2022!