The Drupal Association's annual election for an at-large board seat is well underway, with key dates approaching fast. The Open Community Forums will take place tomorrow at 09:00 UTC and 17:00 UTC, providing a platform for community members to engage directly with the candidates. Voting opens on 15 August at 00:00 UTC and will remain open until 5 September at 23:59 UTC. The results will be ratified between 6-13 September, and the new board member will be officially announced at DrupalCon Barcelona 2024.

In conjunction with this election, The DropTimes is running a "Meet the Candidate" campaign, where we showcase interviews with each of the candidates vying for a seat on the board. This series is designed to give the Drupal community deeper insights into the motivations, ideas, and expertise of those who seek to shape the future of the Drupal Association.

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Today, we kick off the series with Dominique De Cooman, an entrepreneur deeply embedded in the Drupal ecosystem. As the founder of Dropsolid, Dominique has a wealth of experience in both Drupal services and the broader digital experience platform (DXP) market. His candidacy is driven by a vision to expand Drupal's influence beyond being a CMS, transforming it into a key player within the open DXP ecosystem. The DropTimes has previously conducted a comprehensive interview featuring Dominique De Cooman. Read it here: A Conversation with Dominique de Cooman on Drupal, Mautic, Open DXP, and Dropsolid.

In his interview, Dominique discusses his plans to elevate Drupal's position in the midmarket segment and outlines his strategy for fostering innovation through stronger connections with other open-source platforms. His insights provide a compelling case for how he intends to help the Drupal Association navigate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. 

TDT [1]: The most generic question to a candidate at any election is why do you want to run? Similarly here, why do you want to run for a board seat at the Drupal Association?

Dominique De Cooman: I want Drupal and the open web ecosystem to flourish. I believe the key for Drupal to flourish is to join forces with other projects in the open web ecosystem and become more than a CMS.

Why do I think that?

I believe CMS markets have become very crowded, a red ocean. Making an enterprise-grade open-source CMS like Drupal stand out as the best in its class is key to being selected by customers. Drupal competes with many other proprietary CMS systems, especially in the small and midsize enterprise market (companies with a turnover between 10 M and 500 M). To win, Drupal has to be more than just an open-source CMS.

Making Drupal competitive beyond being technically strong is mandatory. Drupal needs marketing that shows its capabilities and return on investment for the SME market. It needs to show more than what it does for the big logos. Drupal needs to show what it can do for the many many organisations that have smaller budgets (50k-500k) than the big enterprises (with +500k/y budgets.)

I also believe Drupal can differentiate itself by becoming part of the open DXP. This is possible by building strong bridges with other open-source ecosystems like Mautic and Unomi.

I see how making Drupal deeply connected with other open-source platforms might increase its potential for adoption as open DXP or part of it increases its chances. Customers are looking for more than a CMS, especially midmarket, where they want a fully working packaged solution to cover all needs, not just content management. An example of how I have educated the community with new ideas on how to package Drupal in new ways like the open DXP dates as far back as 2019:

TDT [2]: What can the Drupal Community expect from your candidacy? What are the innovative ideas Drupal should look forward to if you are to win?

Dominique De Cooman: I believe my advice can help the DA make better decisions on how to market Drupal to the midmarket and bring Drupal to market as a part of the DXP. This will bring opportunities to the community at large to innovate. With more projects and challenges to solve, innovation will be driven by all that demand. As an entrepreneur in both Drupal services and Drupal-based DXP in the midmarket with Dropsolid, I believe I have a unique view on the market and what is needed. With this advice, the DA will know what the majority of the customers in this segment want.

The Drupal community is very tech-driven; therefore, having commercial and entrepreneurial representation on the board is crucial to keep Drupal connected with what customers of the largest segment (midmarket) want. I’m a developer who turned into an entrepreneur/marketer/sales and I do know how to make Drupal and DXP appeal to midmarket customers. This might not at first appeal to the more tech-driven members of the community, but remember that selling creates opportunities for the technical community to innovate.

I’m also not here because Dropsolid is in this market but because I want to share insights like I have done many times in the past. Even to competitors. The idea has always been to make the Drupal pie bigger and grow the open web ecosystem by creating bridges between open-source projects so we all win.

TDT [3]: If you could change one thing about the current structure or operations of the Drupal Association, what would it be and why?

Dominique De Cooman: Drupal is trying to serve a wide range of markets and audiences. Maybe it would not be a bad idea to segment it a bit. For example, Drupal core mostly appeals to larger organizations that see Drupal as their engine to build digital experiences, while Drupal CMS will appeal more to SMEs.

In fact, this is already happening on the council level, where you have a Starshot council. Maybe making that a permanent thing would not be a bad idea. However, it is good to evaluate how the Starshot Council performs.

The danger is that there are too many different parts of the community. It is important to stay as one community. Core and CMS still need to stay aligned while having their own visions.

TDT [4]: How do you envision the Drupal community evolving over the next five years, and what role do you see yourself playing in that transformation?

Dominique De Cooman: Short term: Make Drupal successful as a CMS in the SME market.

How can I play a role?

At Dropsolid, we have always packaged and sold Drupal to a lot of SMEs. We had our own Rocketship Drupal distribution that was specifically designed for SMEs. Basically, it was a layout builder-enhanced distribution with out-of-the-box features. On our D7 version, we sold hundreds of Drupal sites to SMEs for budgets starting from as low as 5-10k. On the D8 version, we never got back that low, but it could work starting from a 20k budget. We know it is possible to bring Drupal to the SME market. I hope to give the DA valuable advice on how to navigate this market.

Long term: I hope the Drupal community can evolve beyond CMS.

It is good we are focusing on getting on par on the CMS level again with Starshot, and Dropsolid is actively contributing towards the success of Starshot and Experience Builder. It is crucial that we get the foundations up to par to stay relevant in the market.

In the long run, I hope that Drupal can also become the best basis for the open DXP. The Drupal core has always had the potential to be the best open structured data engine, as Dries coined it in the DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019. I don’t think we realize how visionary this statement actually was. To me, it means Drupal core has the potential to govern not only content but also data. Which would truly leapfrog the competition. There would be no one in CMS land who would be able to deliver these capabilities openly.

From 2019 Driesnote:

"In 2024 we call this the basis of the open DXP. I would go even further and say that the structured data engine could mean Drupal handles not only content in a structured way but can also handle the user data in a structured way, in combination with the structured content. That way Drupal would become a killer application capable of delivering personalized experiences out of the box."

In short, I hope I can help Drupal transcend from CMS to DXP.

How can I play a role?

By helping formulate a vision for Drupal core that goes beyond content management. I have had discussions with several individuals in the community who are building products on top of Drupal. A lot of them are hungry for an ambitious vision for Drupal Core. Here too I hope to help build bridges but also to bring crucial contribution and funding towards the Drupal core project. An example of this is a 1M€ Eurostars grant we are applying to with Open Social, also a Drupal-based product company with the vision to build a Community Experience Platform. We will be researching and prototyping how an open structured data engine should look like to be eligible for the basis of an open DXP. Together, we will join the Mautic and Drupal ecosystems. Together, we are stronger.

I’m also positive that we can attract funding from other open-source supporting foundations for Drupal if we can build upon the big vision of the structured data engine.

As a structured data engine, we could imagine that Drupal would become the engine of choice for many open-source products serving a wide range of applications. If the engine is truly composable, this would be possible.

TDT [5]: Can you share a specific instance where you successfully led a community or organizational initiative? What were the challenges, and how did you overcome them?

Dominique De Cooman: When I got elected in the Mautic community, the project had a runway of basically 9 months of cash. It was crucial we would get in new sponsors. I strategized with Ruth Cheesley and the team on how to get new sponsorships and generate new revenue streams. As we stand now Mautic seems to be breaking even for the first half of 2024. In a short period, we were able to get in new sponsors, one of them being the Drupal Association. It meant a lot for the Mautic community that the DA is sponsoring Mautic. A valuable bridge has been built between Drupal and Mautic.

Building bridges is what I like to bring to the Drupal community. Not only with Mautic are we building bridges with Drupal, but also with Typo3, Joomla, and other CMS. They, too, see the value of being a stronger community by creating alliances. This will be key to creating the ecosystem that supports the open web.

Further, in the Mautic community, we have launched free trials together with the community. Dropsolid is currently the biggest contributor to the project.

So, I would not only help personally, but my company would also help Drupal in many ways, as we already do. 

At Dropsolid, we talk to many other Drupal companies that could become partners on the hosting and DevOps platform for the open DXP we bring to market. We would also try to have them look at becoming a DA partner, even if it is only at the Bronze level. We know from experience in the Mautic community that sponsoring the community starts small but could grow bigger over the years. Bringing more certified partners into the Drupal ecosystem is also vital for the growth of the ecosystem. 

I believe there is a lot of potential in the bronze-to-silver-to-gold level as there will be a lot of new Drupal agencies that will adopt Starshot Drupal CMS as their preferred platform on which to build. These companies will then grow over the years. I hope I’ll also be able to bring these companies in because we are also talking to them to help them go from Web-Agency to DXP-Agency to win more deals with Drupal, just like we help Webmasters grow towards DXP-masters so they can make more impact with Drupal in their organizations by creating more engagement on the websites & digital experiences they manage.

If you look at the challenges we overcame, they were mostly getting everyone aligned and ensuring there were no conflicts of interest. This is not easy because most members of the council also represent a company. But by clearly defining commitments and doing what we promised, we created marketing, sales, and finance plans that achieved results, and everyone collaborated.

TDT [6]: As an entrepreneur in both Drupal services and Drupal-based DXP in the midmarket with Dropsolid, you propose to create new opportunities to package and sell Drupal for example as part of the open DXP. What is going to be your mantra (core agenda) in ensuring a prolonged success for Drupal?

Dominique De Cooman: It is crucial that we stay successful on the enterprise level while becoming more accessible at the SME level. Starshot is a great movement towards this. I fully support this project, and we are actively contributing to it. We have a full-time equivalent dedicated to Starshot, and we are already selling it in the market.

To stay relevant to enterprise customers, we have to keep innovating at the core level. We should keep evolving Drupal towards the best open structured data engine, which is, in fact, the best basis of the open DXP. While doing so, we should build bridges with other players in the open-source ecosystem, forming a strong open web foundation.

I hope I can make a great gift towards Drupal, which has given me so much over the last 17 years. I hope we can make Drupal last for many decades to come as one of the cornerstones of the open web.