Talking Drupal Discusses the Aaron Winborn Award’s Origins and Community Purpose

Episode 561 of Talking Drupal examines the Aaron Winborn Award with George DeMet and 2026 recipient April Sides. Published on 15 July 2026, the conversation covers Aaron Winborn’s Drupal contributions, the award’s creation and selection practices, and what receiving it means.

George, founder and co-CEO of Palantir.net, describes Aaron as a contributor known for foundational media work, event organisation, mentorship, kindness, and integrity. He says the Drupal Community Working Group established the Aaron Winborn Award in 2015 so Aaron and his family could learn that the community intended to honour him. George also outlines the nomination and selection process as he knew it, while noting that he has not served on the committee for about five years and cannot confirm its current voting method.

April, principal software engineer at Red Hat, reflects on learning that she had received the award, speaking at DrupalCon, and the tradition of producing a different physical award each year. The guests identify mentoring, event organising, design, project management, issue-queue work, promotion, and copy-editing as forms of contribution, reinforcing the award’s recognition of service beyond software development.

Regular hosts Nic Laflin and John Picozzi are joined by guest host Ashraf Abed. In the Module of the Week segment, correspondent Martin Anderson-Clutz introduces the Summit Site Template, released as version 1.0.0 for creating Drupal event websites. Martin describes its Canvas integration, event content architecture, Event Platform Helper dependency, and supporting files intended to help people and AI agents understand and troubleshoot generated sites.