“It’s Time to Give Back Beyond Code”: Kevin Quillen

Kevin Quillen, Practice Lead at Velir, has been a driving force in the Drupal community for over 16 years. With a background in both development and leadership, Kevin has not only contributed code but also helped shape the future of Drupal through initiatives like AI integration and co-authoring the Drupal 10 Development Cookbook. His deep understanding of Drupal’s potential and challenges makes him a unique voice in the community.

As the Drupal Association Board Elections unfold, running until 5 September, The DropTimes' "Meet the Candidate" campaign offers a platform for voters to connect with candidates such as Kevin Quillen on a deeper level. This interview series provides insights into the Kevin's visions and qualifications, ensuring that community members can cast their votes with confidence.

In this interview, Kevin Quillen discusses his motivations for running for the board, highlighting his commitment to enhancing Drupal’s accessibility and global reach. He shares his ideas on modernizing Drupal.org, attracting new developers and designers, and ensuring Drupal remains a top choice for site builders. Kevin also reflects on his leadership experiences and how they have prepared him to contribute to the Drupal Association in new and impactful ways.

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?

Kevin Quillen: I have been working with Drupal since version 5 and in the Drupal community for over 16 years. Prior to that, I built my own CMS and CRM, and I have been in the agency space for nearly 20 years. With Drupal, I have learned a lot from members across the community and agency spectrum, helping push Drupal forward in core and contributed module contributions, spoken at various Drupalcons, and co-wrote a book on Drupal 10. I believe it is time for me to give back in other ways than just code - I think a great way to do that is to help with the Drupal Association.

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?

Kevin Quillen: The Drupal Association doesn't directly influence the features or development (code) of Drupal. However, given my background in the community, agency space, and as a developer, I feel like I can provide valuable insight to what users need, how to support developers, how to grow community and how to attract new developers and designers to the Drupal community. These facets are important, as that is what will ultimately lend itself down the road to continuing the evolution of Drupal itself. Newcomers and fresh input are important to any open-source project and the Drupal community has a literal wealth of knowledge to mentor and impart t o them.

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

Kevin Quillen: I think the Drupal Association does a fine job in many of its current areas. One thing I would personally love to see is the completion and launch of a revamped Drupal.org site in both form and function. We are overdue for a new look and feel - the last design revamp was in 2008-2010. While Drupal has a very strong foundation and feature set, it may not “look” like it at first glance of drupal.org particularly to outsiders. Part of helping introduce (or re-introduce!) Drupal to the world is in a captivating, friendly design of its project homepage. Some of this new branding direction and design comp was previewed at DrupalCon Portland, and this is one area I would love to help see through with the Drupal Association because I believe it is critical to attracting new developers, designers, and site builders.

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?

Kevin Quillen: I believe the community will evolve and become a more balanced mix of site builders, developers, and designers. A lot of the previous years were developer-centric, causing a bit of a shift in contributor demographics. Because of that though, developers created an exceptionally strong core framework that has enabled a lot of modules and tools to be created for site builders. Take the ECA (Event Condition Action) module, for example. ECA allows site builders to add new functionality to their Drupal site by using a drag-and-drop diagram workflow. If you haven’t tried it yet, you absolutely have to. Along with Experience Builder, I believe we will attract designers and front-end developers back to Drupal who once wrote it off as being too hard to use for design, front-end styling or using newer tools like React or Vue. We need to ensure that momentum continues, market toward non-developer demographics and provide training and onboarding for everyone.

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?

Kevin Quillen: Certainly. I am in the midst of working on the AI initiative in Drupal, working closely with folks like Jamie Abrahams, Marcus Johansson, and Andrew Belcher of FreelyGive, Scott Euser of SoapBox, Michael Gow of Fearnley International, and Frederik Wouters of Calibrate. In 2024 we came together to unite behind a single purpose to provide a framework for AI integration and out-of-the-box experience for AI features in Drupal regardless of what AI provider you may have. It had become clear that instead of pushing one module over another that focused entirely in the favor of any one provider, it was instead better to collaborate and provide the tools to integrate any provider in a clear and straightforward API. 

Part of the challenge like any project were deciding on what to develop first, how to decide feature priority, and similar issues. We have effectively navigated these with a professional and personal rapport while generating excitement around this initiative. We have worked together closely and in a short time provided a working module suite that is capable of AI integrations for content editing, search, and site management. The team is working on some pretty killer stuff for future releases, and there are some surprises yet in store for later this year that cannot be mentioned yet.

TDT [6]: You mentioned being personally interested in making sure Drupal is an open, strong, appealing platform that anyone can use no matter where they are in the world. But, Drupal has always had a reputation for being a high-end, hard-to-learn platform, how do you propose this can be changed?

Kevin Quillen: I know one of the most significant challenges organizations have faced was the upgrade from 7 to 8. I agree that was a difficult chasm to cross that some may still face with older sites. I had to face it myself. However, we came out on the other side in a better position and on a stronger foundation and it has kept Drupal a viable, competitive platform for building websites to this day. Keep in mind, that Drupal is nearly 25 years old. Most software, especially online or web based software, does not last half as long. We are now nearly 10 years beyond the release of Drupal 8 with that shift in architecture and because of that change, we were able to develop features around better configuration management, automatic updates, and project browsing to name just a few. Providing a revamped framework birthed amazing contributed projects like ECA (Event Condition Action) for example. We also saw a complete overhaul of well-established modules like ` Jacob and the contributors did an excellent job at evolving Webform even further into an incredible tool for site builders. These are areas where Drupal shines.

Having said that, there are many areas we can help improve to guide people through the process of onboarding and working with Drupal. One classic area is ensuring we are active at keeping Drupal documentation and guides up to date. Another is ensuring that Matt and the “trial experience” team have what they need to succeed. If you haven’t heard of that initiative, Matt is working on getting Drupal to run directly in the browser without needing to download anything and run it on their machine. That will be a big step to ‘trying Drupal’ for outsiders and a big step for learning to learn Drupal for non-technical people. Lastly, helping demystify that Drupal is ‘hard to learn’ through thought leadership, marketing Drupal Starshot and Experience Builder, along with other outlets like conference sponsorships and outreach will go a long way, especially as Drupal continues evolving toward being a great choice for site builders.