Vladimir Roudakov Has Set His Vision for DrupalSouth
An open-source advocate, active teacher, and community organizer, Vladimir Roudakov is now setting his sights on the 2024 DrupalSouth Steering Committee. Vladimir, a Drupal developer and Solutions Architect at Tomato Elephant Studio, has spent over a decade shaping the Drupal community in Australia and beyond. With experience running Brisbane’s Drupal meetups, organizing local Drupal events, and teaching tech essentials, he’s determined to take on this leadership role.
Vladimir’s candidacy for the DrupalSouth Steering Committee is rooted in his dedication to fostering Drupal adoption in academia and promoting better educational resources. As an IT instructor with experience teaching Drupal, Gitlab, and Bootstrap, he has firsthand knowledge of the challenges students and educators face with open-source technologies. In the interview, he delves into his plans for creating more accessible documentation, and curriculum resources and expanding Drupal’s reach through local events and training. Vladimir also addresses gaps he’s observed in Drupal’s event organization tools and shares ideas inspired by WordCamp and GovHack to streamline event management within the community.
Throughout the conversation, Vladimir reflects on the evolution of Drupal, from early versions to the latest iteration of Drupal 11. He offers a unique perspective on how the community can adapt and grow by improving marketing and documentation efforts, ensuring Drupal remains a robust, accessible choice for developers and organizations. For Vladimir, the “beginner's mind” approach is central to his vision, aiming to strengthen the community’s foundation for future generations while fostering inclusivity and resilience in the open-source world.
This conversation with Alka Elizabeth, a sub-editor with The DropTimes offers an inspiring look at Vladimir’s journey and the goals he hopes to achieve, both for Drupal and for the people working within its community.
TDT [1]: You have been a contributor and trainer in the Drupal ecosystem for over a decade. Can you share the moment or experience that first drew you to Drupal? What was your "Aha!" moment?
Vladimir Roudakov: My first Open-Source aha moment was when I discovered Joomla in the late 2000s and realised that I could modify code to build the system I needed.
A couple of years later, I went to a tiny studio, where my new boss gave me a stack of papers with credentials and said, "Please take care of our customers." There were a number of Drupal 6 websites, which I converted to Drupal 7, starting my Drupal journey, and I never looked back.
TDT [2]: You are running for the DrupalSouth Steering Committee with a strong focus on promoting Drupal in academia. Can you elaborate on the strategies you plan to implement to bring Drupal into more colleges and universities?
Vladimir Roudakov: I have been teaching Drupal, Gitlab, and Bootstrap for the last 12 years, publicly and privately. I became a certified teacher in 2022 and spent a year teaching IT at a local college. I collected feedback from teachers and students reflecting on past and current Drupal learning experiences. In a nutshell, Drupal requires a lot more love in the documentation department for successful adoption in the future, especially by small businesses and academia.
The first step was creating regular documentation contribution sprints, which were successfully implemented in 2024 as a part of the Brisbane meetup and helped to improve multiple documentation pages.
The second step (remaining to be completed in 2025) is to create a curriculum based on my training and teaching experience. It will provide teachers with various lengths of courses to adopt in the curriculum as they wish.
TDT [3]: What do you think are the main barriers preventing more students from engaging with Drupal, and how can these be addressed?
Vladimir Roudakov: There are a number of issues. In my opinion, the two main issues are:
- Lack of up-to-date documentation. A number of teachers were confused with Drupal versioning and how to find up-to-date documentation. Imagine how students navigate this terrain.
- Despite all the talk, Drupal is still an island. Academia is not always aware of Drupal’s strengths as a technology, often choosing from the more popular open-source technologies or alternative enterprise technologies.
TDT [4]: DrupalSouth plays an important role in the region's Drupal ecosystem. How do you envision the committee evolving, and what specific initiatives would you like to introduce or support if elected?
Vladimir Roudakov: As far as I can remember, Drupal South Committee was originally created to support the community rather than taking on an organisational role for the conference. I envision the committee change that can bring affordable camps back by working with local educational institutions and organisations.
It is also important to promote Drupal at other popular events, such as Drupal Developer Days and other community conferences.
Both initiatives are great for letting graduates, students, and users of other products discover Drupal.
TDT [5]: You’ve highlighted the need for better tools for Drupal events, inspired by experiences like GovHack and WordCamp. What does your ideal event tool look like, and how would it benefit both organizers and participants in the Drupal community?
Vladimir Roudakov: Post-COVID, lots of communities lost a single point of truth when it comes to technical event scheduling or communication with their audience. Brisbane meetup organisers saw some communities moving to ticketing systems while others are trying to pick up chat-based systems.
WordCamp Central is one system that is a good example of how we can provide a home for all the events. It is not ideal, but it does a better job of promoting WordPress Events than Drupal groups or Drupal event pages.
The other side of the successful community is a consistent newsletter, which we don’t really have. That would be something the DrupalSouth committee can produce consistently in the future.
TDT [6]: In 2023, you ran for a seat on the Drupal Association Board, where you focused on initiatives like promoting Drupal in academia, enhancing event management tools, and expanding contributor recognition programs. With your DrupalSouth Steering Committee candidacy, you seem to be continuing those same goals on a regional level. How do you see the transition from global to regional leadership impacting your ability to achieve these objectives, and have your strategies evolved in any way since your 2023 campaign?
Vladimir Roudakov: After the 2023 Drupal Association Board election, my colleagues and I started documentation sprints and opened dialog with a number of local colleges.
In 2024 I gave my second annual address to the students of the local college about the importance of open source and supporting local developer communities.
My philosophy is to live by example, so sprints, meetups, and presentations are the best platforms for me to raise awareness and invite others to participate.
Whether the open-source community decides to help solve the hard tasks or gets distracted by new and shiny things will determine its future. Technologies come and go, and the mistakes we make as a community will be a good lesson in the future.
TDT [7]: As someone who's been a part of Drupal and other open-source communities (e.g., Gitlab, WordPress), how does the Drupal community stand out, especially considering the latest tension unraveling between Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine?
Vladimir Roudakov: Strong communities lend a hand in times of hardship. While helping organise the first WordCamp in Australia in 5 years (2-3 Nov 2024, Sydney) I witnessed how resilient and strong the local WordPress community stayed. I like the idea that you truly get to know your colleagues when the times are hard. The same goes for the community. I would hope that the Drupal community is as resilient as WordPress one and we can help each other. In the meantime, I will make sure that the local Drupal community is as inclusive and welcoming as I possibly can.
TDT [8]: Having witnessed multiple Drupal versions, how would you describe the evolution of Drupal from the time you first began contributing to today with Drupal 11? Has it evolved for good?
Vladimir Roudakov: Personally, I like the evolution of Drupal embedding other open-source technologies such as Symfony and CKEditor 5. I also like the simplified upgrade process Drupal introduced since version 8.
However, I don’t think the Drupal community communicated those features well enough outside the Drupal island. Proper marketing might shine those features for the world to discover. Documentation can be an instrumental tool in that process.
TDT [9]: The first version of Drupal CMS is only two months away. What positive changes would this bring to the Drupal ecosystem? Would DrupalCMS being a more user-friendly version help remove the apprehensions about Drupal being hard to comprehend?
Vladimir Roudakov: A shinier project with poor documentation won’t attract the attention it deserves. In my experience, as long as users are confused by documentation, the project will get very similar traction. At the end of the day, the foundation is still a Drupal, and as long as the foundation is confusing, the more complex structures built on top will be as confusing.
TDT [10]: What legacy or impact would you like to leave on the Drupal community as a long-term contributor and potential member of the DrupalSouth Steering Committee?
Vladimir Roudakov: A number of my good teachers practised the idea of a beginner's mind: you put yourself in novice shoes while trying to improve whatever you are doing. That should give you a sense of direction for the future but will also help you work on your foundation to ensure it is strong for future generations. Hopefully, my work with documentation and teaching would invite more people into the community that I have been part of for the last 15 or so years.
Alka Elizabeth My puns are intended.
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