This is a transcript. For the full video, see Fred Plais Talks Commerce in Drupal.

[00:00:00] Michael Meyers: Hello, and welcome to Tag1 Team Talks, the blog and podcast of Tag1 Consulting. We're commemorating the 20th Anniversary of Drupal with an interview series featuring community leaders talking about their Drupal experience.

My guest today is Fred Plais, the co-founder and CEO of Platform.sh. I'm Michael Meyers, the managing director at Tag1. Tag1's the number two all time contributor to Drupal. We build large-scale applications for global 500s and large organizations in every sector with Drupal as well as many other technologies.

And we're one of the few official providers of Drupal 7 Extended Support. So if you want to continue running Drupal 7, after it goes end-of-life next year, please reach out. I'm really excited to have Fred on the show today. Fred's work with so many large organizations L'Oreal, Vodafone.

For those of you in the Drupal community, you probably best know Fred as the general manager of AF83 , which was a [00:01:00] multinational agency, specializing in e-commerce as well as many other things. And before co-founding Platform.sh. Fred was the co-founder and CEO of Commerce Guys which is today Centarro.

And that's a really interesting story that we're going to get into. Fred, thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing your Drupal journey. Welcome.

[00:01:24] Fred Plais: Hi Michael, thank you very much for having me.

[00:01:27] Michael Meyers: Definitely. So I figured, you know, let's set the stage a little bit, talk, talk about your background and your career in the community, and then we'll dive more into, you know, Drupal itself and talking about the platform.

Um, But I'm curious to get us started, you know you've been in the Drupal community for over 12 years now. How did you first discover Drupal?.

[00:01:50] Fred Plais: I first discovered Drupal in Paris when I was actually running a, an agency called AF83 at the time we, the agency was actually building [00:02:00] a social networks back in 2009.

We had this vision that, um Browns to actually integrate their planning and, and to engage their users and customers should build communities. And, and at some point you, I'm not, my background is not technical. I've been building products and I've been in the web development industry for a long, long time, but more as a, as in the product side of things and more on the business side of things.

And you know, I had this good friend came to me and said, Hey, look Fred, you know, there's this amazing CMS, called Drupal. And on that Drupal thing, you know, you can actually build a - you can build Facebook by just assembling a, you know, a core and modules. And it's very granular. You can actually bring things together and, you know, you actually build a web differently than the way people used to build web before.[00:03:00]

By this module approach and that thought it was actually fascinating, you know, to be fair at Facebook in 2009, it's not Facebook in 2021. So it was a way less sophisticated web property. And there was just potentially there was three or four features that were really important on Facebook. So, you know, it was just not so, you know, just to, to understand the scale, it was not so hard to build, but still he was very real.

And, you know, it was the nature of the, of the, CMS and the, the thousands of modules that were there. The open source nature that struck me as something very, very unique and very meaningful. And you know, so that's how I discovered it. And then, you know, my uh, my partner in crime, Ori Pekelman who's been my partner for that 13 years in many different businesses.

[00:04:00] You know, it was, it was actually a very, very vested in open source. He's been involved in open source since I would say, since ever. And I'm very interested and curious and getting into communities decided to actually get involved in the Drupal community because he thought also, that it was very meaningful and decided to take the responsibility of running DrupalCon Paris and organizing it.

And I think that was back in 2009. And that's when I really understood Drupal. What it was about more than this modular framework. But you know, it was really a community as well. Very vibrant was very, very smart people. We got engaged, financially engaged. The fun story about these conference is that..

We had a blocked account with PayPal on which there were almost a hundred thousand dollars that's we couldn't, we couldn't release. And so we've been at huge stress because we were very engaged [00:05:00] financially in this first DrupalCon. But you know, this DrupalCon in the end , we managed. to the remove the problem with PayPal and we, we, we got a great event and it was just amazing vibes.

So that's really how I discovered, you know, back in 2009 and the the Drupal community, the Drupal framework. And I got excited.

[00:05:21] Michael Meyers: Well, I, I vividly remember DrupalCon Paris. Um I've been to many, many DrupalCons over the years. It is one of my favorites for, for so many reasons. I forgot all about the PayPal story and, and the irony is PayPal also used Drupal x.com for many years to though I think that might've been a little later on.

So I talked to Robert Douglass, I, I had the opportunity to interview him a little while back and, you know, he touched on a little bit, but it was really fascinating, you know, how AF 83 kind of, you know, incubated or gave birth to Commerce [00:06:00] Guys. And, and then, you know, the, how that, you know, in some ways transitioned to platform.sh I'd really love to learn more about that because it sounded like an amazing story, and he just only touched on it.

How are how are all of these things related and how did one sort of transition or lead to the other?.

[00:06:18] Fred Plais: Yeah, no, the, the, you know, the short story is, you know, we, we at the time again, very involved in web development, very involved starting to get involved in Drupal. And we, we met Ryan Szrama and his team and, um the, the fit was great.

You know, we, we love those guys. They were doing e-commerce with with Drupal and it really rang a bell in sense, in a sense that, you know, what we're seeing on the marketplace as well. You know, we, we were very interested in social networks, but you know, quite curious in general, and we were seeing this need it's still a very important need.

You know, where on the web industry. You get to talk with two sort of people. People [00:07:00] doing transactions and people doing content. if I want to, you know, just take a very big shortcut on, on this. It's a little bit approximate, but you know, it's still, it's still true, and people building content. They they get the traffic, right.

They managed to get this ability to create traffic on, on the web, but they can't monetize very well. I mean, you know, if advertisements was a way to monetize a website, we would all be very rich. On the other end, there are people actually doing transactions and they can monetize really, really well, but they don't get so much heavy traffic.

And so, you know, the, the dream was to be able to actually combine content and commerce together. So you would have a, you know, the traffic and the conversion and, on the transactions that go with it. And so, you know, on that vision, we thought commerce, commerce and Drupal together, that's actually extremely exciting.

And at the time Ryan had built super carts and they were delivering services around, [00:08:00] ubercarts which was built for Drupal 5 and 6. And you know, it was, it was a very, very decent piece of work and it was uh, very convincing, but, you know, Drupal 7 was coming and in the team, you know, getting interested in in Drupal we had done, this an I didn't realize at the time how important this recruitment will be, but, you know, we had recruited, this is very impressive brain, um human person.

Yeah, and human being, Damien Tournoud, who was currently my CTO, so, and a partner in crime now for more than 10 years, but Damien was the Drupal experts in-house. And he was actually very involved in Drupal 7 at the time. He was considered as one of the key architect of the, of the software. Very, very involved in the community.

Damien is very, very sharp and smart and, and uh, had some very brilliant ideas on how to build Drupal 7 right. And we thought, well, you know, this is an amazing opportunity. [00:09:00] We are. We're seeing we, you know, Drupal 7 is coming to birth with a ton of different you know, super exciting new approaches.

Let's build Commerce from scratch. Let's let's build commerce from there. Day 1 and make sure that it perfectly integrates with core and perfectly integrates with everything else. So that's how we, we we thought, okay, we need a new version of uh, of Ubercart. It's going to be a drastic change. So let's rename it.

And we came up with Drupal Commerce, which was an obvious one, you know, which could actually could actually I liked, you know, the fact that, yeah, its Drupal and yes, it's commerce. Content and transactions all together. And that, that was actually what, you know, the the vision that we had. Then I got so excited about the vision that I, I found a way to actually deal with my previous partner at AF 83 to actually just spin up a company. To come and acquire the uh, the company that [00:10:00] Ryan and his team were running at the time in the US. And so we made just one big company, big, not big but bigger company with people in Europe, people in the US uh, and that's how we got the Commerce Guys' story started based on the, you know, rebuilding commerce on Drupal's site.

So yeah, I'm still excited when I talk about it because I, you know, I, that was a great, great moment and a very exciting period.

[00:10:25] Michael Meyers: It was, it was huge for Drupal. I mean, still is, I mean, a Drupal, I don't think would be the platform it is today and have adoption that it has today without the commerce components and capabilities.

And those were all driven by you know, you and the team over at Commerce Guys. And I love Ryan. He's a really great guy and so, eventually Commerce Guys becomes its own company. And, you know, is a spun-out of, you know the agency. [00:11:00] How does Commerce Guys become Platform.sh? What was the transition from, from Commerce Guys to Platform?

[00:11:08] Fred Plais: Um, sure. Yeah. And so, you know, the, the story gets gets better because, you know, Drupal Commerce becomes a hit. We're seeing a lot of adoption. We, we're just seeing a growing number of of Drupal sites being built for commerce. You know, at the top of the, of the Commerce Guys story, I think, you know, we were seeing like 8%, 7 or 8% of Drupal sites actually using commerce.

So, you know, which, which is big because Drupal is big. And so, you know, 8% of the sites using commerce means a lot of sites were, you know, just adding some commerce components to, to their properties. So very, very interesting. And, you know, we're thinking, okay, so, so, you know, how can, we, you know, how can, we actually you know, deliver a product company behind that that idea.

And, we've been we've, we've had been very interested in the cloud. You know, we [00:12:00] Since day one, thinking, you know, we need a cloud version of Drupal Commerce, but we want to keep the flexibility of Drupal Commerce, which is, which is really awesome and a huge differentiator. So we thought we can't, we can't, you know, we won't, you know, it's not a good idea to actually build a a SASS e-commerce platform.

That's going be too restrictive and, and too you know, that's the issue with SASS, right? You don't get to be flexible. You, you it's click, click and click and click and you get something up really quickly. But you don't get to be able to build an experience and, and just you know, customer is whatever you think is relevant and we want to keep that fresh meat.

So, so the past approach was, was the obvious one. And so we started working on the, on the, you know, starting to actually split up the R&D teams into two teams. The Ryan led team, which was focusing on Drupal Commerce and, building the nice, the nice the next features for commerce. On the Damien's team was actually building the bells the platform service. [00:13:00] A project that would actually fit, fit Drupal Commerce.

So that's how we started working on the initiatives. and, um you know, two years later, because it took a while before we actually could could launch them, two years later, we had a pretty amazing buzz, very different, whatever was out there with a very unique experience, a unique flavor. And, you know, we, we we opened it up to the market.

And that was in 2015, you know, I think uh, a and we launched it at at a DrupalCon like we always do for these big launches. And so, um you know, very interestingly during the----, you know, and very quickly on the we were working with agencies and the agency was telling us. Look for it.

This is really great. We love Drupal Commerce, we love Drupal. But you know, we also do very frequently. We do other languages and not just Drupal. Drupal is a big piece of what we do, but we also do [00:14:00] other things. Could we use your product, which is really useful for other languages. And since Damien is Damien Damien Tourneau is, you know, he's a very, very smart guy yet not engineer the path specifically for Drupal with general, yet meant teaching quite generically, which is also why it took so long to build in the first place, because he was every, you know, he was very generic and very well done.

And so extending to other languages was easy. And we started to respond to agency requirements too, and not to, not anything PHP like Symfony is a big deal. And to beginner Drupal community and a lot of people and enough agencies building Drupal sites also you know, build things with Symfony.

So we started with Symfony. Then the obvious next one was Laravel, and then, you know, Node is a thing and people are actually using Drupal on Node. And so we decided to actually do Node very well as well. And by then, and Ruby and now we do Golang, you have Dotnet and we do Java. So, so [00:15:00] we progressively extended to other, other specs.

Not just Drupal. Drupal is still a very, very central piece. We understand Drupal really well. And we've always been very, very fascinated, you know, fascinated by, by Drupal. So we kept going on Drupal, which, you know, we extended to other languages. Thinking tomorrow's world is a, it's probably not just one stack. It's probably, you know, combining stacks together and giving them this flexibility to developers.

So, you know, that's that's how we've been. We've been actually diverging from commerce and at some point during it was very obvious that we had two businesses. In one company and those companies, those, those businesses required to actually a specific home forged. So, you know, with my friend, Ryan, we actually orchestrated this this split up and you know, built a brand new company for uh, the Drupal commerce business to have a new home, which is called Centarro now, which Ryan is a brilliantly, brilliantly [00:16:00] running today. So so that's how we, we actually managed to, to, you know, build two very nice independent businesses that are actually working together well, but, but not, not so coordinated as they were in the first place.

[00:16:14] Michael Meyers: I love that story. How Centarro, you know, becomes into Platform. Platform gives birth to Centarro. It's pretty amazing. And I think, you know, I think it's great that you guys run more than Drupal. You know, we no longer live in a world where you can use one technology. And I think that, you know, really set Platform apart early on because, you know, a lot of other providers and systems, you know, we're, we're kind of locked into that model where even if you wanted to run Node or, or whatever it was, you know, you had to do that elsewhere. And so I think it, you know, it really positioned you guys well for growth and fill the need. And, you know, it's, it's extremely [00:17:00] rare today that we build a system that just uses Drupal.

[00:17:04] Fred Plais: Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I think, I think you know, we understood that pretty early. We thought that, you know, the, the future of the, of the Tech is multi-stack that's not only you, you, you want to use the right tool for whatever you're building, and the, you know, developers don't want to compromise on that.

You know, they, they know that you know, if you have to use the wrong tool to build something, the complexity is actually going up and the outcome is going to be less good. So they are now they have a voice in the organization. They can Talk to IT. They are respected and heard because they are so precious.

So we are in a world where every organization is becoming a software company, somehow. And you can only listen to the software engineers when you're trying to build a software company you're not going anywhere. And so, so the, the, the reality of commodity stack is just right here. And it's obvious. And so you know, I think we were, um we, we took [00:18:00] the right decision to actually start building multi-stack from day one.

And it's not just, you know, you can pick it, pick a stack for whatever. It's really the combination of stacks, which is striking me today. You know, the the amazing traction for ----. Uh, And is very true for Drupal as well. I mean, it makes so much sense to actually build your forum with JS and make sure that you can actually fit to any screen and, and you know, just combine the power of Drupal, which is really in the editing and in the workflows and in the in the flexibility.

Along with, you know, the wider UI experience. And and I think, you know, this combination of Drupal Headless makes a ton of sense. And I think, I think we're uniquely positioned to to support agencies and customers building less experiences based on, based on, on a Drupal backend.

[00:18:56] Michael Meyers: Yeah, no undoubtedly a very smart decision, [00:19:00] ahead of your time, you guys saw this coming and it's really well positioned you.

So let's, let's shift gears a little bit. It was, I, you know, it, it's so good to, to learn about, you know, All the different companies and, and, and the roles they've played and the interaction, you know, and it's, it's, you know, thinking back in 20 years, you know, as you know, everybody has a piece of the story.

So I, you know, I, I really appreciate you sharing that. Um, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about, Drupal, the platform, Drupal the community, you know, your thoughts and involvement in these things. You know one place I always like to start is contribution. You know, you mentioned earlier, your partner is, you know, has always been part of contribution.

Damien has been one of the top contributors to Drupal. Um, you know, one of the things that I love and I was so excited to have you on today is that you contribute meaningfully in a way that, that, you know, not enough people do, [00:20:00] and that is financially. You guys are one of the biggest financial supporters of events, of the Drupal Association.

And so first off, thank you, because you know, we need everything we need, we need, we need developers, but we need money and we need more money than we're getting. And so, you know, I'm curious, you know, what motivates you guys to be such generous supporters of the DA and the community in these conferences?

You know, especially given that you've diversified so much.

[00:20:34] Fred Plais: Well, you know, to, to be, um you know, to be completely transparent with you. You know, we, we still see Drupal as a, as a very important, um stack in the web development options that you, you, you have. So. Drupal is dear to our heart because of this story and where it comes from.

And, the, you know, we've been through that story and we've been amazed from the very beginning from, you know, what's in the code and the also in the community [00:21:00] and on the people. And you know, in on a more personal note I've met my co-founders in Drupal. I've met incredible people. You mentioned Ryan Szrama.

You know, Rob, Rob Douglass has been also, um somebody that the Drupal community as well, and somebody that I've been working with for almost 8 years now. And it's just amazing. And so, you know, it's just so many amazing, amazing meetings. So I think, you know, we, we've got there's something about about Drupal that, you know, we don't have with other stacks.

At Platform.sh. And so you know, we, we were very happy to, to financially support the community, which I think it's a win-win because, you know, whereby by doing that, you also expose our brand. So the to the Drupallers and to people building building applications and sites. And and so, you know, this is a, this is a mutually beneficial, um contribution I have to say, [00:22:00] we can engage with the community.

We can keep updated on, on, on the news and on what's happening on the latest innovation. So you know, I think it serves both parties really well. And you know, the, um the reality for a platform like ours is, you know, we are not building a path with Drupal. We still have a little bit of Drupal in there, but it's quite it's quite limited, you know, the team might need many develops in Python and Go today.

So, so, you know, the code contributions for us or are not that obvious since we don't use the, the technology as much as we used to when we, when we were Commerce Guys and it was it was one, a personal focus to, to build you know, to build Drupal and to build Drupal Commerce. So things have changed over time.

I, I think, you know, we, we can still support support the community in a different way, and we're trying to, you know, trying to be [00:23:00] involved in as many meetups as we can. And not only be coming to the global conferences, but also to the smaller, more localized conferences and you know, we, like it very much as well.

[00:23:15] Michael Meyers: Awesome. You've already shared so many great stories. Um, you know, I, I love the PayPal freezing your wallet for DrupalCon Paris. You know thinking back over the last 12 years, you know, I I'd love to hear, you know, another story or experience at a conference, you know, you know, a sweet Drupal memory that sort of stands out.

[00:23:40] Fred Plais: You know, one of my great memories is I was I was very happy with that conference. You know, we, we had we had built this concept, which we call the the commerce village in that was back in, I think, 2014. And we were actually building we were [00:24:00] building a marketplace around in we're trying to get you know, the e-commerce world involved in Drupal.

Um, and you know, this is not a place where they will naturally go while, you know, e-commerce, there's a, there's a full ecosystem of of, of layers and services that you want to, you want to, you need to leverage things like payment gateways. Uh, You know, PayPal Authorize.net you know, all these all these players, they are not in Drupal.

[00:24:28] Fred Plais: Um, they were not in Drupal before Commerce Guys were there. There's actually a thing you know, tax payment solutions, um cause it's actually a big deal when you do e-commerce in the US, you actually be able to exactly know how much tax to pay depending on the on the postal code and you know, a bunch of different sort of players, delivery players you know, discount solutions you know, several times payments.

And, you know, we built this village where we actually managed to get all those ecosystem to a DrupalCon.. [00:25:00] You know, do you think if theme inside DrupalCon around commerce and that's a very good memory. It's a, it's been a fun one. I think, you know, we use a good contribution to expanding, expanding Drupal beyond just content.

Um, exposing the brands who, run on the community to actually, another sort of really important function in the web, the web industry. And so that's actually a very fond memory. We we had a lot of fun building this village and we were very supported by the Drupal Association that actually, so that was you know, in interested eye, and with a lot of, um goodwill to help us succeed on this.

So that was a very, fun year

[00:25:42] Michael Meyers: Yeah, no, I remember that. And one of the many reasons that that conference was awesome. So I'm going to put you on the spot here. We talked about all, a lot of wonderful things. It's been personally, professionally, you know, Drupal has meant you know, so many things to you clearly.

What [00:26:00] is your least favorite aspect of Drupal or the Drupal community?

[00:26:06] Fred Plais: My least favorite aspect. I don't know that I've got something that, you know, I don't feel good about the community. I think, you know, it's a very, it's a very open community. It's a, it's also, you know, opinionated you know, the, um most of the time, you know, especially on, on, on this community, mostly great experiences.

So I don't, there's nothing standing out as a, as something negative. I wanted to say about the community. I think, you know, the, the community is, is ----. And I think that's one of the challenges we are facing -------- is getting a little older, than it used to be, we'er all getting a little older and, you know, it's still the same folks around.

Um, and I wish we would find a way to get, you know, some, some younger people involved in Drupal the same way it looks like, you know, we're growing with the community. [00:27:00] So it's great, you know, it's great stories. We get to meet each other again. I think, you know, I would love for me to be able to recruit more, more, um younger developers.

And I think that's actually the challenge we are facing as a community..

[00:27:14] Michael Meyers: I agree. I wish the community would listen to me more. That would be my gripe. Why don't you guys always do what I want? Um, but that's what makes it a great community and it's probably good that they don't always listen to me. So I want to try something new as part of this series with you because of your background in product development and running businesses.

I thought it would be really interesting to do a quick SWOT analysis with you. Talk about some of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the platform. What do you think Drupal's biggest strength in the marketplace is today?.

[00:27:53] Fred Plais: I think it's true open source which is really so rare today, a true open source.

That's a huge [00:28:00] strength. Amazing flexibility. Drupal is the most flexible CMS solution out there, by far.. There's nothing as, as, as as well, architecture as, as Drupal, you know, from a security standpoint, it's extremely strong. It's well thought of. So that's the, the the main strengths. I think the, the the workflow for editors is also very sophisticated.

You can actually do some pretty amazing workflows. It's really well done. All those use cases, you know, we find, we find you know, the best tool that can, they can, they can give to, to, to have in Drupal is the best we can find to actually build those experiences. So that's definitely here on, strength. So, you know, SWOTs is also weaknesses.

So weaknesses, you know, I kind of touch it by my, with my comments on, you know younger developers. I think, you know, the, the community needs find a way to actually we need more, more new blood, we you [00:29:00] more new people in this community. and the more, you know, new contributors and new level of energy I think that's really, that's also quite quite important.

I would say also that you know, we, we lost the, the simplicity game against against WordPress. The WordPress community has grown incredibly strong because they could actually offer a very simple way to get started. And Drupal has still this you know, the bar's pretty high to get started on Drupal.

You need to learn a lot of things. And it's a little overwhelming for many people and, WordPress is getting it on that front. So limiting access to the software is, is harder. And I think that's challenging. I also think that's part of the positioning [00:30:00] of Drupal, you know which is a definitely, the right tool for the more enterprisey market you know, Drupal is no tool for the SMB.

It's pretty clear Drupal is a tool for building, you know, significant enterprise experiences that require sophisticated workflows and sophisticated customizations, so from that standpoint, I think it's strong. I think Drupal has also managed to actually be leveraged by all the what Dries called, the the elephants at some, in some conference a couple of years ago.

You know, the well-known integration partners the Accentures of the world. You know, the, they, are using Drupal. They value Drupal. They are practices for Drupal. I think that's a massive win. I think that gives credibility to Drupal in the enterprise world a lot as well. So yeah, I think, you know, those,the important thing for Drupal is to, I think, continue to be actually a, a [00:31:00] very credible enterprise software still work on simplicity.

It has no reason not to actually make the code more accessible to remove some of the overhead that developers have when they, when they get started on Drupal. Probably easier said than done, but I think that's actually one of the challenges we face as a community to just make the the bar a little lower.

So more people can jump over it on the one.

[00:31:27] Michael Meyers: Yeah. And and threats? You anything stand out in your mind is, you know, is there a Drupal killer out there? Is there something that as a community that we need to be paying attention to that we don't, you know, that we're not doing.

[00:31:40] Fred Plais: I mean, threats is the the conclusions of what I said earlier, which is, you know, contribution shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrink more and continue, you know, being too complex and, and, set the bar too high for people to get started and you know, become less of a meaningful thing where, you know, before is a, is a very, very important tool for the [00:32:00] web development world.

You know, I think the there is absolutely an opportunity to actually remain in the uh, top forces out there, if we're not careful, we might actually, um not see that any more, in the future. And that's the threat. You know, technologies come and go. And and and it's actually rolls super, super fast.

You know, we, there's so many, so many technologies that have you know, shine at some point and disappear because they couldn't transform themselves or just adapt to the new world. You know, I think Drupal is is well equipped, you know, I think the community behind it is very smart is is very aware of these challenges.

So I, I feel this is going to be, you know, to be a very optimistic about the future of Drupal. And we want to emphasize on the fact that, you know, I feel that the right people around can actually find the solutions for that. And there's awareness of those [00:33:00] issues. I'm sure I'm not the only one bringing this up every year.

Every person you've talked to probably mentioned in a way or another these challenges, but uh, so I think they're well understood. Um, They're also accepted, you know, it's not just the fact that, you know, if you want to change something you want to not only act, understand but also accept and take action.

I think, you know, all those three steps are actually happening today, so I feel confident about the future of Drupal.

[00:33:27] Michael Meyers: Yeah, no, I, I agree. That's something I, I, I see in different forums, you know, should I continue building in Drupal? Things have gotten more complex, you know, and it's, you know, Drupal's community has been amazing, but you know, some of these things are, you know, what have shaped and changed the community over time, you know, 20 years ago, you know, I was first involved.

It was, it was the SMB market, you know, it was small non-profits. People were using it for a simple blog and, you know, it's morphed to an enterprise platform. It always had a barrier to entry. You know, I don't know [00:34:00] like that a horrific Drupal learning curve, cartoon that like gives me nightmares. I'll dig that up.

I don't think, you know, I don't think we should be talking about it or pointing it out, but it's funny. And yeah, I mean, it's the, you know, the community, hasn't had a hard time transitioning in some case from 7 to 8, you know, the user base has changed, you know, as time goes on. And, but you know, I generally think that these are really good changes.

You know, some of them have been hard to make and I agree. I think there's a good, sense of what needs to be done. And, you know, just look at the marketplace, you know businesses like yours you know, Pantheon just raised an insane amount of money. Acquia was, you know, bought out for a billion dollars.

Like, you know, the economics of the, you know, the community and the business is just, you know, on fire. And so, you know, the, the people with the money are, are betting on the platform. And so. You know, I think [00:35:00] we have the community that can make these changes. I think all indicators are very positive that Drupal will continue to evolve and be an even better platform into the future.

And that's the only way it will exist in the future.

[00:35:13] Fred Plais: Yep. No 100% agree with everything you said, and I think the future is bright for Drupal. And I think, you know, the we shouldn't fear change. We shouldn't, you know, try and keep status quo. I think, you know, it's a, it's gonna work if we keep moving. And if we were aware of those those required changes and if we take action and and I, again, I feel, I feel good that this is going to happen.

[00:35:38] Michael Meyers: Definitely. So last question to wrap things up, if you know, you got to pass the torch tell me who should I interview next?

[00:35:49] Fred Plais: Okay. So you've talked to Ryan.

[00:35:52] Michael Meyers: I have not talked to Ryan yet. I can't believe that.

[00:35:55] Fred Plais: Yeah, you have to talk to Ryan, that's my absolute [00:36:00] first, a first choice here.

[00:36:03] Michael Meyers: Yeah.

[00:36:03] Fred Plais: Is Ryan Szrama, from Centarro..

[00:36:04] Michael Meyers: Definitely. I, I don't, I don't want to play favorites, but he's one of my favorite people and that for sure.

I just, you know, just such a wonderful person and a, and a great guy. So, I'll definitely add to my list and we'll reach out to him. I know that you're super busy. Platform is on fire. It's so great to see. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing this history and these fun stories. I really appreciate it.

[00:36:32] Fred Plais: It was my great pleasure. Thank you very much, Michael for this very pleasant conversation, that was just great to have all those memories back. So thanks for making that happen, very appreciative.

[00:36:44] Michael Meyers: Definitely this series is so much fun for me. I, look forward to it. I wish I, you know, I wish I could interview so many people and it's, it's such a great way to, to catch up.

So I love doing these, to our listeners. If you liked this talk, [00:37:00] please remember to upvote, subscribe and share it out. You can check out all our interviews in this series at tag1.com/20, as well as our past Tag1 Team Talks on all the latest technology topics at tag1.com/talks as always we'd love your input, feedback suggestions.

You know, you want to see us interview more people. You have topics you want us to cover. In other talks, please let us know. You can write to us at talks@tag1.com. That's tag the number one.com. Thank you again for tuning in take care.