[DUG-TO] Great Topic - Making Money With Drupal

[Michael Baynger]

Interesting points Andre. As someone who comes from a product design and
production background, I'm looking forward to hearing more about the Drupal
product-versus-service idea. I'm of course familiar with Aquia and
Development Seed but I'm not very familiar with their business models and
how they fit into the open source licensing context.

It also seems to echo something that James referred to in the last meetup -
that of the large core versus small core debate. I don't know a lot about
that history per se, but I have certainly noticed the significant usability
tensions between Drupal as an out-of-the-box web building system (larger
core) and Drupal as a flexible platform requiring considerable design and
development effort (smaller core). The two perspective seem to me like
traffic moving in opposite directions on the same side of the freeway.
Andre, you referred to 'rough edges' - I think that's being kind. From a
usability point of view this often resembles a multi-car pile up.

So I'm interested to learn more about how the rise (and apparent success) of
Drupal based products might be a response to this fundamental issue.

Cheers,

Michael
The User Advocate Group
"Profitability Through Usability"


On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Andre Molnar <andre at becircle.com> wrote:

> I'd be happy to offer any insights I have to the topic having been
> working with Drupal for several years now in a few different contexts
>
> - on my own
> - in a team working on multiple projects
> - in a team working on a single large project
>
> One of the most interesting shifts in the last 24 months is 'Drupal
> expertise' becoming a commodity.  This of course being a direct result
> of the explosive growth of Drupal and the number of people that are
> intimately familiar with it.
>
> Development shops don't benefit from economies of scale (since costs
> rise with capacity).  So as competition in Drupal development grows its
> increasingly difficult to make a go at it by creating 'one off'
> solutions for individual clients.  Its not a good time to start a Drupal
> development shop (and becoming less desirable to be a Drupal development
> shop).
>
> But, it is a very good time to come up with new Drupal based 'products'
> and create a business plan around them. Examples include the products
> coming out of Development Seed or Acquia.  Drupal continues to be rough
> around the edges when it comes to creating products (tough to deploy
> upgrades for example), but its really getting much easier to build them.
>
> Anyway, I'm starting to ramble a bit. Long story short, its an
> interesting time in the Drupal world - and I'd be glad to join in the
> conversation.
>
> andre
>
> Aidan Foster wrote:
> > I'd love to hear what people are doing with Drupal as a part of their
> > business models. I've got a small web development team and we've been
> > moving more and more towards a Drupal focus over the last few years.
> > Moving from static websites to Drupal based websites has required a
> > completely different approach to estimating costs, and pitching clients.
> > I'd love to learn more about how others are dealing with the issues
> > related estimates, and their development cycle which are key parts to a
> > project's profitability. I'd be happy to chip in my experiences either
> > as an audience member, or as mini-presentation.
> >
>
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