Ryan Szrama, a long-term Drupal ally and the founder of Centarro (formerly CommerceGuys and Ubercart), took on to elaborately dissect and discuss Dries Butyaert’s keynote presentation at DrupalCon Pittsburg 2023. The blog titled “Innovating with Drupal’s Core Competency” urges the Drupal community to highlight the distinctive contributions of Drupal to open-web and foster innovation within their core expertise.

Ryan initially skims through the keynote presentation’s significant parts, where Butyaert heavily emphasized the DrupalCon Pittsburg theme of innovation while introducing the audience selection of proposals that would receive “Pitch-Burgh” innovation grants. Notably, there were also discussions about the Single Directory Components aimed to simplify Drupal theming, and it garnered much attention. The Drupal Association Board endorsed an Open Web Manifesto coordinating their efforts for a more significant movement for an innovative, inclusive, and open web. 

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The blog says the goal is to combat walled gardens and proprietary platforms that compromise users’ rights to privacy and property. The focus is on promoting an open web ecosystem and making it the better web, even in the realms of eCommerce platforms. Ryan encourages other community members to embrace the Open Web Manifesto aiming for a unified vision of the web. Innovative discussions are underway, particularly within the Drupal Commerce context as it is said in Drupal, “the drop is always moving.” The intention is not just maintenance but actively outperforming proprietary competitors.

Then the fundamental question arises, “What is Drupal’s core competency?” While Ryan is short of an indecisive answer for the question, it likely revolves around “content modeling, organization, and distribution.” Drupal undoubtedly excels in aspects boasting advantages in its entity data model, Search API, access control systems, and API-based content access. While it may lag behind other platforms in user-centric areas, Drupal’s core strengths remain undefeated. Hence, survival against proprietary and open-source rivals hinges on preserving excellence in Drupal’s core competency. 

Dries Butyaert’s appeal to bloom a thousand flowers in the DrupalCon Pittsburg is a strong call for action. Ryan wishes the same for Drupal Commerce, where complex product data models, catalog optimization, and managing composite entities pose content challenges. 

Following Dries’ demonstration of the OpenAI integration module, he proposes leveraging LLMs like ChatGPT to assist ambitious site builders by analyzing content libraries and business rules to propose Drupal-optimized content architectures, thus enhancing productivity.

To drive innovation, Ryan Szrama suggests a rubric for assessing opportunities aligned with the vision of open web staying close to Drupal’s core competency. Collaboration is welcomed to amplify ideas and initiatives, meeting the necessities and ensuring sustainable relevance. While the author acknowledges the constraints in achieving such a mission, the call for the community is to engage in collective advancement.

For more information about “Fostering Innovations with Drupal’s Core Competency” and other resources, kindly read the full blog post.