drupal

Matthew Saunders

Drupal.org username: MatthewS

Introduction

I’m Matthew Saunders, a technologist, storyteller, and Drupal evangelist. I’ve been a part of the Drupal community since 2006, attending my first DrupalCon in 2007. Atlanta 2025 was my 26th. I’m a former Board Member of the Drupal Association, Chair of Drupal Colorado, and a founder of Drupalcamp Colorado — the longest-running DrupalCamp in North America. My leadership spans community governance, digital strategy, and accessible technology, with a growing focus on AI and neurodiversity advocacy.

Vision and Impact

I’ve led significant work in the AI space through my role as AI Ambassador for amazee.io. I’ve been building demos, writing policy, and evangelizing data-sovereign, enterprise-grade AI tools for Drupal. I’m also organizing the first Drupal AI hackathon at Drupal GovCon and leading sessions at multiple camps to make AI practical and approachable for site builders.

Parallel to this, I’ve continued my public advocacy for neurodiverse inclusion in tech. My session “The Neurodivergency Superpower: How Diverse Teams Function Better” has been featured at DrupalCon and regional camps. I’ve created a YouTube series (“My Neurodivergent Brain”) and lead Pfizer’s internal podcast on neurodiversity, offering a lived-experience lens to build inclusive cultures in open-source.

Community Contributions

• Co-founder and Chair of Drupalcamp Colorado (2007–present)
• Volunteer for Drupal GovCon 2025
• Founding member, Drupal Event Organizers Working Group (2019-2024)
• Spoken at over 30 world-wide events including 10 Drupalcons and numerous camps
• Former Director, Drupal Association Board (2013–2016)
• Organizer of the first DrupalAI Hackathon (2025, Drupal GovCon)
• Admin, Drupal Facebook group
• CoC contact 
• Contributor to community health initiatives

Current Roles

I currently work for amazee.io as their AI Ambassador on the Product Team. I’m Chair of Drupal Colorado. I’m a volunteer with Drupal GovCon. I’m an advisor to the Bluefly Collective. I’m a maintainer for 8 projects. You can see my LinkedIn profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmsaunders/ 

Why I’m Running Again

Drupal is at an inflection point. With the rapid adoption of AI and an urgent need for inclusive governance, the Drupal Association Board needs leaders with both technical insight and a strong community ethos. I bring both. I want to help shape our strategy around emerging technologies while reinforcing Drupal’s values of openness, accessibility, and shared growth.

Why Vote for Me?

I bring depth and breadth, from technical leadership to community-building, from nonprofit governance to enterprise-scale Drupal strategy. I’ve worked across agencies, startups, global corporations, and grassroots orgs. I’ve served on nonprofit boards, built digital teams, and shown up consistently for the Drupal community for nearly two decades. If elected, I’ll continue to be a connector, a challenger, and a champion for both innovation and inclusion.

Who are you? (biography/background)

I am Alexander Varwijk (Kingdutch on Drupal.org), born north of Amsterdam and currently living in the Dutch city of Enschede, near the German border. My programming journey began at a young age after seeing how an au-pair used Perl to maintain a Drum & Bass fan website. My first creation was a simple terminal calculator in Perl, but I quickly discovered the magic of building websites, starting with Dreamweaver before adding interactivity using PHP 4.4.

My path with Drupal began in 2012: for the new website of a local sports association I was looking for a tool that allowed me to build overviews for club members, teams, and matches. After building the first features of the website using Drupal 7 I was eager to learn more about the framework and its community, which led me to DrupalCon Prague in 2013. There, by chance, I was connected to other people from Enschede: my future colleagues at Open Social.

At the same time as getting to know Drupal I started my study of Electrical Engineering. I ended up spending more time with various committees for my study association as well as a two year board membership as president of the Vestingbar – a student run bar open 364 days of the year.

In 2016 I dropped out of my Electrical Engineering study to make room for my entrepreneurial interests: I started a craft-beer subscription service called Ontdekbier (using Drupal Commerce for the website); I started a study of Business Administration, and I joined GoalGorilla during their transition from Drupal agency to the product company now known as Open Social.

My craft-beer subscription service is no longer around. After meeting the marketing manager from Heineken at a beer sommelier course and learning of their many millions of euros of funding for BeerWulf in a bid to capture the craft-beer e-commerce market, I decided that that was not a market player I could compete with.

I'm still with Open Social, where as Technical Architect at Open Social, I help power some of the world's most impactful organizations through Drupal-based collaborative platforms, including the European Commission, World Bank, United Nations, and Greenpeace International.

In my time off I still enjoy programming, such as introducing async capabilities to Drupal. Besides that I love airplanes, poker – a source of global friendships, reading, speaking at conferences, and travelling. Interests that complement each other well. When I'm back at home I enjoy cycling with friends and I volunteer my time to help organize a local music festival every year.

Why are you running for a board seat at the Drupal Association? (mission/motivation)

Drupal is an amazing framework for modern day connected applications. Its community is vibrant and chooses the direction of the project through choosing where it decides to contribute. The Drupal Association as I understand it plays a vital role in ensuring Drupal's longevity and ensuring a healthy community by supporting the community and its contributors.

Three main aspects that excite me and motivate me to join the Drupal Association board are: Developer Advocacy and promoting Drupal outside our community; increasing attractiveness of Drupal Association sponsorship for organizations using Drupal as a tool; and the forming of a federated system of Drupal Associations to coordinate global and local tasks in supporting and growing our community.

While talking with developers at conferences outside of the Drupal community, their image of Drupal often does not seem to reflect the current state our framework offers. At the same time, developers working with Drupal seem to underestimate their options of sharing our message with people outside of our community.

As a Drupal Association board member I would like to initiate or boost a developer advocacy program that connects the amazing speakers that we have within the Drupal community to great non-Drupal conferences. Expanding our outreach efforts promotes Drupal as a technical tool and helps modernise its image while simultaneously allowing our community to learn from other technologies and tools.

The Drupal Association pitch for sponsorship is currently focused in large part around visibility within the Drupal community as a Drupal service provider. As a Drupal Association board member I want to help expand the pitch with one that appeals to companies that use Drupal as a development framework but do not resell Drupal itself, thereby growing the funding for the Drupal Association and the Drupal project.

The International Drupal Federation Initiative provides exciting opportunities. Many local associations already exist that know how to engage their local communities and grow usage and contributions within those spaces. There are also tasks that transcend national borders and can benefit from global cooperation. Developer advocacy, as well as crafting a clear and compelling story of why the individual associations and an overarching international association are important to any organization using Drupal, are prime examples.

Why should members vote for you? (qualifications)

My 13 years of experience in the Drupal ecosystem have shown me both the community's incredible strengths and the areas where we can improve. My contribution would be a combination of open source development experience – inside and outside of Drupal, a business administration background and my drive and energy to promote Drupal. I am able to evaluate the work of the Drupal Association through a strategic lens and translate the community's needs into actionable plans. My journey from building a local sports club

website to architecting platforms for organizations like the UN and European Commission has given me perspective on the broad spectrum of Drupal users and their diverse needs.

As a conference speaker and (co-)maintainer of multiple Drupal projects, I try to give back to the community that has given me so much. As a member of the board of the Drupal Association I can use my experience of turning ideas into workable solutions to further contribute to the community's growth and longevity.

I believe I can contribute meaningfully to the challenges facing Drupal and the Drupal Association. As our framework competes in an increasingly complex landscape, we need thoughtful approaches to marketing, funding and community growth. My entrepreneurial and product experience, combined with deep community involvement, gives me tools to help navigate the balance between innovation and stability, between open-source values and practical sustainability, that the Drupal Association must maintain.

I had been considering a self-nomination for the Drupal Association At-Large Board Seat a few times. This year, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. I've been a bit busy with baseball season kicking off (three kids, three teams 🫠) that I haven't written a blog yet, but I will, explaining why I've considered now the right time. 

Today we are talking about the Custom Field Module, what it does, and why you might want to use it with guest Andy Marquis. We’ll also cover Facet Bot Blocker as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/505

• Meet the Guest: Andy Marquee
• Module of the Week: Facet Bot Blocker
• Exploring the Custom Field Module
• Benefits and Use Cases of Custom Field Module
• Custom Field Module vs. Other Solutions
• Advanced Features and Integrations
• Reflecting on Past Projects and Key Value
• Use Cases and Flexibility of Custom Fields
• Advanced Features and Integrations
• Challenges and Limitations
• Future Roadmap and Improvements

Custom Field Module

Andy Marquis - drupal.org/project/custom_field apmsooner

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Norah Medlin - tekNorah

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you been looking for an inexpensive way to mitigate an upsurge of bot traffic on your Drupal site’s faceted search pages? There’s a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • Facet Bot Blocker
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Mar 2025, so about two months ago, by John Brandenburg (bburg) of Forum One
  • Versions available: 1.0.2 which support Drupal 10 and 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Number of open issues: 4 open issues, one of which is a bug, but it did have a fix merged 4 days ago
• Usage stats:
  • 106 sites
• Module features and usage
  • A number of sites are seeing a huge upswing in bot traffic, and quite often a big part of that bot traffic is on one or more pages with faceted search
  • Crawlers try to request every permutation of every possible combination of facets. If your page has multiple facets, and in particular facets that accept multiple values, the number of permutations becomes huge
  • Facet Bot Blocker works by allowing you to set a maximum number of facet requests to allow, what error to return, and a custom HTML message to return to blocked user agents
  • If you have Memcache or Redis available, it’s recommended to use the appropriate module, and Facet Bot Blocker will automatically store its settings there for reduced database reads
  • The project page is also clear that if you are able to use a true Web Application Firewall (like Cloudflare or Akamai), that would be a better strategy. But if you don’t have one available, Facet Bot Blocker can help to mitigate the surges in bot traffic that are causing problems for many Drupal sites, particularly those hosted on platforms that charge based on usage

Dear Readers,

Drupal isn’t struggling because it’s weak. It’s struggling because it doesn’t know its true strength. Like an elephant nudged around by smaller animals, it forgets that it can knock down walls if it just turns and pushes. We have spent years celebrating flexibility, adaptability, and a proud open-source ethos. But in trying to be everything to everyone, Drupal often ends up being invisible to those who need it most.

As Alejandro Moreno López points out, Drupal’s real power lies in what it enables without custom code. It is a low-code platform that hides in plain sight, quietly powering some of the most complex digital experiences across various industries. However, without sharp, targeted messaging and tools that speak the language of business problems, that power remains locked behind a technical perception. Most people do not explore Drupal because they do not see what it solves. They see a CMS, not a solution.

What if that changed? What if Drupal led with pre-built, industry-specific solutions? What if it made the first five minutes inspiring instead of intimidating? The pieces are already there. The potential is proven. What Drupal needs now is to step into its strength with clarity, coordination, and a message that leaves no room for doubt. When the elephant finally moves with purpose, it will no longer be ignored.

INTERVIEW

• Marcus Johansson's Return to Drupal with AI at Core
• From Drupal Core to Static Site Innovation: Samuel Mortenson on Tome, SFC, and Open Source Legacy

DISCOVER DRUPAL

• Why Drupal’s Greatest Strength Might Be Its Biggest Marketing Challenge
• Dropmin: What Is It and Why Does It Exist?
• Drupal “Back-to-Basics” Initiative Seeks New Leader to Boost Beginner Support
• Drupal Core Names Cristina Chumillas and Emma Horrell as First UX Managers
• Drupal Site Template Marketplace Moves Forward with Governance and Business Model Drafts
• New Update on api.drupal.org Highlights Supported Drupal Versions
• Roland Obermair Announces Development of NextCloud WebDAV Client for Drupal

EVENTS

• Looking Beyond the Horizon at DrupalJam 2025
• Barcamp Perpignan 2025 to Host In-Person Drupal Event on June 19–21
• Stanford WebCamp 2025: What We Hosted, Heard, and Learned
• Annertech and Platform.sh Sponsor Networking Reception at LocalGov Drupal Camp 2025 in Westminster
• Get Ready for a Week Full of Drupal: June 2–8, 2025

ORGANIZATION NEWS

• Pantheon Launches GitHub Integration, Upgraded Drupal Module, and Trust Center in Spring 2025 Update
   

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you, 
Sincerely 
Alka Elizabeth 
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

Running for the Drupal Association Board Again Because the Work Isn't Finished

IXP Initiative Co-Creator | Technical Account Manager | Community Contributor

I'm running for the Drupal Association Board again because the work we started isn't finished. When I first nominated myself in 2023, I talked about the need for better regional representation and sustainable talent pipelines. Today, as several major DA initiatives directly address these challenges, we need to ensure they work for everyone - from small regional agencies to large global companies, from new developers to experienced contributors. If you're a member of the Drupal community who values global inclusion and sustainable growth, I'm asking for your support in this important moment of transformation.

The Global Community Vision

I have worked for years within the Drupal community in both Latin America and the United States. I helped organize DrupalCon Latin America back in 2015, and honestly, I want to bring more opportunities like that to LATAM and other regions that get overlooked.

But this isn't just about Latin America. It's about recognizing that Drupal's future depends on communities everywhere having pathways to contribute and grow.

We're in a chicken and egg situation across many areas - community growth, code contribution, sustainability, and business development. For Drupal to grow at all levels of the ecosystem pyramid, we need more popularity and adoption. But this requires support from larger agencies. At the same time, the DA needs to develop sustainable revenue beyond just big agencies and DrupalCon North America. The challenge is that we still need those larger players to help create realistic pathways for regional agencies to participate and thrive. Breaking this cycle requires action on multiple fronts at once.

The International Federation initiative offers a way to break through some of these interconnected challenges by creating structures where global communities can actually participate, potentially moving all these areas forward together.

Building Solutions, Not Just Identifying Problems

The thing I'm most proud of is co-creating the IXP Initiative. We saw this fundamental problem - new developers couldn't get hired without experience, but couldn't get experience without being hired. So we built something to fix it. Working with other members of the community and the Drupal Association, we turned this idea into a real program. Now we have companies actually participating, offering structured pathways for new developers, and getting 250 contribution credits for each successful engagement.

This proves we can move beyond just talking about problems to building actual solutions that strengthen the entire ecosystem.

Why Regional Perspective Matters Now

My experience working in both Colombia and the United States since moving to the US in 2007 taught me how regional economic differences create both challenges and huge opportunities for Drupal.

At a recent board meeting, I brought up how a $1,000 partnership fee that works in the US becomes impossible in countries where monthly minimum wage is $200-300. These aren't just numbers - they represent talented developers who want to contribute but need different pathways to participation.

The International Federation initiative—a concept currently being explored to potentially give regional Drupal communities more formal representation—creates exactly the framework we need to address this. This structured approach can transform regional participation by providing clear business value to local companies, creating a more accessible path to becoming Drupal Certified partners while strengthening DA revenue.

Why The Timing Is Perfect

Several major initiatives are reshaping Drupal's global landscape:

1. Drupal CMS: Democratizing Enterprise Functionality

Drupal CMS now delivers enterprise-grade functionality to smaller markets and diverse budget contexts. With out-of-the-box features that previously required expensive custom development and no CS degree needed, Drupal has become accessible to communities previously excluded from its benefits.

2. International Federation: Creating Global Governance

The International Federation initiative is creating formal structures for global governance. With the working group starting in June 2025, we need board members who understand regional economic realities and can help shape this federation to truly serve diverse communities.

3. Marketplace Initiative: Enabling New Business Models

The Marketplace initiative is analyzing the feasibility of creating a marketplace for templates and quick site deployment options. I believe having quick ways to spin off a site that makes it 70% ready with Drupal CMS, decent price hosting to start, and templates that bring functionality and design very quickly, opens new paths to new business models. Add IXP to that and you have the affordable workforce to work on lower budget situations.

All these initiatives are interconnected: Drupal CMS makes participation technically possible, the International Federation creates the governance structure, and the Marketplace opens business opportunities. Making them work together is how we'll create a balanced ecosystem that serves both community values and business sustainability.

Balance Between Community and Business

I understand we need a sustainable Drupal Association that balances community needs with business realities. I recognize the importance of balancing community, open source, and businesses, but the reality is today's Drupal global activities sometimes lack on the business part.

We can do better. When I proposed bringing back DrupalCon Latin America, I suggested adapting the fair-style event model common in our region. Organizations pay for exhibition spots and actively invite end users, creating genuine business opportunities alongside community building.

Another example is how IXP-trained resources could enable agencies to open a Drupal CMS line of business for smaller budget projects. This creates opportunities to serve clients with limited resources - whether they're smaller companies, organizations in developing markets, or even departments within large enterprises looking for internal solutions. This approach simultaneously develops talent, creates business opportunities, and expands Drupal's reach.

I've been writing about ways to help make contribution more economically sustainable, including authentic community contribution approaches and ideas about how Drupal.org could better connect businesses with service providers across different economic regions.

What I'd Focus On

As a board member, I'd focus on:

• Ensuring the International Federation serves all regions - by making regional economic realities central to governance structures
• Creating opportunities in underrepresented regions - by expanding IXP's successful model to build global talent pipelines
• Generating economic value for regional developers - by supporting DA initiatives like the Marketplace for sustainable growth
• Creating opportunities for the entire global community - by connecting diverse economic contexts to build meaningful bridges

The Work Continues

I've spent years contributing to the Drupal community and creating programs that develop new talent. I've written extensively about community-first approaches that create sustainable business value. Now I want to bring that same focus to board-level decision making as these critical initiatives unfold.

The future of Drupal depends on communities everywhere having real pathways to contribute and grow. With the International Federation, Drupal CMS accessibility, and Marketplace opportunities all developing simultaneously, the board needs to ensure these initiatives work together to build a truly global community where everyone (regardless of region or economic context) can participate meaningfully.

If you believe in this vision for a truly global Drupal, please:

1. Cast your vote during the election period (June 15-30, 2025)
2. Share this nomination with your colleagues who care about global representation
3. Reach out to me with questions or ideas at carlos.ospina@palcera.com

Together, we can build a Drupal ecosystem that works for everyone, everywhere.

– Carlos

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