Interview with Adam Bergstein, aka Nerdstein: Should Drupal 8 core development slow down?

Agiledrop is highlighting active Drupal community members through a series of interviews.

Adam Bergstein is the maintainer of SimplyTest.me, runs the Drupal Coffee Exchange and participates in the Governance Task Force that just released its community proposal. Learn how Adam, aka Nerdstein, feels about Drupal 8 core development.
 

1. Please tell us a little about yourself. How do you participate in the Drupal community and what do you do professionally?

I go by [the nick name] Nerdstein and have been a part of the Drupal community for quite some time. My main contributions are porting/supporting Drupal 8 modules, giving talks at events, maintaining SimplyTest.me, running the Drupal Coffee Exchange and recently participating in the Governance Task Force.

I live in the United States with my wife and two daughters, whom I adore. I currently serve as the VP of Engineering for Hook 42 but had previous roles at CivicActions, Acquia and Penn State University. I have a masters in Information Security, and love working with teams, mentoring/enablement, architecture, security, Agile and DevOps.

 

2. When did you first came across Drupal? What convinced you to stay, software or the community, and why?

I started looking at Drupal during an evaluation of a project. This was right around the time that the business/agency ecosystem was just starting to take shape. While I was a bit intimidated by all of the new terminology and my lack of understanding open source communities, we selected Drupal. A vendor and I were impressed by how much progress was able to be made thanks to both core and contrib. 

While that piqued my interest, it still took me a long time to understand the community and to contribute. I attended Drupaldelphia back in 2014. I learned a lot, made several community connections, and really enjoyed it. At that point, I knew I wanted to participate and got the confidence to do so. 

I’ve always valued both, the people and the efforts of our vast community. We have some incredibly unique, fun and talented people that contribute in meaningful ways. I’m routinely impressed by how we face and solve hard problems. There is an incredible impact when we add up our collective efforts. I look at what we do each day and I’m proud to even have a small part in it.

 

3. What impact has Drupal made on you? Is there a particular moment you remember?

It’s made a huge impact. It’s allowed me to grow professionally and provide for my family. All of this while maintaining a feeling that I’m serving clients and for a greater good through the community efforts.

I remember the moment I went to Boston to the interview with Acquia, which was my first Drupal-centric position. I had not travelled much professionally, rarely attended community events, and generally had a sense of imposter syndrome (I shouldn’t even be here, sort of thing). I was surprised at how relevant my Drupal experience was, and knew this was the start of something much larger. 

 

4. How do you explain what Drupal is to other, non-Drupal people?

Basically a bunch of really cool people building technology together. People are shocked to learn how a significant number of (mostly) volunteers across the globe are able to come together to build software that is widely adopted. It seems a bit far-fetched at first, but I think people understand there is something larger and impactful happening in our community. I often compare this to proprietary efforts, like Microsoft, and the analogy is better understood. 

 

5. How did you see Drupal evolving over the years? What do you think the future will bring?

I actually have a blog post I’ve been drafting for several months on this very topic. I feel like we need to evolve both, the technology and our community. It is non-trivial to answer, and I need to state that this is my opinion. 

Technically speaking, I’d like to see Drupal core slow down on adding new features and focus on stability. The recent additions of Unami, media, layout builder and a stable migrate is incredibly impactful for Drupal as a product. I’d much prefer if we pause, reflect on what we’ve learned and polish what we have. Prioritizing and resolving already known open issues would stabilize Drupal and clean up a lot of the small things people find frustrating. The initiative around Composer-related improvements is a great example of something we learned and need to prioritize. And I sense there is a lot we can clean up in the core, like View Modes and the Block system, that could be incrementally improved to promote usability and consistency between features.

Community-wise, I would simply reference the proposal we have now released from the Governance Task Force. We proposed recommendations to several aspects of the community. A lot of work and deliberation went into the recommendations, and do a much better job communicating them than I ever could myself. 

 

6. What are some of the contribution to open source code or community that you are most proud of?

I am very proud of the opportunity I had to serve on the Governance Task Force. I see so much potential to help the community from the work done by the task force. I was so overwhelmingly impressed by my peers on the task force. It was a dream team of some of the most thoughtful, smart and easy-to-work-with individuals I’ve ever collaborated with. 

 

7. Is there an initiative or a project in Drupal space that you would like to promote or highlight?

I’ll take the time to highlight three things and would ask anyone who is interested in participating to reach out to me.

1. SimplyTest.me will be going through some technical modernization that includes a new Drupal 8 front-end and the underlying tools that provision instances.
2. We’re expanding the Drupal Coffee Exchange to better support international audiences. If you and others in your country enjoy coffee, please sign up! It’s a lot of fun for people.
3. As part of the Governance Task Force, we publicly released a proposal and created issues for an open commentary period for the community. Get involved. You may have better ideas to contribute or be able to provide additional context to help move the efforts forward. 

 

8. Is there anything else that excites you beyond Drupal? Either a new technology or a personal endeavorment. 

I always rave about my two beautiful kids, my love for craft beer and my foodie tendencies. But lately, I have been trying to prioritize my physical health by running. Over the last two years, I have participated in over ten races and very recently was able to run a ten-mile run (~15K). For several years I focused on my education, jobs and family needs, while my physical health was not as good as it should have been. I have enjoyed running routinely and shocked by how much it helps relieves stress, gives me some fresh air and helps me remain balanced.