Interview with Kevin Kaland, aka wizonesolutions: Towards a more and more decoupled Drupal

Agiledrop is highlighting active Drupal community members through a series of interviews. Now you get a chance to learn more about the people behind Drupal projects. 

Meet Kevin Kaland, perhaps more easily recognized by his Twitter handle wizonesolutions, the digital wizard responsible for the FillPDF module. In this interview, he talks about his first interactions with Drupal and reveals his thoughts on the future of Drupal as a decoupled system. 

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

I’m originally from the US, but I’ve been living in Europe (Norway and Slovenia) for the past 6 years.

I maintain the FillPDF module and run an associated software-as-a-service business called FillPDF Service.

Professionally, I’m a software developer. I develop and maintain websites, usually with Drupal.

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

I first encountered Drupal when volunteering on a nonprofit’s web team. I got familiar with it, and when I started WizOne Solutions, I did a good amount of work with it. I didn’t get involved in the community until Autumn 2010, a little over a year after. The community was welcoming enough that I began attending meetups and conferences regularly.

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

Learning Drupal 8 was fairly difficult at first, but I was impressed that the community managed to release it. It took a long time to come out.

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

I usually avoid trying, haha. But seriously, if they don’t know what it is, I just describe it as a tool for making websites.

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

It’s always hard to say. I have a couple thoughts, though:

• It will become more and more of a content administration backend coupled with single-page applications on the user-facing side that simply exchange data with Drupal. This is typically called “decoupled Drupal.”
• If the Promote Drupal initiative is successful, it will be marketed as compliant with legal accessibility guidelines.
• As ready-made Drupal distributions become better, it will become faster to build effective sites.

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

Code-wise, the FillPDF module :) the Drupal 8 version was released on the same day Drupal 8 came out.

Community-wise, probably my DrupalCon Vienna session. It was my first DrupalCon session, and it went alright. I also made a diagram for it that is now in the Drupal Commerce migration docs.

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

The Promote Drupal initiative! Everything else is dependent on there being enough Drupal projects to pay the bills!

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

I like traveling, hiking, and learning languages. I’m currently studying Romanian on Duolingo in preparation for DrupalDevDays Transylvania.