Alejandro Moreno Lopez is a software engineer/architect who has worked in different roles, from pure development, to leading small and medium teams, to co-founding three different companies with different partners in technology, content management, marketing online and tourism. He's also been lucky enough to work and lead some of the biggest enterprise projects in Drupal like Royal Mail, Parcelforce, and BBC.
[ENG] Bursting the Bubble: Why Code Alone Won’t Save the Open Web
We built it. We optimized it. We secured it. But outside of our issue queues and Slack channels, does the wider tech world know—or care? For years, the Drupal community has suffered from a "build it and they will come" mentality. We have created one of the most robust platforms on the web, yet we often find ourselves preaching to the converted in a comfortable, self-referential bubble. In this session, I will share the uncomfortable reality of taking the Drupal Association to Web Summit Lisbon—a massive, generalist tech event where "Drupal" was just another booth in a sea of startups. I will share the messy details of what happens when you step out of the "Drupal Island" and face the market head-on. But this is not a talk about marketing; it is a talk about survival. And it is not a talk about Drupal. It’s about open source. As developers, we have a responsibility that goes beyond code quality. We need to confront the "Tragedy of the Commons" that threatens open source projects: everyone relies on the ecosystem, but few invest in its external visibility. I will explore how our technical decisions—from DX to API design—either reinforce our isolation or help us burst the bubble. Following keynote deliveries at DrupalCamp France and Drupal Iberia, and being featured at Drupalcamp England and invited to Drupalcamp Finland, I am bringing this mission to CMSConf. This session is a strategic roadmap for how we, as a community, can export our excellence. and reach outside our comfort zones.