Can the Drupal community expand by 100X? Yes! And Drupal Gardens will help.

As the product manager of Drupal Gardens, my days at Drupalcon last month were filled with product demos and discussions about Drupal Gardens. The product was previewed last fall at Drupalcon in Paris, but it wasn't yet in beta. This Drupalcon was a different story. I was able to talk to dozens of Gardens beta testers each day and meet new people who wanted to use it. The thing that pleased me most was how excited new Drupal users are about Drupal Gardens. Each morning, people came by our booth to proudly tell us that they had built their first Drupal site the night before! In demo after demo, lots of people bust out with "This is exactly what I need!". The ThemeBuilder was a key reason for the excitement and people are enthusiastic about being able to create a great-looking site quickly. But for people who are new to Drupal, the other Gardens features are just as important. The site templates, ability to turn features on/off, built-in wysiwyg editor, media browser, and video tutorials all help to shorten their Drupal learning curve.

Drupal's popularity is soaring and the number of people who want to user Drupal is growing exponentially. This includes site developers, site designers, agencies, and business people who are savvy enough to know that Drupal is the way to go. Across the board, these different groups are viewing Drupal Gardens as a fast path to get into a Drupal site and learn how to use Drupal.