In the Spring of 2007, I teamed up with Partners in Health, a non-profit building hospitals in developing countries. We had a long list of ideas for an intranet and for a new public site and needed a tool with a lot of flexibility. We picked Drupal because of the active community, the growing collection of modules, and the hope that non-engineers could administer the sites. The Partners in Health sites went up fast. In a matter of weeks, people from around the world were downloading and using materials from the sites to help train health workers in rural parts of Africa and Latin America. As a non-techie, it was fantastic to be able to create new tools as fast as we could come up with ideas. We would talk about a new feature and have it live on our site a few hours later. This was the way the web was supposed to work!

Everyone should be able to use the web to communicate in new ways - money or technical knowledge shouldn't be a barrier. So when I learned that Acquia needed someone to head up product management, I jumped at the chance to join the team. Working with Acquia would be a way to help get Drupal in to the hands of more people, and at the same time help support the community to continue to make Drupal even better. My work with Partners in Health was winding down, so the timing was perfect. Prior to my work with non profits, I managed the eRoom.net hosted service at EMC, and was in product management at Netscape and Broderbund software.

I joined Acquia at Drupalcon in Szeged while I was ramping down my former job. Then I joined Acquia full-time about a week before the launch. It's been a crazy and exciting time. My role as Director of Product Management is to make sure that Acquia's plans for rolling out new product and services reflect what Acquia customers need most. I'll hear what you need by talking to some of you individually, inviting you to small feedback sessions, talking to you in forums, and collecting your opinions through surveys. You have an open invitation to contact me any time with questions about our roadmap.

Speaking of our roadmap, we've posted the latest plans for Acquia Drupal here and the Acquia Network here. Please post a comment on these pages and tell us what you think about what's there and what's missing. We want to hear from Drupal experts, newbies, and even non-users alike.

We've also created a short survey to gather feedback from you. Feel free to post your thoughts on our roadmap pages or tell us what you think via the survey - or both. And if you haven't tried the Acquia Network yet, jump over here to get your free subscription ASAP.