Most of you in the Drupal community don't know me much - if at all. I haven't been checking in Drupal code constantly, so I don't show up in CVS logs or in IRC. But I've been increasingly involved with Drupal behind the scenes. Since you don't know me, I'll spend a few moments of my first blog post here telling you about how I got here, and where I hope we're headed.

I've spent the bulk of the last year focusing nearly entirely on Drupal - initially as a consultant using it to deliver websites for customers. Then I met Dries at Drupalcon in Sunnyvale in the spring of 2007. We felt an immediate friendship, and had similar opinions about the potential for Drupal - both its potential for use today to build great websites, as well as its potential to become a much more broadly-used platform.

Maybe just as importantly, we also agreed on what Drupal is missing - both from a technology as well as marketplace perspective - and what needs to be done to fill that gap. And, as that conversation continued, it was clear we wanted to work together to fix that problem.

The result is Acquia.

I'm both proud to be part of the Drupal community, and excited to be able to contribute the skills I have to make it better. I'm not a coder (anymore), but I do know business stuff, including how to raise capital and apply it for the benefit of all involved. I've built a commercial open source company once already, and am proud of our result. We did most things right, and even made a few mistakes - that I've hopefully learned from.

Dries and I intend that Acquia will follow the best practices of the best open source software companies, because they benefit both the community and the company. But the Drupal community and technology are unique. Accordingly, we're going to try some unique things in the way we run the company. We hope we can try them out with you - and that you'll tell us what you like, and what you don't like - without you throwing the baby (us) out with the bathwater (our experiments).

Dries and I share some key goals:

• First, to increase the number of people using Drupal by a factor of at least 10, if not more, in the next several years.
• Second, to invest focused attention on the software to make sure it fulfills its potential.
• Third, to build a company that respects the community, the Drupal way of doing things, and that (at the same time) can be a big commercial success.
• And finally, to build products and services that lots and lots of Drupal users will want - in order to build a successful company. We can only continue to do more and more for Drupal if we're making money. If we build stuff you want, we'll grow, which will help us invest more in Drupal. We hope it becomes a virtuous cycle.

We look forward to this ride together with you. We hope it's a fun, rockin', and exciting one.