The past month has been filled with so many exciting changes it has taken a few weeks for it all to settle in. Between taking a developer position with Aten, traveling out to Denver for my first DrupalCon and driving a truck full of my stuff across Kansas, the opportunities for change have been abundant.
And one of these changes is the chance to develop with Drupal. I have seen and built all kinds of content management apps over the years as a web developer. This included building everything from simple forms that managed a single content type to a complete PHP framework and applications built on that. But most of the custom systems were just that: custom and closed off from collaborating with people outside of the organization. And even the other open source systems I developed for either seemed too focused on one type of site or almost unintuitive.
Luckily I also got to experience a great introduction to the Drupal community and my new coworkers by coming out for DrupalCon Denver. There were great sessions and plenty of chances to meet other developers from Denver and around the country, talk about projects, and drink some great Colorado brews. But mostly I got a good feel for the people involved in Drupal.
Drupal not only offers a powerful tool for creating engaging websites, but a chance to develop with others and to contribute to a larger community. And importantly this is a part of the Aten culture. You can see this in efforts like OpenAid. I look forward to helping with those projects and others that help developers and consumers.