[consulting] Consulting directory

[Boris Mann]

On 3/22/07, Chris Geoghegan <chris at imagexmedia.com> wrote:
> > In all honesty, it's nice,  but its not huge. It helps somewhat in
> > marketing, but only if you can duplicate it or produce the same
> > quality of work.
> >
>
> There are a lot of 'not-so-good-looking' Drupal sites out there.
> Without people who can make good looking Drupal (who may or may not
> also contribute modules), Drupal would not be picked up by bigger
> corporations/companies/organizations and Drupal would not be as
> popular. I haven't done vast research into this, but I am basing this
> off my experience. Getting a site to do what you want it to is only
> half the battle. Usability and design are necessity. One of the
> reasons I love Drupal is you can theme it so that it doesn't look
> like a content management system. That has been very important for
> our business and our clients. I believe that this would also be very
> important to developers/designers who are part of the community and
> receive funding from their clients to build contributed modules.
>

There are many many many ways to contribute *directly*. Documentation,
answering questions in forums, contributing modules, contributing
patches to modules or core, helping organize local user group meetups,
etc. etc.

Sorry, using Drupal to get paid to do work does NOT contribute back to
the base project. But it is your choice. In my opinion, contributions
that you do you get value back many fold in "community ROI" -- in
everything from increased exposure / marketing to having the community
work on the same things you need to build anyway.

For any busy consultants (all of us!) who feel they don't have time to
contribute in one of the ways I've mentioned....here's an easy one.
Have you all contributed a case study write up of sites that you've
built for clients?

The success stories section (http://drupal.org/node/15237) is not very
big: I ask everyone who posts in the "Drupal showcase" forum to take
the time to do a write up, but don't get a lot of takers. Case studies
like this *are* super useful, and welcomed.

Having trouble figuring out how to submit a handbook page? Email me
your case study directly, and I'll post it for you.

FYI, Drupal.org has a PageRank of 9. YouTube has a PageRank of 8.
Getting content on Drupal.org is good for your business, and good for
your clients' business.

(also, we're off topic -- what *I* was talking about was an offsite
service provider directory, NOT the Contributor list on Drupal.org
itself. And I hope you all know what you need to do if you DO want to
be on the Contributor list.)

-- 
Boris Mann
Skype borismann
http://www.bryght.com