Drupal was released in 2001 by Dries Buytaert and is the third most popular CMS in the world. Up till now, over 1 million websites are powered by Drupal with the CMS downloaded over 25 million times. Its current market share is 4.8% and all these numbers show how this CMS is climbing up the ladder of popularity slowly, but steadily.
The Drupal community is definitely one of the most engaging communities and its influencers are spread all around the globe. No matter which country you talk about, Drupal has its experts and fans everywhere. In this article, I have covered top Drupal contributors and influencers from Australia. Have a look at these community champions of Drupal from Australia. And as the case with any of the lists, this one is no exception.
This list is not in any order. If you happen to know anyone from Australia who is a Drupal specialist or influencer, feel free to share with me.
For now, let’s begin with some of the influencers that I have found for Drupal in Australia.
Dave Hall
LinkedIn: Dave Hall
Twitter: Dave Hall
Dave is a Drupal architect and deployment specialist. He is the owner of Dave Hall Consulting which he started in 2001. Dave is a regular contributor of Drupal and has worked as a senior advisor on Drupal 8 workflow initiative. He is in the IT industry since a decade and also has command on PHP, Web applications etc.
Jibran Ijaz
LinkedIn: Jibran Ijaz
Twitter: Jibran Ijaz
Jibran Ijaz is the only core Drupal contributor from Pakistan. He currently works at PreviousNext in Australia as a Senior Drupal developer. He is known as a man with a vision and has worked as a Drupal Module developer and maintainer. Jibran has worked with Motorola too and has command over Web development and PHP.
Donna Benjamin
LinkedIn: Donna Benjamin
Twitter: Donna Benjamin
Donna is a Drupal Association member and has held senior positions in her career. Currently she is working as the project lead at Catalyst IT Australia. Donna has an experience of over two decades in the IT industry and is the director of Drupal Association since past 5 years. Apart from Drupal, Donna likes to work on Open source, Web development, and linux etc.
Gordon Heydon
LinkedIn: Gordon Heydon
Twitter: Gordon Heydon
Gordon has credit of contributing Drupal on htmlarea and filestore2. He also modified the image modules in Drupal. He is the owner of Heydon Consulting and has been working as a senior information technology consultant and contractor since over a decade. Other than Drupal, Gordon has command on MySQL, and Open Source technologies etc.
Nick Schoonens
LinkedIn: Nick Schoonens
Nick works as a senior Drupal developer at Flight Center, a CMS digital agency. He is also a Drupal association member and is creating Drupal based websites since 2005. Nick also works as a freelancer and other than Drupal, his other work favorites are SEO, web development, and CSS.
John Saward
LinkedIn: John Saward
Twitter: John Saward
John is a vision leader and works as a consultant Drupal engineer at Interactive Eagles. John is a Drupal association member too and has worked as a freelancer on different Drupal projects. Apart from Drupal, John is also good at SEO, PHP, and Web development etc.
Murray Woodman
LinkedIn: Murray Woodman
Twitter: Murray Woodman
Murray is a co founder of Morpht, that is a Drupal development company. He is also a project contributor for Drupal. Murray was organizer of DrupalCamp Sydney in 2014. Murray also worked as Drupal consultant and has command on Web development and Information architecture etc.
Ivan Zugec
LinkedIn: Ivan Zugec
Twitter: Ivan Zugec
Ivan is a senior Drupal consultant currently working as a director at WebWash. He has an extensive experience of more than 10 years in Drupal development and is a Drupal association member as well. Ivan has proficient in jQuery, PHP and Javascript etc.
Vladimir Roudakov
LinkedIn: Vladimir Roudakov
Twitter: Vladimir Roudakov
Vladimir has been the coordinator for DrupalSouth and is a software developer and a senior Drupal solution architect. He is proficient in Drupal 8 and is a Drupal association member. Vladimir currently works as a software development lead at XVT Solutions. Apart from Drupal, Vladimir has command over jQuery, MySQL, PHP, and HTML5 etc.
Alex Skrypnyk
LinkedIn: Alex Skrypnyk
Twitter: Alex Skrypnyk
Alex previously worked at Technocrat as a senior developer. Currently, he works as a software engineer at his own venture Alex.Designworks. Alex is a Drupal association member and Acquia Certified Drupal Developer. Other than Drupal, Alex likes to work on Javascript, PHP, and CSS etc.
James Gollan
LinkedIn: James Gollan
Twitter: James Gollan
James is a freelance Drupal development consultant. He currently works at Acquia as a technical team lead. He is a Drupal association member and has been a Senior Drupal developer. James has years of experience with Drupal and is a specialist of CSS, HTML etc.
Owen Lansbury
LinkedIn: Owen Lansbury
Twitter: Owen Lansbury
Owen is the co founder of PreviousNext, a Drupal strategy, design and development firm. He currently works as a managing director there. His venture, PreviousNext is one of the best Drupal agencies in Australia and other than Drupal, Owen has interests in information architecture, user experience, e-commerce etc.
Khalid Saifullah
LinkedIn: Khalid Saifullah
Khalid is a Drupal fanatic from Bangladesh. He currently works at Equiem Australia as a software engineer. Khalid has an extensive experience of more than a decade in software engineering, web development and is a Drupal association member. Other than Drupal, Khalid has command over Linux and PHP etc.
Adam Donnison
LinkedIn: Adam Donnison
Twitter: Adam Donnison
Adam is a Drupal association member with practical experience of more than a decade in web development and the software industry. He currently works at MariaDB Corporation as a WebOps Manager. Other than Drupal, Adam is a specialist of MySQL, Open Source, and Databases etc.
Sam Becker
LinkedIn: Sam Becker
Twitter: Sam Becker
Sam is a Drupal association member and currently works at PreviousNext as a Drupal Consultant. Sam has an experience of more than five years in the web development industry and other than Drupal, he loves to work on CSS, and PHP etc.
Chris Beyer
LinkedIn: Chris Beyer
Chris is a Drupal association member and currently works at V.I as a CTO. He also works as an independant consultant. His clientele is worth to watch with clients like Nissan, Disney, Cadbury etc. He has an experience of more than 17 years in the IT industry and is a jack of all trades.
Chris O’Neill
LinkedIn: Chris O’Neill
Chris is a Drupal association member and currently works at Acquia as a Senior manager of support for the regions of Asia, Pacific and Japan. He has an experience of over a decade. Other than Drupal, his interests are in Information architecture, User experience, and Web development etc.
Joshua Farry
LinkedIn: Joshua Farry
Twitter: Joshua Farry
Joshua is a freelance Drupal developer and is a Drupal association member. He has years of experience under his arsenal and is a Drupal fanatic. Other than Drupal, Joshua specializes in jQuery, PHP, and Javascript etc.
Lee Rowlands
LinkedIn: Lee Rowlands
Twitter: Lee Rowlands
Lee is a senior Drupal developer at PreviousNext. He is into the Drupal coding business since 2007 and has command on Web development and PHP. His linkedin connections say that he is a developer that everybody wants in their team. By the way, Lee has a website too.
Final Thoughts
If you are a true Drupal fan or looking to become a Drupal developer or if you are eager to learn more about the world’s most secure content management system, then you need to follow these Drupal influencers from Australia. You can follow them to know what is happening in the Drupal community and what to expect from this CMS in the future. Let me know how well you found the list to be and if you have some good influencers from Australia in the community of Drupal, then feel free to mention them in the comments below.
Tahha Ashraf
Tahha Ashraf is a Digital Content Producer at Cloudways, a Managed Cloud Hosting Platform. He loves talking about brands and writes content related to online marketing. He is fond of creativity and writes poetry in his free time.