One of our presenters this year is Ivan Zugec, he's going to be talking about Media in Drupal 8. Media in Drupal has been a thrilling and often painful ride. I remember James Walker's talk in Barcelona in 2007 "Image handling in core... for real this time." 10 years later and we're hoping Drupal 8 has learned from Drupal 7 and that Media will be a stable platform with great WYSIWYG integration.
I've noticed that Ivan has been very busy on LinkedIn, so I thought I would ask him some questions about his business Webwash.
DrupalGov: So Ivan, is Webwash is your online training brand?
Ivan: This is my main company which I do all of my freelancing and contracting work under. I've recently started diversifying by offering online training. In the future I'll be offering in-person training as well. While I currently work on my own, Webwash is my main brand which will grow as my business grows.
DrupalGov: What are your plans for growth?
Ivan: With my training, I hope to offer different levels. You could start by purchasing a course, then if you need more support, I'd like to offer an online class. Then if someone needs even more support, I'd offer private consulting. With the free content, I want to get into more video and possibly live streaming.
DrupalGov: Are you looking to bring in more content authors and expand the brand?
Ivan: Yes, I want to bring in authors and pay them to write Drupal tutorials.
DrupalGov: What sort of consulting have you been doing?
Ivan: For the last couple of years my consulting has focused around helping teams build maintainable Drupal sites. That involves developing a process for deployment, development and module updates. Every website that I've worked on since mid 2014 has used the Paragraphs module. So I've worked with content editors and teach them how to use Paragraphs and understand the concept.
DrupalGov: What sort of problems do you see in Drupal that people could need training for?
Ivan: From a site building standpoint it's important to understand the fundamental systems in Drupal, i.e., fields (type, widget and formatters), entities/bundles, display modes and blocks. Once you know what these are then you can jump into more advanced topics such as Panels, Display Suite, etc...
DrupalGov: Do you think Drupal 8 is a good step for Drupal? Any favourite parts?
Ivan: I think Drupal 8 is a step in the right direction. I like the fact that new features are being added constantly and a new version is released every 6 months. The configuration management in Drupal 8 is amazing. I've probably spent hundreds of hours manually deploying changes in past versions. But now in Drupal 8, simply export your changes and you're good to go.
DrupalGov: Thanks for talking to us Ivan, good luck with Webwash and we look forward to your presentation!
