I.T. Rockstar

Drupal Geek; Changing the world, one node at a time

"Saving the world, one node at a time" is what I do.

I build web-apps for organisations that change the world. The video demonstrates The Hub Map; a web-application I built that promotes awareness of human-rights issues worldwide. (WITNESS Hub is an initiative of another great Rockstar, Peter Gabriel! hub.witness.org). With my colleagues at CivicActions, I work with groups like Greenpeace, Amnesty-International, Creative-Commons and many other world-changing groups.

When not empowering those larger organizations, I work on Drupal (http://tinyurl.com/bevan-on-drupal-org). Drupal is the platform that powers those organizations' websites. Plus many others such as The Onion, Otago Daily Times, NY-Observer, MyPlay.com, MTV.co.uk, Ubuntu, SpreadFirefox.com, Sorted.org.nz, Beehive.govt.nz, Greens.org.nz and hundreds-of-thousands more (http://tinyurl.com/number-of-drupal-sites).

My most significant Drupal-contribution is vertical-tabs. Vertical-tabs make Drupal's forms significantly easier-to-use, making it faster and easier for millions of Drupal users to edit website content with less hassle! (http://tinyurl.com/vertical-tabs-civicactions)

I contribute heavily to many aspects of Drupal; bug-fixes, patches, patch-reviews, features and new addons. And especially Drupal's usability;
I'm on the UX-team (groups.drupal.org/uxteam).
I attended formal usability-testing, at my own expense, to discover and document Drupal-usability problems.
I was a mentor in Google-Summer-of-Code-2008 for the Usability-Testing-Suite, which will facilitate more Drupal usability-testing.

Drupal is built by a huge community of developers. That community is another of my passions;
I administer http://groups.drupal.org/new-zealand.
I found sponsorship and co-organized DrupalSouth, NZ's first nation-wide Drupal event.
I mentor less-experienced Drupal developers and pair-up projects with Drupal developers who contact me through http://Drupal.geek.nz, my personal/professional blog.
I regularly give technical/HOWTO presentations.

I built the Internet-Blackout-NZ Drupal-module to promote the campaign that resulted in the s92a-withdrawal.

I built a web-app that comprehensively calculates environmental, social and economic impacts of proposed hydro-electric power-stations from a few inputs. I designed a geographic-algorithm that determines the reservoir's shape, area and volume from just one user-input line on a map, and public topographic data.

On the commercial side, I single-handedly built BWMsnow.co.nz and SkateGear.co.nz; NZ's first and largest online snowboard/ski and skateboard stores.
I built http://Feriana.co.nz, an online product portfolio, in just 3 days.

I'm not short of paying-work, but it's the contributions and community that I'm passionate about. However non-billable work takes it's toll! I want to go to DrupalCon-Paris where I can meet other developers, better supporting and grow the Drupal-community, and further empower millions of Drupal-users and organisations that are changing the world, one node at a time. Winning IT-Rockstar will make DrupalCon-Paris possible!

---