A decade ago, I wrote a White Paper that 10x’d my credibility an open source community that I was otherwise unknown in.

Crazy part? I wasn’t an expert on the subject (but I became one in the process).

Here’s the backstory of the Drupal PCI Compliance White Paper /1 Preface.
This is not a humblebrag. It's a pattern that basically anyone can follow to achieve a similar result.

Tech changes fast, and this creates knowledge gaps. Find a particularly hard and expensive gap, and you can become a valuable resource in a community. /2

Remember John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" from 1995? Let's see what holds true 🧵

eff.org/de/cyberspace-… "You have no sovereignty where we gather."

"We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth."

My first (big) breakthrough in the tech startup scene?

It had zero correlation with dev skills and everything to do with presenting on how to solve business problems with techology.

A short story of my "Drupal Means Business" talk. (thread) First, none of this would have happened without the mentorship from my late friend Rick Nashleanas.

I attended his local presentation on a similar topic, and I immediately approached him asking how we amplify this message to other developers/agencies. /2

The recent SA-CORE-2018-004 and SA-CORE-2018-002 security advisories have sparked a lot of conversations in the Drupal community regarding all things security. IMHO, it's important to highlight several talking points to keep things in perspective. 1/Timing. In both cases, it is believed that the patches and releases occurred before any publicly known or widely used exploit. This is huge. This means the community had a marked advantage in addressing before mass exploits were attempted.